Confessions of a Dell Sales Manager, A Threat, and Another Dell Goof

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

A few days ago The Consumerist posted an article titled “22 Confessions Of A Former Dell Sales Manager”. As the article said:

A former Dell kiosk manager writes us to share helpful tips about doing business with Dell. He has no particular problems with Dell, he just wanted to share some helpful tips for consumers looking to get the best deal. He includes info on getting the best deal from the website, different kinds of promotions the Dell offers, insider details on how the kiosk sales reps are compensated, what coupons and deals they have to offer you to close the deal.

Dell had a problem with this, and asked The Consumerist to take down the article, saying it had proprietary information … and the threat was evident in the email to The Consumerist.

The Consumerist did not, and the sh*t hit the fan around the blogosphere. Dell’s decided the bad PR was worse than the info being on the Web, and placed a ‘mea culpa’ on their Direct2Dell blog last night.

Now’s not the time to mince words, so let me just say it… we blew it.

I’m referring to a recent blog post from an ex-Dell kiosk employee that received more attention after the Consumerist blogged about it, and even more still after we asked them to remove it. Source: Direct2Dell

We Say: In the post, Dell addresses the points in the original Consumerist article, including what it felt were either inaccuracies or misunderstandings, as well as add #23 (’We Goofed’). My favorite confession had to be that soon XPS systems will be getting tech support from the U.S. and Canada (#16). This would mean someone like me wouldn’t have to escalate (you may recall my Vista upgrade woes) in order to get effective help … or to fulfill this question from the comments on the Direct2Dell blog post, “When will I be able to understand the person at the other end of the phone?” Although of course, it will be limited to their high-end XPS systems, still. Oh well, … little steps (I hope).