Dell Computers Bait & Switch & Lies Nationwide

June 17, 2009
Dell International Services, Inc.

This, I believe, is the third printer I purchased from your company and none of them ever adequately printed envelopes without a struggle. I've always had them jam, print distorted words , smear the letters and numbers and they've been engineered to use the color cartridge in place of the black one automatically. That's a sneaky way to increase sales.

Any time I wanted to make an envelope, I had to click on the number 3 or 4, to get 1 that wouldn't jam or smear and now it just jams; no matter how many times I load and clear it. Your fraudulent sale of this imitation printer to me is the sole reason I had to purchase another box of 500 envelopes. I doubt you ever made an AIO 966 printer that works. They certainly would not pass a factory bench test, except accidentally.

The first computer I received from your company was never bench tested, because two of your technicians required twenty minutes, on the phone, to just boot it up and after the C drive was finally damaged by the viruses invited in by the Vista operating system you sold me, though you knew it didn't work either, I was told that Dell would not resolve the problem until my attorney contacted your administrative office.

In my first six months of owning Dell equipment, I went through two computers and three printers; spending over sixty hours on the phone with your technicians to make the junk work. When my wife saw the last printer come through the door, she said, " No more! I don't want to see another printer. Just do what you can with this one." and when I found that it had a feed problem too, I just started making labels instead of an argument.

The sole reason I thought of buying a Dell computer was because of your deceptive advertising; 'Get a dell computer for only $545.00.' Of course after I called the number, the salesman told me that it wouldn't work unless I spent another $350.00 and I could up-grade to Vista from XP,which would cost a little more. Since I was already talking to someone, I just acquiesced to the usual Bait and Switch tactic that, I'm sure, you used on everyone.

Now that I've purchased your three year full coverage warranty, I discovered that it's been changed to a limited warranty and you're no longer interested in my software problems, though I still have a year more of coverage left. When I finally read your warranty, I discovered it's not worth the paper it's not written on.

The part that says, " The terms of this agreement can, at any time, be changed without notice by Dell." caught my attention. When I consulted Wikipedia concerning the definition of warranty, it said the synonym was a commitment or promise and a breach of warranty occurs when a promise is broken, so in Dell's case the breach is built into the warranty, i.e., it's a lie that was sold to me as a warranty.

Warranty: N. A promise or assurance that something is true or that something is of a certain quality or useful for a particular purpose; an assurance by one party to a contract that a certain fact is true, given to save the other party the trouble of confirming it, that is, in effect a promise to cover any losses suffered by the other party if the fact turns out not to be true.*

In the case of the first computer, I was never compensated for the shear grief, stress and commitment of time and attention necessary to force Dell to address to my computer's failure to function and the files I permanently lost, to say nothing of the shear volume of time, day after day addressing operating system issues, viruses, printing jams, misprints and squandered envelopes by the pile.

No one apologized for lying about the bait and switch game perpetrated when I purchased this nightmare advertised on T.V. or the quality of the incompetent Vista operating system, the Word 2001 software that was installed in 2007, the lack of a standard bench test, the refusal to fix it or the cost of the attorney to force you to replace it.

There was no remorse demonstrated by Dell when I had to buy and replace three printers that Dell engineers knew already wouldn't make envelopes easily or consistently, because of the ever-present feed problems and none of them told me that they would use the color, instead of the black cartridge intentionally to accelerate ink sales, surreptitiously.

Finally, Dell expressed no concern that the only thing about their warranty that could not be changed without notice to me, was the price, so one day I had full coverage and the next, I had some degraded (Limited) coverage that I never requested.

The sale of the Vista operating system, the Dell printer and the warranty were all performed as fraudulent acts and you have breached the warranty on the computer.

I formally request a response to this complaint in writing within five days of receipt.

James
Cypress, California