Dell on Friday rebutted accusations that it was withholding evidence in connection with a long-running case charging the PC maker of willingly selling faulty PCs.
Web hosting service provider Advanced Internet Technologies on Thursday filed a motion accusing Dell of withholding evidence and failing to produce documents in its possession, according to a court filing. AIT's motion sought sanctions against Dell.
"We disagree with AIT's contention that we violated the discovery order and will be filing our response with the Court soon. Dell takes all court orders and our obligations to comply with them very seriously," said David Frink, a Dell spokesman.
The documents sought by AIT are in connection with a case accusing the PC maker of selling thousands of desktop PCs despite knowing the machines contained faulty components.
AIT filed the case against Dell in the US District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2007 and is seeking $75,000 and punitive damages from breach of contract, fraud and deceptive business practices.
Earlier documents unsealed in connection with the case showed some Dell employees having prior knowledge that the company's OptiPlex PCs were likely to break, according to a New York Times report in June.
AIT's attorney did not return a call seeking comment.
According to the documents, Dell employees knowingly tried to play down component problems, which put customers at risk. Salespeople were told to say "don't bring this to customer's attention proactively", in an effort to conceal system problems.
Dell shipped around 11.8 million OptiPlex computers between May 2003 to July 2005 that were at risk due to faulty components. The desktops were sold to business customers including Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo.
The problems stemmed mainly from some bad capacitors on the motherboards supplied by a company called Nichicon. The same issue affected many PC makers, but the problem has now been resolved, Dell has said. The company fixed the computers, and extended the warranty of systems containing faulty motherboards. The current PCs are not affected by the problem.
Comments
Linda said: I have had 2 faulty Dell laptops and the customer service is appalling despite next day on site service guarentee that they avoid with every trick in the book to get out of it they never did honour it I had to County Court them to get my money back and my advice is everyone should do it its the only way to get your money back you spend hours on the phone to india then I stupidly tried a dell for a 2nd time a couple of years later as I thought it was a one off bad experience again after a year problems battery keyboard screen system etc and they would not come out despite a 4 year next day on site warrenty so I would never recommend a Dell and I will never buy another Just to let you know this time Ive got my money back as I brought it via a well known shop who also had problems with them and they agreed I had received no service from Dell and they also ignored them I could not get past India Number 1 for poor customer service