Hacker News Reader

Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

The secret to Dell is you need to buy “ProSupport”. It costs like $100 more.

I had an issue that was known with certain Dell universal docking stations. We had the elevated support and got a hot fix in a few days. A colleague with the same laptop, same dock has the same problem and got nothing - they refused to acknowledge or support the dock connection, claiming that they only support “hardware” and not windows drivers. Eventually the driver was released a few months later.

Other OEMs like Lenovo and HP don’t fuck around with stuff like this. Just price Dell like for like with the equivalent support offering. Dell’s pricing is usually very competitive, so you’ll probably find they will still win some comparisons, and when they do the “pro” offering is better.

View on HN

Yup. Prosupport was very worth it.. People who buy Macs for work also buy Apple Care, right? Same thing. Dell sent technicians to my house twice to fix issues. My only gripe was that my Precision didn't seem to fully support the Ubuntu 18.04 it came with, but everything has been better with 20.04.

I do not buy AppleCare, especially for MacBook Airs. There are no moving parts, and I feel like the likelihood of something not working is so low in the period that AppleCare covers that it is just worth it to buy a new laptop if anything happens to it.

Note that apple would not sell AppleCare if they were losing money on it. If you can afford to replace a laptop, you might as well do that. Dell’s professional warranty sends someone to your house next day to fix it, which is worth something extra, especially if you are far from an Apple store. But I do not think Apple’s does anything special like that.

Yeah I'd be more worried about the ipad pro or latest iphone. The screen on the pro costs like $700 alone.

Apple won’t send a technician to your house, no.

But if you break anything on that device and you want to have it repaired, that’s likely to be pretty expensive. In contrast, if you have AppleCare, the repair may be free, or just the cost of the replacement components and no labor charge.

More recent versions of AppleCare have even started covering screen replacements, which can easily exceed the value of the device, or even the cost of buying another one that is identically configured.

So, yeah — I always buy the maximum AppleCare I can. Just one broken component, and it has paid for itself for the remaining lifetime of that device.

Extended warranties are very high margin - probably 65-75% for Applecare. For a vendor like Dell, they pay a variety of third party entities something like $25-40 per on-site visit, plus a commodity part. If you're handy, it is often cheaper to DIY.

With Apple, remember that they are masters of business process, supply chain and scale. You either hump the computer to the Apple store or do a depot repair. There's no man in the van. They put OEM parts or replace the unit and refurbish it in some industrial process. Apple makes of money on this, as the process maximizes utilization and minimizes loss - they are using their own staff or a smaller number of depot contractors, and push losses like shipping shrink to their contractors like FedEx.

But... remember that you have captive to a single supplier for most replacement parts, and replacement parts are a profit center for Apple. It's gross, but if you're not prepared to essentially replace the unit in year 2, and you need the device, you may be better off with AppleCare. Another factor is because Apple devices are unpredictably hit or miss for quality. My company had a defective keyboard MacBook that was replaced in full 7 times. There have been issues with batteries, de-lamination, and other things at various times that are a risk as well.

Personally, I buy AppleCare for Macs, but not for things that are more accessories like Apple TVs, iPads, etc. My kids iPad has a cracked screen stabilized with scotch tape.

> People who buy Macs for work also buy Apple Care, right?

Not for laptops, the quality is so high I’m stacking them up as I can’t justify throwing them out or recycling them. I have a macbook pro from 2012 still going strong (albeit slow)

This is such a bad business decision as they could really establish themselves on the notebook market, even it got smaller in the meantime. But they have had this strategy for years and I don't believe they will be able to continue this for much longer because more and more people talk negatively about Dell. Problem is there are not too many alternatives and it seems to be a general trend.

> The secret to Dell is you need to buy “ProSupport”. It costs like $100 more.

I had the prosupport, still got Indian call center.

I've received plenty of decent support from what seem to be Indian call centers. ("seem" because I could be wrong about accents). I've had awful support from other call centers. I have also been involved in multiple call center procurements: The question is more about the training of call center staff that you're willing to pay for, not location. Dell could get high quality call centers in India if they were willing to put resources into building an excellent knowledge based and extensive training for call center staff. Dell has chosen not to go that route.

Yea of course, my implication was that it wasn't US support, which could have more maneuverability and decision making as opposed to a rigid script. But you are right in that it's actually about the company and training/policies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com