Technical Tidbits™

I said it quite some time ago, BOYCOTT DELL!

Now, I am posting this on the day of Independence for the United States – The Fourth of July – because there is nothing more UNAMERICAN than the Dell computer company!

First, it was for charging American’s to get American support: Is It Time to Boycott Dell?

Now, it is being reported that Dell KNOWINGLY sold faulty computers and tried to blame it on their customers! Yes, you read that right!

The first report came in through an article I caught on Yahoo! Finance.

Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell show that the company’s employees were actually aware that the computers were likely to break. Still, the employees tried to play down the problem to customers and allowed customers to rely on trouble-prone machines, putting their businesses at risk. Even the firm defending Dell in the lawsuit was affected when Dell balked at fixing 1,000 suspect computers, according to e-mail messages revealed in the dispute.

The updated article from InfoWorld tells the tale of this and many more troubles besetting the company due to their lies and cover-ups.

It was bad enough that Dell – a company founded in America – is charging those same American’s for American support.  After all, it costs them more to hire an American English-speaking support desk person than it does to off-shore it in India!

But now, they are literally calling all American’s ROYAL SUCKERS in that they are selling you a KNOWN FAULTY PC and then trying to put the blame back on you for screwing it up!

If you continue to buy a Dell, then you deserve whatever you get from them.

I just can’t believe that any American would want to spend their hard earned money with a company who lies and cheats their customers. This is deplorable! And anyone who continues to buy from this arseholes has got to have their head examined!

But then again, maybe they are the epitome of America? After all, they are just like our Politicians. They take our money, treat us like s#it and assume we are stupid!

In the U.S. today, we are celebrating a holiday called President’s Day.

According to Wikipedia, it’s a National holiday to honor George Washington’s birthday and over time has become a method of honoring all U.S. Presidents.

Aside from the fact that schools and government offices are closed, it’s a day that reminds us of our past and the founding of our great – albeit economically challenged – nation.

Ever since the race for the presidency and the historic election of Barack Obama as our new leader, we’ve seen a resurgence of patriotism. Many websites have cropped up asking citizens to rededicate themselves to their country and other citizens.

Well, this is my contribution to patriotism. I’ve developed a new category here called: Boycott. In this category I’m going to post articles dealing with companies that were founded in the United States or do business with U.S. consumers yet have un-American policies.

I don’t know about any of you, but I am sick and tired of companies that take money from the American consumer and send it elsewhere! I’m sick of being marketed to by liars and unethical businesses. I will no longer support businesses that do not support the American worker and English-speaking citizens.

There’s an old saying, “Money talks, Bulls#*t walks.”  Are you ready to take a stand with me and our other readers and put our money were our home is?

If so, then you will want to stay tuned to this category!

I’m also putting a permanent page of those companies on the boycott list and the links to our posts and others that support the reason we should boycott.

Thus far, I’ve mentioned Dell as a boycott since their decision to charge American’s for American support.

See: Is It Time to Boycott Dell?

And: Is It Time to Boycott Dell Part 2

I’ll be moving those posts into this category today.

And I’m adding a new company to the boycott list!

Good old born in the U.S.A. IBM! Yes, my friends, IBM!

In an article forwarded to me by a friend, John Murrell of blogs.siliconvalley.com has posted the following: Think of this layoff as your gateway to an exotic cross-cultural adventure

According to a document…..Big Blue has a program called Project Match that helps U.S. and Canadian workers whose jobs have been cut relocate to places where the company still has openings — specifically, developing markets like India, China and Brazil. “Should you accept a position in one of these countries,” the notice explains, “IBM offers financial assistance to offset moving costs, provides immigration support, such as visa assistance, and other support to help ease the transition of an international move.” The tradeoff? You have to be “willing to work on local terms and conditions,” living on the low wages that helped undercut the domestic job you just lost.

Excuse me? I could go on with yet another one of my rants, but the employees actually say it quite well in the article.

The employee advocacy group Alliance@IBM sees the program as a slap in the face to go with the push out the door, saying, “IBM is not only offshoring IBM U.S. jobs but they want employees to offshore themselves through Project Match.” The company, naturally, puts it in more positive terms. “It’s more of a vehicle for people who want to expand their life experience by working somewhere else,” said a spokesman. “A lot of people want to work in India.”

Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Considering our economy is the toilet let’s just all move to India! And I’m not talking about just working there, let’s bail out on our citizenship here!  Then let’s see where the tax payer dollars come from to support the bailout! What do you think Pelosi? President Obama, what do you think? Does that sound like a good plan to you?

Yes, I’m being sarcastic but I cannot believe the audacity of some of these companies!

That all being said, Happy President’s day! Yea, right!

I received an e-mail today that related to my first post: Is it Time to Boycott Dell? I asked for permission to post the e-mail and have been giving it – including his name.  (Caution:  contains adult language)

Tony Neetz wrote:

Well I just read on your blog about how Dell wants to charge to speak to an American CSR.Now I’m really f#@king pissed. I forwarded this on to everyone I know. I have known too many good people who lost their jobs to corporate offshore outsourcing (including me) at the hands of greedy corporate bastards.

I currently own a Dell and was thinking about replacing it with another one when it gives up the ghost as it has worked really well for me over the past 8 yrs., but they can kiss my ass. Time to look at HP or something else. Ya, I’m pissed off right now and I can feel my blood pressure going up. I can’t believe I haven’t heard of this until now. Thanks for posting it. I really want to start a letter writing campaign to newspapers or something.

I will go out of my way to support a company who keep its jobs (especially tech support) in America. This is one of the reasons I recently bought a Garmin GPS. They believe in keeping their manufacturing and support workers in the U.S. (Kansas), unlike the other GPS companies. Magellan had so many CS complaints about their tech. support in India, that they are now opening a U.S. tech support facility to offset the bad press and try to get back some of their shrinking customer base. The one thing you always read when reading customer and industry reviews about Magellan was how terrible their CS was, and a lot of people wrote that they returned their GPS units and told everyone they knew not to buy Magellan because of it. I guess Dell didn’t get the message.

If this wasn’t my only PC and I didn’t need it so bad, I would burn the damn thing on the front lawn of the Dell corporate HQs.

How DARE they.

Could not have said it better myself! However, I don’t use Dell. We build PC’s here! So Tony, let us know when you’re Dell croaks! We’ll build you a new one for cost!

Thanks for the message!