I actually went to high school with “Dude, you’re getting a Dell!” guy.” Ben Curtis, pictured right, helped the company sell a big old pile of laptops.
However, I highly doubt that Ben’s going to be involved in handing out the checks to consumers who purchased repairs for Dell’s shoddy products. More importantly, are YOU one of those consumers? Because if you are, you should probably find out and get some money from Dell, who just lost a class-action lawsuit.
The full details are at a website breaking the lawsuit, but here’s the skinny:
If you owned a Dell 1150, 5100 or 5160, you got hosed, because Dell purposely made those products in a poor manner. (Frankly, I can’t believe it’s only three models — when I first read about this, I assumed it was the entire company.)
How so? Well, the Plaintiffs claimed that Dell “acted deceptively in designing, manufacturing, marketing, selling, and servicing” these computers and that Dell provided (1) inadequate cooling systems (2) a power supply system that prematurely fails when used as intended and (3) motherboards that prematurely fail when used as intended.
If you’ve ever owned a Dell, this sounds pretty accurate. The company, of course, is denying all wrongdoing and just handing out money to consumers in place of actually admitting they did something wrong.
The whole notion of “why are you paying if you didn’t do anything wrong?” aside, if you owned one of those, you can get some cash.
First, just be on the lookout for a “Notice of Eligibility” from Dell. Knowing them, it will probably come in a barely marked envelope that won’t make you want to open it. (And it could say “Auto” on there, because they’re using their databases to find out who’s eligible, so don’t chunk it just because of that.)
If you owned a computer and don’t receive that, go to the lawsuit’s website and follow the instructions.
Be warned, though, that you’ll probably only get like $150 (per Consumerist), so the painful process might not actually be worth the results.
Which makes it just like any normal experience with Dell customer service.