An expose of bad businesses and their unethical practices

Tim, thanks for picking up on this story. It didn't surprise me to hear what Dell just said about the Utah media. He's done this before. I don't know him personally, and I've never bought one of his Totally Awesome computers ... all I know is that I feel unsure of what to think when I see his bizarre advertisements. One comes to mind in which he says that if I do not buy one of his computers, he'll poke me in the eye.

Hopefully the situation will straighten itself out - there's a lesson in here for would-be business owners: Try not to come across as weird.

I think there are different flavors of weird and some work and make you memorable. Cal Worthington, a car dealer in So. California, dominated the market there for years by being "weird-goofy" and people remembered him. There are hundreds of small computer shops around, but those that saw Dell Schanze remembered him for being "weird-overbearing" and he stood out among all the noise and clutter, and his business thrived because of it.

What I don't think works is being "weird-scary." I think "Super-Dell" crossed that line. Others that crossed that line? Michael Jackson, PeeWee Herman, Richard Simons.

Thank you Mr. Tim Stay for writing some truth to this matter. I personally have seen many of Schanzes' attempts at advertising. I have hated every single one of his so called commercials. I figured that he must of had his kids writing the scripts. I never thought even once of trusting this guy. It's not like he was some invented character; this is actually how the man usually opperates, and HE owns the business.(or used to)(scary stuff!)
Yet, to really get to the guts of this, you have to look at this guy through the laws perspective.
Let's not forget that this guy is still facing criminal charges for brandishing a firearm. He also has been involved in actions with bombs! Even though it was a pipe bomb, it is what it is!
Then he makes all his employee's go out and picket in front of the courthouse, were Dell Schanze had to face charges.(for the gun) Not one of those people would have protested for Dell Schanze if he didn't make them. He closed down his stores for a day, and had all his employees' hold signs and protest. None of them did this on their own. (he made them protest for him, SICK)
No, wait I used to see this guys' late night infommercial, and he is LDS. He is a good man that is mormon and upholds the right to bear arms!
Or actually, he is a criminal facing more charges, that believes he is completly in the right no matter what his actions because he is mormon, and has a god complex bigger than his own life. I believe that Dell Schanze has pissed almost everyone in Utah off. No one belives anything he says anymore. They are sick of seeing, hearing or even looking this ignorant sick man.
Dell Schanze please just go away.
An irritated Utahn,
Zachary

Zachary, I am interested in what your relationship to Totally Awesome was. Where you an employee, a customer, or something else?

In regard to Dell's personality..can anyone say "bi-polar?" I mean, it must have taken a ton of energy just to be as "up" as he seemed to be. And, it seems that now he has become paranoid about the news media. He just cannot understand that it's what he does and how he acts which makes people feel the way they do about him.

Over the course of several years, we have purchased three computers from Totally Awesome. The reason we purchased the third one was because we had always received fairly good service and a good product (well as far as we knew, which is nothing about computers). However, the third and most expensive computer caused us headache after headache. We live quite a way from Ogden, but had to keep schlepping it back to Ogden to get the "bugs" out. Never mind calling some "tech" for help..we never, never were able to get any kind of help over the phone. We were also told "we don't give computer help classes. If you don't understand something, go take an adult ed class." This was over one simple question on how to retrieve a file supposedly transferred from the old harddrive to the new one. It's been over a year now and we still can't retrieve it.

Next, the customers were promised over night service on repairs if the computer had been purchased from TA. We never, repeat never, received anything close to that. Another complaint was that "quality control" was just a term, not a reality. When we purchased our third computer, they just kind of "threw" it together. When we got it home, nothing worked the way it was supposed to, so it was back to Ogden and wait another three or four days.

During the time we had to wait in the store for someone to help us, we talked to some other customers. Most, if not all, had the some of the same complaints we did..our biggest one was picking up the computer and it not being fixed.

No, I'm not happy he went out of business. We're having hard drive problems again (this will be the second one in this computer). Now, we have to look for someone we can trust to fix it..hey, where did that lifetime warranty go?

Dale suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder....look it up you will be amazed...the sad part is there is no treatment

Kitty,

I think you are spot on - they had no processes in place. I had similar problems with my computer - poorly built and lousy servicing. Without the proper processes in place, there was no way that the sales clerks could make a promise and know that it would be fulfilled.

I purchased 8 computers from TA. My first purchase was on March 13 of their first year. The date stands out because my Sony computer just died and corporate taxes were due on the 15th. I called their store after 11:00pm to here their store hours. To my surprise a tech answered and understood my stress and said “Come on Down”. I walked out of their store after midnight with my first TA system completely blown away at the quality of service. Over the years I have had 4 of their hard drives go out. My last experience with TA was last December with a hard drive issue. I was behind on my data back-up which I relayed to TA when I dropped it off. I told them to protect my hard drive at all cost and “Do not attempt anything with my hard drive that might compromise my data”. (My concerns to the geek were crystal clear) When I picked up computer I was told that I had a bad hard drive (oh really) and that they put a new one in. To shorten this story: To my amazement they Formatted my old HD (all data lost).

The lifetime warrantee didn't go anywhere. I kept every one of my promises and as you can see I ensured the service will continue at PC Laptops. You say I look psycho on the news and then say I'm crazy for calling them liars. You have no clue how life works, many of those news reporters interviewed me, yelling at me, calling me names and doing everything they could to get some sort of inflamitory statment that would make their story look better for 30-45 minutes and that is the best they came up with. It isn't me that is psycho. It is people like you that are so quick to judge and spew your hate. All you negative hateful people should be ashamed of yourselfs. Yes the news does flat out lie. If you don't know that by now then you might as well write idiot on your faces. Even with all your hate and contention which is of course from the devils influence on you I have still held up to the promises I made. Look at yourselves and your posts!!!! You are seriously sick. I still love you though and will continue being honorable no matter how horrible you are to me.

Love, SUPERDELL

Dan Young stepped up for you, how dare you take the credit. You are a sad, sad man.

Hey Zach, how’s life after getting fired for theft, given another chance and getting caught red handed stealing again and getting canned for final? I can see you haven’t decided to change your life and still go on with all your hate and negativity. I must have a serious pile of blessing waiting for me in heaven for giving you a second chance and trying to help you as much as I did. Too bad you never fixed yourself. Of course that is your sin not mine. I still love you though. Very interesting you still have so much hate when I was the one getting robbed. To you others claiming you don’t know anything about computers but know absolutely for positive that we screwed everything up for you. Hmm, not much logic in that. I am sorry if you had trouble but you might consider the possibility that the troubles you have might have actually had nothing to do with our computer as 98% of computer problems are virus, software, spyware and other types of problems not actually related to computer hardware. Seems kinda strange you point out in one sentence how you received service that no other computer company on earth offers but then really stick it to us on things you really don’t fully understand. I still love you but before you go thrashing around negativity you should probably think about the possibility of you being wrong and thrashing those that don’t deserve it. Maybe we should have been like dell computers and just deny service on anything not directly related to hardware and then your expectations wouldn’t be so high that you would freak out when things don’t happen perfectly. Sorry we were only the best on earth but not absolutely perfect. For those that we really did screw up on, I really am very sorry. That was the whole idea of lifetime service though so you could always come back and we would make sure we stuck to it until we figured it out.

Love, Dell

I've been in the computer industry in one way or another for about 25 years. I own Messick Computers which is a small computer store that has been in business for 15 years. I do very little advertising, so I'm not high profile, and probably not very well known. I practically never submit posts, but I just felt like making a small contribution. I'm not surprised that Totally Awesome went out of business. It seems to me it's just a function of value. I could go into all the details, as I've observed plenty over the years. But, I think the bottom line is at Totally Awesome Computers people didn't get competitive value for what they paid. So they started buying elsewhere. I think the same is true of PC Laptops. For example, I just sold a nice laptop the other day that was priced competitively. Our price was a little higher than the national brands, but then we provide local service, custom assembly, etc. PC Laptops price for a nearly identical system was around a thousand dollars more. My initial estimate was $1,300 more. But, to be conservative, in case I missed something, I'll say $1,000. This is no joke, $1,000 more. I'd be happy to do a detailed comparison if you like. Well, they'll claim they use superior parts, have better "lifetime" service, etc. By the way, not one customer has ever told me that they show proof of their claims of better parts. My opinion is that almost all of that kind of talk is just plain hype, and when people realize they're paying a ton of extra money, "because they love you", well...you get my point. I've always tried to focus on being competitive, being fair minded, working hard to find inteligent solutions, and I've always tried to respect my customers hard earned dollars. That's what's kept me in business for 15 years. So, when someone pays a thousand bucks extra for what?...mostly hype!, and then realizes they wasted a ton of money, well they'll go somewhere else next time. I don't see what's so complicated about that.

I would have to agree with Ron. I've also been in the computer industry for several years, mostly as a network administrator, but on the side, I have been consulting people about computers, and helping them buy/build them. I've recommended and purchased from Messick computers over and over again. And yet after someone buys from Messing I've never had to "Fix" a Messick computer. I have however "Fixed" literally hundreds of TA computers because the people who bought were never happy with the service. I think TA put itself out of business because of poor business habits.