Consumer Rant: Dell

(This is an occasional series, usually posted on weekends when site traffic is down anyway. The series is intended to torture corporations who know that many potential customers who google the business name will run across feedback like this.)

Dear Dell:

I am a repeat customer of yours. I've tried my best to like you. But despite the fact that I'm writing this from a Dell computer, and looking at it from a Dell monitor, I just don't like you. Here's the latest reason why you suck.

I have a TV on my back porch. It's an old POS TV, I bought it a while back at the local pawn shop, and all I use it for is to watch baseball games with my buddies. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a TV for the back porch, because, you know, it's the back porch.

Then the thought occurred to me: I could just get a small flat screen TV and move it outside whenever I watch a game out there. The LCD flat screens are so light and easy to move, it would be a cool solution. Plus, HDTV is way cool for baseball.

But then I thought, "what about the cable box?" I don't want to leave a cable box on the back porch either. I can't just plug it directly into the cable, because I'll lose the HD if I do that. So the perfect solution would be to find a small (i.e., 19" or so) flat screen, which is cable card compatible. That way, easy to move the TV, no cable box to move, and I can enjoy my baseball games in HD. Problem solved.

When I logged onto the Best Buy website, I saw that they don't have any small TVs which are cable card ready - just the jumbotrons. So following up on some advice I found while googling around looking for solutions, I went to the Dell website.

I don't really know much about the technology, but under the specs for your TVs I couldn't find "cable card ready" info on any of the TVs, like I saw on the Best Buy website. So I bravely called your 800 number, and wasted 10 minutes of my life, only to conclude that the customer service person on the other end of the phone - and probably also the other end of the planet - has no idea what a cable card is. Not a clue.

So, Dell, I hung up on your customer service representative, after telling her that she doesn't know what she's talking about, and telling her I would shop somewhere else.

So if anybody knows who sells a small flatscreen which is cable card-ready, give me a shout. In the alternative, anybody who knows of a work-around, likewise please comment. I'm all ears. Like I said, the only person who knows less about the technology than I do, is the Dell woman at whom I hollered.

Meanwhile, Dell, here's your prize: