Not So Totally Awesome Computers

http://www.superdellsucks.com/

I described events exactly as they happened to me. Granted, I’m just one guy, and maybe I’m the only person out there who has had a bad experience with TAC, but the experiences I had lead me to believe there were systemic problems and not just one bad apple. Why would an employee refuse to replace a $10 part on an almost new computer? Why would he make up reasons to blame me for the part going bad that I could tell weren’t true? Even if it were my fault, why argue over something that cost me $10 and probably cost them half as much? It seemed to me the employee had been coached on how to get out of doing even the smallest thing to cost TAC any money, and I had the same experience with PC Laptops.

2 bad experiences with TAC vs. 30 good experiences with Dell = I only buy from Dell from now on.

Speaking of which, in the original post I mentioned we had a power supply go bad on a computer. I hadn’t called in to get it replaced because I thought it was out of warranty, seeing as how I bought these computers almost three years ago. Turns out it still was under the original warranty (which wasn’t an upgraded warranty, it was the basic one that every computer comes with), and I submitted a request online, and the next day I had a new power supply in my hands, free of charge.

And about a month ago I decided to buy a new projector for our office. It was Tuesday evening at about 5pm, and I need it for a meeting on Thursday. The website said that it would ship within 4-5 days. I called up and asked if that meant it might ship immediately. The nice young lady (who was definitely a US citizen and not in some call center in India, by the way), was very knowledgeable and told me she couldn’t make any guarantees, but that it was in the warehouse and would probably ship within 24 hours. I decided to get it overnighted and risk that it might not be there for my Thursday meeting. Bear in mind, this is between 5-6pm.

I got the projector at 9am the following morning. I only had to pay $35 for shipping. And the projector has been working great. Much better than the previous Sharp one I got at Costco and eventually returned.

Every experience I’ve had with Dell has surpassed my expectations, and every experience I’ve had with TAC or PC Laptops has been more than disappointing. I’m just one man, and I only know my experiences, but there they are.

You people crack me up, one says he buys a computer at 11pm and comes in at midnight for instant service but then suggests people buy an emachine because Totally Awesome is supposedly over priced even though our system that cost more is about 40 times faster than the cheap pile of proprietary crap that comes with no service at all. Our prices are stupidly low for what you get!!! You came in at freaking midnight and recieved instant service but then complain???? Are you freaking nuts??? Where on planet earth can you recieve instant personal service on a software problem at midnite???? Or you could be the first guy that buys a computer and then changes the entinre operating system and complains that we noticed so he buys a dell. Hmm if you change the OS on the dell you won’t get any help at all since they don’t cover ANY software problems, user errors, viruses, spyware problems or anything at all other than hardware failures and then only after you press endless menu buttons, wait on hold and talk to someone in India. Not that I need to point out the completely obvious but a few of you seem to be a hamburger short of a happy meal. I still love you though and will continue to provice the best computers on earth and the best service in the world 50 times over. I sure get a kick out of how even people that post complaints about me on the net inadvertantly point out we are unbelievably Totally Awesome. INSTANT SERVICE AT MIDNIGHT AND THE GUY IS WHINING!!!!! There should be laws against peole like that.

I, of course, cannot straight out say that these complaints are lies, but several aspects of them do not ring true.

Of course individual experiences vary, and I have had uncharacteristic customer service experiences at different places, but I have dealt with some of these exact same problems.

I purchased a TAC in November of 99, after two of my brothers had purchased theirs.

Both my brother and I had a power supply problem, and they were replaced immediately at no charge.

I have taken my system in several times, just to get cleaned up (virus’, trojan horse’s, worms etc.) It has always been quick, and free.

You can find a cheaper system, there is no denying it, but I could put out a huge list of friends and family members who have bought ‘economical’ and run into huge problems with no support or service.

I don’t know enough about a computer to fix my own, and that alone makes the unparalleled service of TAC the reason I will ALWAYS buy from TAC.

I worked for the wonderful world of TAC, now closed TAC I should say. These are not lies when a tech is charging 4 different people for the same hour and in such a rush he/she forgets parts, screws, which software was loaded etc, etc……. I myself have been in all the stores from Orem to the warehouse in Ogden. The parts TAC sells are top rate! the people working on the parts are promoted on a religous basis. Sale people are motivated by, first sales rep to sell five systems gets 100.00 bonus, first tech to finish 15 machines gets 100.00, you think your system was #15 and not really worked on????? Dont ask about RMA’ed parts in new systems that would never happen at TAC. (wink, wink) Now that you cannot buy a TAC where is your lifetime warrenty good? Best of luck with the gun oh wait thats for sell toooo. OK Dell best of luck with the flying sports, maybe you can keep your word with that?

hmmm here some more lies .. backing up some of the lie some of us experienced. about about how they back up their products ..
TH: So, how do you do it? How can you sell computers for so cheap and still make a profit?
SUPERDELL paraphrased: I am successful because I am not greedy. I am willing to sell for less and make a profit because of volume. And, I have a very low overhead. When my volume of sales increases, I can then afford to lower the prices even further – I just lowered the prices by $100 per machine. But, even more important than the price is the total package.

TH: Tell me more about what you mean by the “total package”.
SUPERDELL paraphrased: Quality, price and service. If somebody has a problem, even if it is something they broke themselves, we will fix it. If we can’t fix it, we will give you a new computer or your money back, whatever they want. I personally see to the problems; I will call the customer personally. But, we don’t see too many people wanting their money back, only about 1 in 900, and that one is the type of person who simply won’t let you help them. Gateway, on the other hand gets about 35% returns.

heres the story http://saltlakecity.about.com/library/weekly/00art/aa042400a.htm

Just some thoughts on this…
I subcontract for TAC and have found the company fairly Interesting to work for and to the point. I do not know if I would go out and buy one of their computers, because to me PC’s are about all the same to me. Warranties for computers are also fairly equal even up to “Totally Awesome” standards. (Which is not saying much)

I would broaden your perspective and not just look at TAC but also Sony and Dell. And I would even suggest you be open minded and look into getting an Apple. I myself was a major PC nut and (putting this bluntly) have found that Apple makes a far superior product no PC manufacture can reproduce.

But what ever you do… DO NOT BUY A TOTALLY AWESOME COMPUTER!

-Troy-

First, your complaint about Windows 2000 is completely and utterly unfounded. Any manufacture will tell you they do not support 3rd party hardware or software, an OS upgrade not purchased through the vendor is considered 3rd party software and is thus entitled to no support. It really must be this way, there are too many variables on a machine. What if your motherboard manufacture for your ’98 line updated their line for Win2000 and isn’t bothering to write 2k drivers for their old motherboards? SOL. It’s how this business works. Perhaps you purchased one such model and they tried to enlighten you through their verbage and you wouldn’t take no for an answer.

As for your 2nd problem, yeah that doesn’t sound like good service to me. Yet, it is annecdotal, like the comments here. So I take it like a grain of salt.

As for his advertizing. Yes, he has quite the interesting style. I have found it to be quite the norm in the business generally so this problem is hardly unique to him.

TAC never impressed me much. I went in there late 90s with my dad, who wanted to buy a computer for his sister. I asked the lead tech at the store a few questions about their graphics cards and motherboards. He couldn’t answer them and it appeared that all their computers were using 6-month old parts — not the latest. Doesn’t surprise me that he is going out of business. However, all you DELL lovers out there better be knocking on wood. Dell has one of the worst reputations for quality and customer service currently. In the past they had a good reputation, but recently it has gone down hill. Big articles about it in Business Week etc. Google Dell and Customer Service or Quality and see what you get. I build all my own PCs (and run hosting on them) and use Apple for all (except for test machines) my desktops and laptops…

Oh, one more thing. Win2K and Win98 are almost as different as Linux and Win2K, what works for 2K is very unlikely to work with Win98 and vice versa. I can fairly positively assure you that your theory is incorrect.

I really hate to kick a person when they are down, but it could not happen to a nicer guy. If his were such a great computer and the Dells and the Gateways were beneath him, then why are they still in business and he is not??? Humm I wonder, also he has blamed the news media for his down fall, but the only thing he can really do, is look in the mirror and actually see the person responsible for his down fall.

I’m sitting here looking at 3 dead hard drives laying on my desk, wondering why we took this crap for so long. These hard drives all crashed within the last 3 years. TAC customer service has been mostly good, however, their equipment has not been. It is ridiculous to have your hard drive crash every year! Perhaps more ridiculous is that we bought into their excuses and continued to trust that a new hard drive would solve everything. Let’s see – dust, games, and not enough anti-virus software were just some of their excuses as to why our hard drives crashed. I mean, this is on a pc that was barely used for things like email, light word processing and a few kids games. If a hard drive can’t hadle that, then… IT MUST HAVE COME FROM TOTALLY AWESOME COMPUTERS! I’m glad they’re gone so that we’re forced to go somewhere else. I just wonder how long this 4th hard drive is going to last?

I’m sorry that some of you had bad experiences from TAC. I was a technician for TAC for 2 years and even though my company is dead, I don’t like hearing that people had problems with dealing with us. There were many of us that worked very hard (honestly, you have no idea how hard) to make sure that the customer came first. We did try to make high end computers for the masses but indifference from some employees (as well as a few other factors) killed the business.
If I can do anything for you guys email me at man_and_machine@comcast.net. I am starting a mobile repair business (hey, I did just loose my job ^_^) and I’m willing to give TAC customer a break in labor fees. Heck, I’m always around if you just need advice. Good luck gang.

I never bought one of TAC systems. I did try once. I was shopping with my younger brother and he wanted to look at the systems they had. We went to the Orem office and looked at a few of the machines. He found one that he liked and we tried to ask questions about it, but there was only one person in the store at the time and he was to busy answering the phone to help us. At one point he told us it would be one minute then after 15 minutes we just left.

He ended up getting an HP. (which was not the best choice) But at least he was able to get help buying it from them.

Everyone that hates me and lies about me worships satan. God says love thy neighbor as theyself. Therefore if you don’t love me you definitely don’t follow God. After all of your hate and contention can anyone even come up with one single thing I’ve done wrong that is actually true?? How about take the 10 commandments and try to find a single one I’ve broken?? Some of you I fired for theft and you try to call me a liar? Others don’t know crap about computers but claim to know enough to be sure I don’t know anything…. Still others try to pretend the guy that sued me for discrimination obviously had something to say… Hmm the highest paid, highest ranking officer of the company claiming to be held back from promotion becasue of race & religion. Why do you allow Satan to put such foolish things in your hearts??? None of them make any sense at all. Your hate, contention and lies only hurt you. I will always be SUPERDELL. No matter how many lies you tell or how you twist your stories to try and pretend I commited horrible sins I am still me. All the rocks you throw are just waiting to hit you after you die. I still love all of you though no matter how horrible you try and be to me. The nice thing about being able to polorize people so well is that you very quickly find out what people really are. Take a look in the mirror, is this who you want to be? Hateful mean people? You can even try to twist this post and make something horrible out of it but it only hurts you.

Love, SUPERDELL

Glad those totally stupid commercials are gone. Doh… looks like the disease has infected PC Craptops.

There’s a few cry-babies out there! TAC is not perfect (but probably more than the cry-babies), but it is a sad thing when any business goes out. In your rebukes, don’t forget the individuals and families affected by losing work. Next time it may be your job. Then, perhaps you’ll wipe the smug grins off of your faces.

I have dealt with TOC twice. In both cases the service was excellent. On one occassion I flew in from California with my (TOC Purchased) tower, which had a bad video card. I had only two hours for it to be repaired. They moved it to the front of the line (no extra charge), made the repair, removed viruses, etc, and handed it back to me in time for me to be on my way back to California. You guessed it—no charge, and a kind comment and smile.

Gosh it must feel good to be perfect, but then TOC wouldn’t know. They just tried their best to give their best. Perhaps they came up short a time or two, but I think they suceeded.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=412322

Watch the video or else you’re really missing out. The best part is “If I was a really bad guy do you think any of these news reporters would still be alive? Ask yourself that question. You know you all have the ability to repent because of the grace of God, but you are still alive to do it, because of the grace of Super Dell.”

Man, you can’t make this kind of stuff up.

Without taking sides to who’s right and who’s wrong, I do have to point something out. As a computer builder and business owner for years, an electroinic tech that has worked for NASA and others, it is physically and mechanically impossible to build a device, like a computer, that won’t eventually have problems. One of the hardest things about building systems and taking responsibility for them is 98% of the time the problem is user related. It’s always some $%#$ software problem. Very rarely is it the mechanics of the machine. Keep in mind, your dealing with a device that has millions of things going on at any given moment, and the fact that they sustain and work as well and as efficient as they do should be praised!! Computers are a very fickle and funny thing. You might have 10 that work perfectly for 5 years and then 2 or 3 with constant issues. TAC put together systems with top of the line parts offered in the computer world. Those vendors too have failure rates on their individual parts, just as Dell Computer systems do. I can promise you, I fixed more Compaq, Dell’s, HP”s, E Machines, etc.. than I ever did my own. And I can also tell you for sure, the parts they used WERE NOT the quality you would find in a TAC macine. Regardless of the failure or why, once you put your name on that box, you take ownership of every issue it ever produces. Even though it’s something you didn’t cause, the customer will expect you to fix it and blame your quality for it regardless. Its’ your machine, why isn’t it working? You’ll always hear of bad experiences buying computers from TAC, but you’ll hear even more if you read the posts, of people being extremely displeased with the other Big companies out there. What people forget to realize is there are thousands of people very pleased with the systems they bought from TAC, and still are. I’m here to tell you, I worked my butt off trying to benchmark my systems at the levels of TAC computers, and it was impossible! They had some very talented techs working for their company. When you get written up in major magazines for having the fastest benchmark times ever seen for a certain configuration or CPU type by a local company, THAT is impressive. Ok, so SD gets a llittle defensive and sometimes over the top at times, but it’s those same antics that drove you to a store and got you a TAC computer. It’s because he is so interesting, that people, even after his company is gone, still talk about him. Whatever he did, he’s still winning, because we are all here talking about ihim. He ran 9 stores, did extremely well, and should also be complimented. I challenge anyone reading this to do what he did and do it better….

Note: I don’t personally know Superdell, have never worked for the company, and am only writing this to help people understand the trials and tribulations of building and backing computer sysytems. Thanks for listening!!

K

Wow.. So many misconceptions and misunderstandings..

As a competitor to Totally Awesome Computers, we actually did and still do get a lot of his machines in for repair. I have two on my work bench as I write…

A couple of things from a 3rd perspective. As for the owner of this site and original poster… No… Even your worshipped Dell would not support you if you changed the OS on their machine. Let’s try an experiment, shall we? (Since you seem to have enough time on your hands to go TAC bashing…) Let’s have you take one of your Dell machines running Windows 2000, and load the nightmare called Vista on it. When it crashes and burns, which it most definately will, go ahead and call Dell, read them the ID number on the case, and explain in an honest fashion what you have done. Please be sure to post their response here so I can be entertained at your expense.

As for the hardware quality of TAC, I have worked on many of his machines, and found them to be constructed of quality name brand components. This is so much more than can be said of Dell, whom makes MOST of the machines I repair every day. They use outsourced parts from third world countries that you can pick up for pennies on the dollar on the internet. TAC could have purchased these parts as well, and lowered the price of his machine considerably. The person whom complained about the hard drives is especially entertaining… There are only three major hard drive manufacturers in the world. Seagate, Western Digital, and Hitatchi. All others are sister companies or subsideries of these three. Every computer manufacturer uses one of these three companies. Even Dell… Usually when hardware fails on a consistant basis over and over again, it is user error or the environment of the pc.

Yes, dust kills computers, as was mentioned earlier. Dust clogs CPU heatsinks, Powersupply fans, and other vital cooling devices on the motherboard. It is not uncommon to replace power supplies due to dust. In fact, it is our number 1 repair. We order five times the power supplies to any other pc part in our catalogs. Guess what… Dell is the number one brand we replace the power supplies in…. Go figure… In any case, heat is the number one enemy of any electronic component… even light bulbs. Heat will drastically reduce the life expectancy of your computer.

As for the 6 month old hardware comment… In order to purchase the most up to date hardware and install it in a machine, you must have a buyer whom is willing to spend the money on the latest fashion. If your computer costs $599, you aren’t going to get a new quad-core with two gigs of ram and an nvidia 8800GTX. In order to keep the price of the computer the same for more than a few weeks, you have to use the same hardware more than a few weeks. Being 6 months outdated was a lame comment to make. Otherwise, the price of a computer would go up and down like the price of gas. But then, there are some out there that think the Dell $399 special is the way to go, hmmm I wonder how old the hardware is in one of those suckers… Let’s see… I’ll pull up the Dell website and see… Wow! What a deal! For $349.. Dell will sell you a 2 year old AMD Sempron!

My point is… get the facts straight and compare oranges to oranges. I don’t agree with the way SuperDell chose to run his company, but the things being whined about here happen to EVERY company, and 90% of the time, the guy in the mirror caused and could have prevented the problem.

Yes, I did read the original post. It says,
“Then I took it home and installed Windows 2000 on it. Windows 2000 is a pretty common desktop OS, right? I mean, before XP came along. Well, I immediately had problems. The computer would basically just turn itself off randomly, and you couldn’t reboot it unless you actually turned off the switch on the power supply. So I called TAC and asked them about the problems. Their response was “We only support Windows 98.” I was dumbfounded. Windows 98 was already a bit old, and Windows 2000 was much more common.”

What I am saying is this.. Had you done this to one of my machines, Dells, HP’s, or anyone else, you would have gotten the same response. If you look on the front of one of your Dells.. there is a sticker that says, “Designed for Windows XX”. XX being 98, ME, XP, or other… By upgrading that OS to 2000 which contrary to your statement, is NOT common, and was a collage of ME and XP features which really resulted in a disaster. By altering the OS, you would nix any tech support from any manufacturer. I would only ask you to be fair here…

For example, in my garage sits a Jaguar S-type R. It packs 400 horses under the hood, but I find the exhaust a little too tame for how powerful it is. I wanted to have it fitted with an aftermarket exhaust solution that would unleash a little more HP and let this car roar like I think it should. However, the shop I took it to informed me that altering the car would void the warranty. As a businessman, I’m sure you can see this must be.

I wish I could upload pix to your site. I would show you pictures of the Dell Dimension 2400 I am working on right now, and of how there isn’t a name brand part in it, and it is plastered inside with stickers that read “made in China”. SuperDell built machines made by Americans right here in Utah County with major name brand high quality high performance parts. That you had bad experience with them is unfortunate. However, the powersupply incident could happen to any manufacturer. The fact that you got a defective one is just a matter of odds. The fact that Totally Awesome sold it to you was unfortunate as well. I would have replaced the $10 part here at my business, so I can validate that point.

I’m not at all disagreeing with his poor business habits, but I have to stand up and say that ragging on his hardware and putting the Walmart of computers on the pedistal is going too far.

I’m happy for the guy that has so much good fortune with 20 Dells. However, I work on 30 to 40 of them a week, which is double the number of Compaqs, Sonys, HPs, and Toshibas. I see a Totally Awesome computer maybe two or three times a month. Maybe that’s because they go to PC Laptops where the lifetime warranty is “honored” by charging you double for parts, and no labor, but who knows.

One of these days, wander down to PC Club there in Orem, and see the number of Dells stacked up along the shelves and walls waiting to be worked on.

I guess my point is, there are some good honest computer stores here on the Wasatch front. I wouldn’t sell them out for a few Chinese built economy machines over a bad experience with Dell Schanzee. No one can stand the guy, but he did build quality machines, as do other local computer stores all over the county.

Totally Awesome computers were junk, but Dell computers are the worst junk made. I have a computer business here, in Arizona, and also had it in Utah before moving in 2005. I did more repairs on Dell then any other brand. Totally Awesome computers were the second most repaired brand, but way behind Dell. Dell uses the cheapest quality hardware in the assembly of their PC’s, while TAC used alot of shortcuts like leaving out a cooling fan or not installing enough RAM, corrupt OS install, etc.
Now that its 2010, Dell is even worse in quality then anyone.They get worse all the time. Dell is totally junk!