Dell sued for defective PC's

The following article appeared in my local newspaper (Newsday) yesterday:


Selden couple sues Dell over defective PCs

BY RICHARD J. DALTON JR |
October 4, 2007


A Selden couple has sued Dell Computer Corp. for $50.5 million, saying
the company replaced a broken computer with other defective PCs four
times and that a tech-support person repeatedly called them late at
night and e-mailed vile photographs.

The lawsuit alleges that over a 45-day period ending March 30, 2006, a
Dell tech-support agent sent plaintiff Crystal Collette e-mails with the
subject "Devil people in East Asia," with photos depicting Asians
dissecting and eating infants.

"This is the most outrageous thing I've ever seen," said Collette's
lawyer, John Juliano of East Northport. "When you look at them, you get
sick.

"It's the same kind of stuff with all American corporations lately,"
Juliano said. "They keep outsourcing everything, and what's happening is
they're not controlling the people they outsource to."

Dell spokesman Bob Kaufman declined to comment because of the pending
litigation.

The suit also says Collette, 37, bought a defective Dell Dimension 4700
computer in July 2005 and that the company replaced it with the same
model, which also was defective. In all, she received five defective
PCs, including the original, the suit alleges.

The suit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, says
Dell's agents and employees "began calling her at all hours of the
night." Collette said the calls, between 10:30 and 11 p.m., were for
technical support.

The actions, Collette said, led her to suffer "severe and permanent
personal injuries and emotional distress." The suit says her husband,
Raymond Collette, 43, was deprived of her companionship.

Collette, who has two children, said she has had several miscarriages
and so the photos particularly disturbed her.

"I was throwing up," she said. "You wouldn't even mail it to a friend.
Why would this guy be doing this?"

Collette said she had been dealing with a tech-support person named
Sajjad, and the e-mail address of the sender contained the word
"Sajjad." She said she complained to Dell about the e-mails and that a
company representative said the employee had been fired.

Collette said her fifth Dell computer still goes to a blue screen, which
indicates a serious error that requires the PC to be restarted. But she
said that when she calls for technical support, she's often told she has
to speak with Dell's legal department.

Juliano provided the e-mail printouts and photographs, but Newsday could
not verify who sent them. A personal address was listed on the e-mail.

Lance Ulanoff, editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, said consumers are
unhappy with outsourcing, complaining that they sometimes can't
understand a person's accent or that tech-support staff can't resolve
the problem. But this incident, he said, appears to be an
"extraordinary" situation unrelated to outsourcing.

Ulanoff also said that it's difficult to prove that the Dell
tech-support person sent the e-mails. Someone could have spoofed the
e-mail address, or the tech-support person's computer could have been
hit with a computer virus that sent out the e-mails, he said.

 

I may have had a recent bad experience, but I find the information in
this article hard to believe.

 

yup, not a joke, its true
here's the link.
http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzdell1004,0,4113566.story

that's pathetic.

anyway, my customers tell me that most of the dell techs in long island
are terrible.
that's why i get so much business there!! so i cant complain.

dell pays them very little.
i inquired once and it was a ridiculously small amount of money.
jay

 

Jay, without trying to be too nosey, just curious what sections of LI
do you service? I used to live in Nassau and Suffolk county at
different times. I basically travelled LI almost end to end on the
south shore before I left.

 

Well parts of it sound plausible but parts of it sounds like this
couple is trying to make a buck at Dell's expense. I'm just glad I'm
not the lawyer (for either side) in this case.

 

The loss of services is disgusting...
Did you read any of the answers to this law suit. Real funny

Joan

 

i live in North Nassau. 30 mins east of Manhattan.
I typically cover the upper half of Nassau, Queens, and most of
Manhattan. i usually dont go into Suffolk or the other adjacent areas
unless a referral from one of my customers. I'll often tell customers
to bring their stuff to me to save travel.

Long Island is very... long. 3 Hours to get to the far east end of the
island.

 

Trust me I know... I lived in NYC (Queens) traveled to work and school
for some time in Manhattan and the other direction as far as Montauk
Point many times. I used to know the south shore well and am familiar
with the north shore but not as well (too rich for me... Manhasset,
Great Neck, etc.. ). I bet you love traveling into Manhattan .

 

it is true that anyone can sue anyone for any amount of money. what remains
to be seen is if they can actually prove the statements they are making and
justify the damages they are asking for. i know nothing other than what was
in the newsday.com article but i suspect this couple will have a hard time
proving both. and even if true, it is a hard to understand how bearing
witness to a picture of a dissected fetus leads one to "severe and permanent
personal injuries and emotional distress" that results in them severing
relations with their spouse. there is more to this story. my guess is that
it will die a quiet death rather than attract any more notoriety.

 

travel's not so bad. but i have it down to no more than 2 days a week
to manhattan.
i can remotely connect to anyone's computer from my 4 desktops and fix
almost anything.

 

Heck, the lawyers are the only ones that will come away with any money.

 

Always. I imagine one of the Dell attorney's first points will be that a
BSOD represents a Windows problem, so sue Micro$oft (I understand Dell
is responsible for Windows support as an OEM, but who does Dell turn to
when they can't divine a solution?).

Micro$oft has extremely deep pockets, but any big company has enough
legal muscle to delay, delay, delay, until the plaintiffs or their
attorney are dead.

 

They're probably looking for a quick out of court settlement to make a
few bucks. I doubt very much a judge or jury will ever hear this case.

I'm baffled by the timing - they bought the original 4700 in 07/2005 and
just doing something about it now? Does it take that long to file in
Nassau County?

 

Ka-ching. Frivelous -- the couple and lawyer should be fined, the
Dell employee fired, and charges placed against the Dell employee by
police.

 

Then there was the stinking Washington lawyer who sued a dry cleaner recently
for $50M doing something to his pants. The case was thrown out by the judge,
but not until after the dry cleaner shut down two of its three stores to pay for
their defense.

The part of the lawsuit that may have some merit are the vile photographs in
emails, but only if the woman saved all the email messages and vile photos. A
person decent at forensic software could determine where the email was sent from
and possibly provide proof positive that the email was sent from a Dell computer
somewhere off shore.

As for the defective PC, if the couple has kept perfect records of what went
wrong, the service tags of the PCs sent, etc etc etc, they might get something
for their trouble. But $50.5M for a defective PC all by itself is outrageous.

Seems like all you need is a lawyer who will take your case and either your
money up front and/or a healthy percentage of the contingent award, and you can
sue anybody. Isn't it nice to live in the country that produces more lawyers
per capita than any other country? And then we send a bunch of them off to
Washington to legislate perhaps the most complex set of laws known to man. I
like what they are supposed to be doing in Iraq, but, of course, they are not.
Let's start over again with the American legal system and maybe redo the
constitution while at it to reflect the realities of the 21st century.

.... Ben Myers

 

<snip>

The chances of receiving (5) defective PC's are probably equal to winning
the lottery.

Which it appears they're trying to do now.

Couldn't possibly be user error. Nope.

 

Hi Joan!

(don't be a stranger)


Stew

 

it probably because it took that long to stumble across a lawyer at a dinner
party who was drunk enough to promise to take on the case pro-bono (probably
just to get them to shut up about their lame computer 'nightmare' story).

 

genuis!

 

I grew up in Brooklyn and taught at Freeport High School for a year!

Mel