You may remember I reported on how Dell would be offering some colorful new notebooks to its lineup in an effort to capture some of the home PC market. Well, it seems that the “clumsy” company is now scrapping the idea, even after orders have come in to the company.
Dell is telling customers that it is having problems with making notebooks in those exotic colors. The Dell company blog says, “Right now, Tuxedo Black is the only color that is consistently meeting our quality standards.” So forget the sunshine yellow, the flamingo pink, or the ruby red, alpine white, midnight blue, jet black and espresso. To quote Ford concerning the Model T, “Give them any color as long as it’s black.”
The blog, written by Alex Gruzen, a senior vice president in Dell’s consumer products group seems to be using the announcement as a way of explaining why some customers are getting their orders before others.
Dell says that the problem is in producing massive qualities of the colored notebooks. They say that they can produce hundreds at a time, but when they increase the volume, the quality goes down. One particular issue seems to be with dust contamination, that is too much dust in the paint.
I wonder why black is unaffected by the dust. Is it that the dust isn’t as noticeable when it comes to black? Or perhaps black is the default color of the plastic that makes up the notebooks’ casings?
Dell has been suffering from numerous issues in the past year and a half, and this latest problem is sure to add more fuel to the fire when it comes to angry customers. Things such as exploding batteries, nightmarish customer service and cooking the books to meet financial goals have all been in the news lately.
Dell is the world’s number 2 computer manufacturer, with most of its business focused on the business world, supplying computers to large company environments rather than the home computing sector.
Mary Ann Romans also writes for the Frugal Living Blog here at Families.com, where she shares money saving tips for today’s families.
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