We received the following email from a reader this morning:
I was very surprise to try to connect to the english version of the
DELL website in China. here is the answer: "Please kindly be informed that Dell China English website has been shut down."Do you have any news on this? i order my dell 5 months ago on this website, without any problem in english). What will be the interest of removing one language for dell? too much
order from foreigner in China? Weird...
Well, we cannot for the life of us fathom why Dell China would find it a good idea to close down its English website, and to direct English-speaking customers to the Hong Kong website. Certainly takes more effort to take it off than to leave a perfectly functioning website there, but what do we know? We called up the mainland China toll-free number that is quoted on the website, but by the second stage in the number-dialling game, they had already lost the English-speaking customer, so if you really really really want to buy a Dell PC, you don't even get to speak to some customer service person in Mumbai now. Certainly there must be enough expats in all of mainland China and decision-makers among them to constitute a decent market? Just plain strange behaviour from the world's second PC maker, don't you think?
Thanks to reader Jean Gerard!

Week Around the Ists


old news - it happened 6-8 weeks ago
semi-related note:
is anyone's flickr (with plug in) being blocked?
Hi,
I live in Shanghai, I bought an Inspiron 8600 laptop 2.5 years ago. I had to change the motherboard (it fried itself) back in April, and had another problem in early July.
In July I called the toll-free number for tech support (for individual clients (ie. non-corporate), for Inspiron products - in the user manual they have different phone no's for every customer category).
I did notice back then in July that the English version of the website was shut down (stupid move, IMO, since it was already there anyway), but the English-lg phone support was functional and it was painless for me to have my problem solved.
regards,
err
i wonder if sam flemming over at CIC would know about this. Dell is famous in China for having terrible customer service, and there have been a few internet protests from netizens about the poor quality of some of their products. perhaps it's related?
The Dell China English website visite is very low--0.01% thus closed.