| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Friday 14 March 2003: |
| I forgot to mention the two crappy things about ordering a Dell laptop. First, it won't be shipping for over a month. How does it take a month to put parts together? A trained monkey could do it. If they have a one month backlog, why are they not training/hiring more monkeys? And second, the warranty-type radio buttons default to "FREE bla bla SecurityCenter w3yr Wty - Dell Recommended", on a page full of things where the default options are the lowest cost. Full, that is, except for this one, which actually translates as "Free SecurityCenter when you pay $260 for the warranty". This is revealed in tiny letters next to the best non-default option, as "(subtract $260)". All the other options that change the price default to the cheapest selection, and have "(add $X)" next to the others. The deliberate obscuring and misleadingness of this is utterly appalling. If I'd been able to find anyone else selling a laptop with my chosen GPU I'd have gone with them for this reason alone.
[20:12] |
| Tom |
| Vaguely reminds me of buying a Gateway desktop about 4 years ago. Went in to the shop, said "I'd like that one please, double the RAM". "OK, we can do that." <click> and the monkey's began assembling. I said "You've got this financing deal, no money upfront, interest free, payable over 12 months." A bit of paper rummaging and, "Yes, we do." Keep in mind that the monkey's have been assembling all this time. "We just have to get you to call our finance department." "OK." Mr Financier "What's your drivers license number?" "Um. I've got an expired learners permit here somewhere." "Oh. We don't know who you are if you don't have a drivers license." And so on. In the end I had to go and renew my learners permit (you have to play a computer quiz game) before they would sell me the computer. But at least the monkeys were working hard all the time as it was delivered the next day. I've still not worked out what they would have done with the already built machine if I'd failed that test. |