One would imagine placing an order for a near top of the range business  laptop would be something Dell would be really keen to get right.

So last month when I saw they launched the Dell Latitude E4200 I immediately ordered one via my Dell Partner Direct Account Manager as I was in the market for a new business laptop.

I placed the order on the 17th of September and received an order confirmation the same day (pic below).

I was made aware that the Dell Latitude E4200 was getting a “Soft Launch” so I would have to wait until 21st October time frame. So I didn’t bother checking the online order status until earlier today only to find to my amazement my Order had been cancelled (See Main Picture).

Naturally I drop my Dell Partner Direct Account Manager an e-mail asking for clarification. The person covering my account managers issues confirms that the order was indeed cancelled but she did not know why?

27 days have passed since I placed my order, I am very confident I haven’t received any e-mail based notification of cancellation.

To date the closest I have got to a Dell Latitude E4200 is the picture below.

I ordered one, I gave payment details, I even got an order confirmation. What else do I have to do?

I find all of this rather disappointing and I know for a fact none of the procurement problems I  encountered would be acceptable to my Clients/Users.

At the time of writing It would appear if I want a Dell Latitude E4200 I have re-order it and start the process all over again or not as the case may be (a lot can happen in 27 days).

I really want to be blogging about how cool the E4200 is not how much of a headache it is to order one.

Updated 15:40)  Dell got in contact with me at lunchtime with a quote. Then a couple of hours later I was contacted by the Dell Channel Marketing Manager in response to the post below. So all my Partner Direct issues have been resolved. Thanks Guys.

Dell have announced they see a “Further Softening in Global End User Demand”. (Link)

So I was pretty surprised that I could not get in contact with anyone from Dell Partner Direct to give me a quote for these new Latitude E Series laptops.

Since Dell changed from having old fashioned account management I haven’t hooked up with my new account manager. So yesterday when I tried to register interest in a programme I am already enrolled in, I got nowhere.

I managed to log into the Dell Partner site and submit a request but as yet they have not contacted me.

A few hours later I contacted my old Account Manager and asked her to get one of the Partner Direct team to contact me. She CC’ ed me in on an email asking them to do so.

A day later still nothing.

So far for being enrolled in the Dell Partner Direct Programme all I have to show for it is a nice folder and some plastic pens with Dell written on them.

Through all these layers of CRM they can’t seem to respond to a customer who wants to spend money.

Meanwhile maybe the guys leaving comments over at engadget are right. Maybe the the E4200 is priced out of whack and Lenovo would be better value for money.

Engadget Comments Link

I wish I was posting about how excited I was about getting a new laptop today instead as a Dell customer feeling ignored.

Dell have announced on their Direct2Dell blog they will be offering extended warranties for those customers affected by Nvidia GPU issues.

I have previously written about these issues here and here.

From their Post

“Dell will offer a 12-month limited warranty enhancement specific to this issue. For all customers worldwide, we plan to add 12 months of coverage for this issue to the existing limited warranty up to 60 months from the date of purchase.”

The affected Dell models are the:-

Dell Inspiron 1420

Dell Vostro Notebook 1310
Dell Vostro Notebook 1400
Dell Vostro Notebook 1510
Dell Vostro Notebook 1710

Dell Precision M2300

Dell Latitude D630
Dell Latitude D630c

Dell XPS M1330
Dell XPS M1530

Considering Nvida caused this problem Dell are taking a lot of heat for it. So are HP and the other OEMs.

Reading the comments on the current announcement this is still not considered a satisfactory solution by the majority of users. A product recall/replacement is.

Link: Direct2Dell (Comments)

Another Interesting Link on this topic: Link

Web Site analytics are painful to decode at the best of times. But one metric that is usually sound is the number of unique visitors that your Web Site gets.

Unless your web site is super sticky commercial companies rely on being able to be found in Internet search engines like Google.

I monitor and report on the web stats for several companies spread over many different business classifications. In July 2008 on average and collectively the number of unique visitors dropped by 7% and this was unusual based on the pattern of web traffic in the preceding months.

July should have been a big month as it had 23 working days compared to June’s 21. My clients are UK based so would not have been affected by the American July 4th Holiday.

So what happened:

There are two possible things happening here:

1) Google changed dramatically the ranking algorithm.

or

2) The doom and gloom in the economy has affected the number of unique visitors looking for products and services from commercial companies.

I actually think its bit of both 15% Google and 85% the economy.

At some level there is a link between consumer confidence and web traffic to commercial companies.

When you ask customers to pay $99 for an online service it better deliver.

Having to report the loss of 10% of the affected customers e-mail over a multiple day period is frankly both shocking and embarrassing for any large tech company.

I think the only way  Apple can turn this around is to make Mobile Me free for six months. Iron out the bugs then let the consumer decide at the end of the term.

As it stands. Avoid.

Link: http://www.apple.com/mobileme/status/