By Paul Kunert
24 September 2008
Dell’s management in tinkering with its Premier Page portal for partners but its decision to remove certain warranty options has caused delays to resellers’ customer quotes as orders are currently being processed manually.
The resulting frustration this has caused for some partners comes months after the online information and ordering tool for resellers crashed, leaving many with invalid quotes.
The decision to remove extended warranty options from Premier Pages was ill thought through according to several resellers sources and had created a backlog in the system as order were being processed manually.
“Dell is not offering warranties on Premier Pages for anything longer than the standard three years but in times of a slowdown customers want to keep technology for longer and need extended support,” said one.
This came at a time when resellers rely on their vendor partners to be fleet of foot but currently the process involved building a quote online, informing Dell, waiting for them to locate it and reply.
The changes were introduced to “streamline” the system Dell UK channel director Andy Dow told Microscope but he refused to confirm if the company planned to revert to placing all warranty options online.
“We are always looking at ways to make things more efficient, so around warranties we are looking at an efficiency step,” he said, adding that it was clearing the backlog and was evaluating partner feedback.
But another Dell reseller that asked to remain unnamed could not understand how taking extended warranties offline made sales more fluid, “ it is just bizarre.”
