Dell Computers wants to sell you a car. According to Automotive News [sub], we're talking expensive cars. Even though high gas prices and a crippled economy have put the brakes on the high end car market, Michael Dell re-thinks different. He sees "opportunity all up and down the spectrum." Dell CEO and former Sonic Automotive President Jeffrey Rachor might just be planning to spend $500m on premium and import car dealerships. Why? "When people are panicking and don't really know what to do, that's probably the period of greatest opportunity from an investor's standpoint to make changes and do good things." OK, but why cars? The elephant in the room: Dell's straight to the customer sales paradigm. Is the long-awaited era of B2C mass customization upon us?
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One word: huh??
Shouldn’t Dell sort out its own business model first before waltzing into cars, which seems to be the next big thing for clueless execs?
I can see it now, a service light comes on letting the vehicles less than mechanically inclined owner know the coolant is low. The owner calls Dell customer service,
Hi, I have a warning message indicating low coolant. What should I do?
Sir, your service package requires you to pay a $150 fee before I can assist you with this matter.
Really? I don’t remember reading that but fine here is my credit car number.
Thank you, now that you’ve paid I’ve looked into your issue. It turns out the car is totaled. Would you be interested in hearing about our new products?
Is the long-awaited era of B2C mass customization upon us?
The most detestable thing about buying new cars are the sellers: dealers are 100% pure slime. You can smell them from a kilometer away. Simply walking into the showroom makes one want to wretch. And while it is true that you can cleanse the body afterwords with a hot shower and liberal application of organic solvents, what can you do about the psychic injury?
So what do you say, Ford? Will you open an orders desk at your Escape Hybrid factory in Kansas City? Anyone could go in, fill out a form, affix a check and they’d get a call when the the car is ready?
I think it would be a great idea to be able to buy cars in that manner – you pick your model, options, and order it without having to deal with a stealership.
A side note on the photo – Dell bought those defective batteries from Sony, as did a bunch of other laptop manufacturers.
Its not that I destest salespeople, they gotta earn a living too…its just that they needlessly complicate the whole thing with their insistance on interaction beyond, “A test drive? Let’s go! Here’s my card if you’re interested”
Its a chore just to eyeball and test a few cars, much less actually enter negotiations.
The speech was at the Detroit Economic Club, they are interested in “premium and import brands”.
That’s a nice idea Mr. Dell. But I think he is gonna find that the state legislators are in the pockets of the car dealers. And there is no way that they are going to let someone sell cars in their state via the web.
From an article on Arstechnica:
The New York State Supreme Court has dealt a blow against Dell by ruling that the company and its affiliate, Dell Financial Services, engaged in fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices, and abusive debt collection practices.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080528-judge-to-dell-dude-youre-defrauding-your-customers.html
Personally, I’ve not had any trouble dealing with Dell, but this might give me pause before making a car purchase from them.
There are a great many honest dealers around. Sure there are also many, in numbers, who aren’t, but I trust my local BPG dealer far more than I do Wagoner, or Hyundai with its CEO convicted of fraud among other acts. Dealers often go to bat for THEIR customer in dealing with manufacturers.
I’ve never worked in a dealership, but reading some of the stuff on Edmunds posted by dealer personal tells me that customers aren’t honest or easy to deal with either.
I’m with yaninwaoz. I don’t think it’s legal. They will have to create dealers to stay within the law in many, if not most states.
Not all dealers are slime, either. That attitude doesn’t help either.
Since their Direct Sales stopped working so well, they have gone back to offering models of computers in retail stores. I guess they figured it wasn’t the fact that their service is now atrocious that was hurting sales, but the that they needed to get back into retail channels. I deal with Dell on a daily basis, it hurts. Since part of my car buying goes into how well I am treated by the service department I buy from, I can safely say I wouldn’t even look at an upscale car sold by Dell.
What is Dell’s definition of premium brands? Judging by their computer products which all used to be touted as premium, we will be seeing Chery and Tatas sold by Dell soon. At least their support services will not be outsourced from the country of origin.
This sounds like an April’s fool’s joke to me…
If it had worked why Saturn hasn’t flew off the shelf by now.
Will the new electric cars be sold at Best Buy?
“Is the long-awaited era of B2C mass customization upon us?”
One can only hope so! I hate the way the current system is designed around getting you to take something already on the lot. Why not let me order EXACTLY the configuration I want? I keep a new car for five to ten years and am completely willing to wait a few weeks to get it just how I want it.
Holy crap Jonny, maybe you should READ these very short articles before commenting on them. This does not at all involve “Dell Computers” — which has been called Dell Inc. for some years BTW. As the article makes clear, this is Michael Dell diversifying his own money outside of his day job.
Jeffrey Rachor is NOT the CEO of Dell. Micheal Dell is the CEO of Dell. Rachor has nothing to do with Dell Inc, and is merely with the the automotive joint venture being formed with Michael Dell’s money.
Kind of early in the day for drinking isn’t it?
This is an idea that is WAY PAST OVERDUE. From my own research, the only reason it hasn’t already been done is because of the communistic laws that enableempowerprotect the car dealers from the manufacturers.
Imagine if you had a company making widgets and politicians made laws that you HAD TO SELL your widgets through (independent of your company) middle men… and you couldn’t fire them… and you couldn’t refuse to sell to them… and you couldn’t force them to provide the buyers of your widgets decent service… and…
There is already a premium/import business doing mass customization… BMW.