Dell - Not Buying Its Laptops Nor Its Stocks

Before any investment in a company I try to do business as a consumer with that company. Balance sheets can only tell you so much about the “true” story of a business. When the option came up to buy a new laptop for my wife I thought, Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) stock has been interesting to me for some time, let’s give them a go.

Let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty. After going through far too many pages and a number of strange web errors on the dell site my order was lodged. Content to write off these bizarre website errors I went over to the track order page. To my surprise I discovered my estimated delivery date for an off the shelf, uncustomized, mass manufactured, laptop was over a month away.

I couldn’t believe it, I can walk 5 mins from my office to a local computer store and pay the same price for a laptop and walk out that day.

I set about canceling my order right away. Sent an email, no response. Phoned, and finally after sitting on hold for more time than I would like to admit I was put through to a call center where I was able to cancel my order. I did a bit of reading around the web to see if I was the only one who had encountered this, nope.

I am left wondering, what is Dell’s sustainable competitive advantage?

• Easy order- nope.
• Great service- nope.
• Great selection- nope.
• Fast Delivery - nope.
• Great prices - nope.

Sorry Dell, not going to buy a laptop from you again, and not going to be buying your stock either.