Dell suit: What's a PC buyer to do?

When New York's attorney general announced last week that he was filing suit against Dell for its tech-support practices, we shared details on Dell's phone support from our annual tech-support survey. After hearing from several readers who reported many problems with Dell's support (and several who said they were very satisfied), we thought it was important to provide even more information to help consumers make an informed buying decision. 

First, it's worth re-emphasizing the point we make in our buying advice for PCs, and made in the blog entry, that Dell is not the only company with tech-support services that leave a lot to be desired. Check out our results on HP, Compaq, Gateway, Sony, eMachines, and Toshiba, all of which were equally or more unsatisfactory than Dell (available to subscribers). In addition, while Dell was worse than average for waiting on the phone, it was average when it came to actually solving the problem. Meanwhile, most other PC manufacturers were lower than average for solving problems. 

You should also keep in mind that reliability and performance are just as important as tech support when you're making a purchase. We often recommend Dell computers because they exhibit very good performance pretty consistently. As for reliability, Dell is no better or worse than most of the other manufacturers. 

In the end, buying a PC is a balancing act. Consider performance, tech-support, reliability, design, and price, to come to the best decision possible. (For more detailed advice, see our Computers Decision Guide.) 

Finally, we note that New York is also taking aim at Dell's promotional financing, citing deals such as "no interest until 2008" or "six-month interest-free financing." The suit alleges that Dell "uses ultra-restrictive underwriting guidelines, under which the vast majority of consumers — even those with excellent credit histories — do not qualify for promotional financing." The suit goes on to allege that once consumers are rejected, Dell fails to clearly let them know they've been rejected, and "mislead[s] them by calling these consumers' accounts ‘Dell Preferred' accounts." 

We haven't addressed eligibility problems with such promotions (though we'll now look into them the next time we update our advice), nor have we specifically looked at Dell's offers. But we have urged that if you accept a no-payment, no-interest offer, you should pay for the item before the term expires. Otherwise you could be charged very high interest rates starting from the date of purchase. 

— Donna Tapellini