Dell sells 900-person call center in El Salvador

Brian White — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:45:00 EST

Filed under: Deals, Products and Services, Dell (DELL)

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) said yesterday that it will sell a 900-person customer support call center in El Salvador to an outsource company that handles support for large global corporations. Stream Global Services, Inc. will take over the customer support center as Dell continues to find ways to slash costs as much as it can.

Stream Global indicated that it will enhance the center to handle upcoming support needs from emerging Latin American markets. My question is this: is Dell once again having an identity crisis about running its own support organization? After all, this is the company that outsourced some U.S.-based support to India a while back, an effort that fell flat on its face. Yes, there is a difference between support centers in India that take care of U.S. customers and Latin American support centers taking care of Latin American customers.

Still, Dell should once and for all just outsource global support for its consumer product lines and call it a day. But wait a minute -- isn't the consumer market the one Dell has used in the last 18 months to claw its way back to growth after discovering consumer retail sales were a sales holy grail? Yes it is. And there are some heavy competitors in the commodity PC business these days, along with a market share-grabbing Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) to deal with. At this time, Dell, did not have any comment on the possible sale of other global call centers. The company probably does not know what it wants to do. It wouldn't be the first time.

Dell sells 900-person call center in El Salvador originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell sees class-action lawsuit that could involve 5,000 employees

Brian White — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:03:00 EST

Filed under: Dell (DELL), Employees

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) is in hot water with about 5,000 of its call center employees. The class is suing the world's second-largest computer maker, alleging it underpaid them. Any Dell call center employee in the U.S. who worked for the company from February 8, 2004 to the present can join the class.

The lawsuit stems from claims of not being paid for overtime or training for two employees who originally brought the case almost 18 months ago. Since that time, more than 80 employees have joined the suit and a federal judge gave it class action this week to cover all Dell's call center employees in the U.S. It's hard to gauge what material effect this case will have to Dell's bottom line, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it mentioned on upcoming financial documents since it's now a federal class action.

This is not good news for Dell, which was already under the gun in another suit for alleged deceptive sales practices and fraud. The company, which has seen good sales figures lately and seems to be on the right track to not losing more market share to larger competitor Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ), will have a rough time with this suit, I suspect. If the current and former employees have documented, unpaid (or underpaid) hours that were witnessed by others and have paychecks to back up those claims, Dell may need to be ready to pay out.

Dell sees class-action lawsuit that could involve 5,000 employees originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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