Obnoxious Dell Pre-Installs
Time for a rant: This is one of those things that makes me look at Dell and wonder WTF happened to their vaunted customer service. I blame either a) a McKinsey ("the people who brought you Enron:™ ") -type consultant, or 2) some jackass MBA.
Dell no longer "delights" their customers -- at least not this one. They have become a commodity supplier of low cost goods, which are IMO spyware/popup infected.
Seriously, who is the Putz that greenlighted this collection of obnoxious sales pitches?
- Type in a bad address, and instead of Google, you are directed to a Google like page with ads for Dell's products (see below);
- Print anything, and the default printer utility will launch a sales pitch on toner;
Someone should fire that bastard. Hardly delightful day after day.
Here are the fixes:
To delete the printer pop up, you must uninstall the printer software, and then uncheck a box during the install process. Not only did it take a Dell tech support person an hour to figure that out, but it guaranteed that my next printer will be an HP. (Morons).
The other McKinsey/MBA type abrasiveness is this stupidity below. Mistype an address, or leave any site that auto refreshes (WSJ, TheStreet.com, Briefing), and you get a Dell/Google co-branded sales page.
Go away.
To remove that program, go to the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs. Look for the application named "Browser Address Error Redirector" or it may be called "GoogleAFE". Select "Uninstall."
btw, I do not recall giving permission for that to be installed. (Jerks)
If the sales / marketing people at HP had any smarts, they would be paying attention to these sorts of customer service rants. The shame is, the machine -- once the obnoxious-ware was uninstalled -- is a reliable screamer.
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This sort of poor customer experience will certainly make me hesitate before if I order something from Dell again . . .
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For prior discussions on this topic, see Consumer Issues and Investors and Consumer Issues (Feedback)
Hey! Your cranky when your off the meds!
Wednesday, March 29, 2006 | 06:30 PM | Permalink
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Great rant!
Maybe somebody Who Knows Somebody at H-P AND Dell will do all of us the favor of passing it on.
We don't need/want H-P to get infected; we'd like Dell to take notes.
Posted by: Nona | Mar 29, 2006 7:28:43 PM
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