Jun
5
2008
Why bad is good: my personal story
Author: Robin BrowneWell, I finally hand a first-hand experience that showed me the power of companies allowing negative opinions of them into the conversation on their own website. And it’s not surprising which company I had it with…but I’ll save that until the end.
So the story is that the battery on my laptop had all but died after two years and the warranty on it had run out so I called the company to find out how to get a new one. I was angry because the battery never really lasted that long to begin with and was similar to the type of battery the company had recalled about a year earlier because they were making laptops burst into flames. So, I was already an unhappy customer when Prakash from Bangalore, India answered the phone and told me a new battery would run me $350. My ire increased….
I told Prakash that I would be switching laptops and that I wouldn’t be buying one from the company he worked for. He asked me to tell him why that was and then politely offered to send me the quotes for the new battery in case I changed my mind. Well, after thinking about it and realizing I wasn’t in the position to buy a new laptop right now, I reluctantly decided to go ahead and buy the new battery. I went on to the company site and was all ready to buy when I noticed that customer reviews of the battery rated it 1.7 out of 5. I checked out the reviews and they all pretty much slammed the battery for lasting only a year.
I changed my mind again about the battery – and about the company, Dell.
I was ready to write off the company for the battery experience and some other things but the fact that they allowed me to avoid getting another crappy battery by having bad reviews – really bad reviews – gave me new respect for them.
Would I recommend a Dell computer to friends? Well, if someone was looking for a computer of a type that Dell sold I would suggest they make Dell part of their research. Without my battery review experience I would have been steering them clear of Dell hell.
