Dell…Just Let Us Go
We bought three new Dell machines and four monitors earlier this month and since then we have been receiving a steady stream of sales emails from Dell. Daniel unsubscribed from their mailing list this morning, which as he says “was easy, but…” after unsubscribing, Dell informed Daniel it can take ten business days to become fully unsubscribed. Here is the message:
As of 19/03/2007 8:59:28 AM, this e-mail address will be opted out from all marketing e-mail subscriptions within 10 business days. In the interim, you may continue to receive e-mail marketing to which you originally subscribed.
*Weak*
Now we are getting more emails from Dell like “Spring Blowout Sale”. Dell…we bought your stuff, now please let us go and stop wasting our time. If we love you, we’ll come back…that’s how it works – or at least how it ought to work. Right now this relationship is on rocky ground.
sends more invoices than there are 
3:29 pm
Dude – you got Dell-ed.
3:35 pm
They call that being “Dell-ed”? Ouch.
3:55 pm
Overstock.com is the same. Worse, even. I made one purchase and kept getting swamped with e-mail even though I opted out (so I thought) when I placed my order. Went back to the site to unsubscribe and got the same BS about it taking ten days to process the request.
*super-weak*
Finally they let me go. I will not return (but I returned the item so they lost out completely).
9:15 pm
I’ve never heard of being “Dell-ed.” But ask any IT guy what “De-Dell-ing” means. In context: “We just got 6 computers in today, but we have to de-Dell them before we set them up.”
9:17 pm
By the way this blogs is consistently one of the best ones I read. And I read alotta blogs.
9:31 pm
Doesn’t U.S. law require immediate compliance? This 10-day thing is found all over the net, but the supposed reasoning behind taking this much time to repair a database entry is ridiculous, much like the banking policy of hanging onto check funds for 7+ days before posting it!
11:00 pm
@Jeremy – oh we “de-delled” those machines right away…funny. Thanks for the kind words about the blog – comments like that are fuel.
@Adam – I think it is illegal via the CAN SPAM act a few years back…but maybe they get 10 days before things get ugly from a litigation standpoint. Anyway you slice it it’s not what customers want so I don’t see why they do it.
10:33 am
Personally I don’t do Dell, nor do I ever recommend it to clients. Since they outsourced their support for all but really, REALLY big clients to somewhere-over-the-sea several years back they’ve been on my black list. By far I prefer and recommend HP/Compaq. All of the major mfgs put tons of crap in their preloads and you have to wipe the machine and reinstall clean so that’s not the issue. The issue for me is QUALIFIED support available when needed – with no language barriers. An HP will respect your contact preferences, I bought a new laptop at Christmas and have received zero additional marketing email since that point because that’s what I chose during the sales process. Now that’s honoring customer wishes!
11:57 am
I am pretty sure that this does violate the can-spam act
Its also a good case scenario of how blogs can effect a companies PR
Similar thing here:
http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/general-joomla/customer-service-and-aweber.html