The fact that Dell contributes to Handgun Control Inc, (HCI) makes them anti-gun in anyone's book. I say boycott bigtime.
[url]http://www.progressivefunds.com/hci/[/url]

Edited cuz my fingers were typing ahead of my brain...lol. Dell contributes to HCI on every sale of a PC.

[>:/]

Guys,

What Spearweasel and I are trying to say, is that if some of these wild claims about Dell were true, we'd know about it much sooner and with more certainty than ANY of you.  We'd be able and willing to confirm those claims.  

Honestly, if you believe that letter from that Denny guy, and believe that Dell can [i]somehow[/i] find out if a customer is a member of the NRA, or any other group for that matter, then you seriously need to adjust your tin foil hats.  There is no major consipiracy against ANYONE happening at Dell.  We sell computers, we are in it to make money, and we didn't get to be #1 by having some stupid little discriminatory policies in place.

I'm not going to look into the Weigand issue any further, as I have been a Dell employee long enough to know it wasn't anything more than a fuckup on someone's part.  It's quite likely that Mr Weigand's sale should not have even been looked at by Export Compliance.

If you don't like waivers, why do you sign one when you shoot at a public range?  I know I signed one at the range I frequent, and I sign one every single time I go to the indoor range around here, but I'm not calling for some boycott of ranges, am I?

I suppose you have convincing proof of this Dave?  My evidence and all I need to know, is what I've gained and what I know having been, and currently being, an employee of Dell.  I know it's POSSIBLE for a company to dig for information about it's customers, but when your bottom line is to MAKE MONEY, it would be INHERENTLY STUPID to do what you're thinking Dell does.  

Guys like you seem to me like you're looking for a conspiracy, and you're looking for an enemy... looking for a fight.  I'm looking for facts.  Show me some.

dear Mr. Dell,

ill gladly take that pc you offered Mr. Weigand if that would make you feel better.  i too, own weapons, (combat and otherwise [;)] ) and would like to see if i can disintegrate your pc with 30 rounds of .223 SS109 ammo.

duh,

Redray

Inherantly stupid? Yes. Bad Business decsion..yes. Didn't stop K-Mart did it? Now the morons got anti-white, anti-gun moron spokesman Spike Lee who said he'd shoot Chareton Heston and then denied it when asked about it....uh huh. No amount of Business acumen offsets bad PC decisions..and I don't mean computer here. I mean Politially Correct. That's what Dell has done. To hedge their bets, they contribute to a lot of different sources. Just seems contibutions to HCI in any form is a bad bet.

I think TheDave brings up some good points here.  Apologies are fine and good, but if they continue to flag lawful gun-related business then have we really accomplished anything?  They say that they are considering changing their policies, etc.  If something like this happens again, we need to pull out all the stops.

I don't think the HCI affiliate link is any big deal.  There's no reason why GOA, SAF, JPFO, etc couldn't use the same program on their sites.

Well, I think whoever at Dell made the judgement call to cancel the order, should rethink the entire thing. If I were buy something to use illegally, I think that I would have to use the most unassuming name possible.To me, just by the fact that the business uses a name with "combat" and "pistol" in it says that it is a ligit business, or at least one that is willing to open itself up to scrutiny from the outside. It's not like the company name was "terrorists are us" or something.

I cannot blame Dell for the acts of one person inside of the company, but I do think that they should review how their people approach this subject. however, they are citing "export" laws. Export means leaving the country. This was an order that was to ship in the US was it not?

Dell didn't cancel the order.  Mr. Weigand did.  Someone in customer service that he talked to told him about the delay, and wrongfully told him that it was because of his company name, so Mr Weigand got mad and cancelled the order.

Spear and Fencer,

I have been reading all of the information I can get my hands on regarding this, both here and on the Dell forums. The questions that I would like either of you to answer are these.

Is there a screening process in place that will flag certain individuals?
If so, is this process separate from Dell's export compliance practices?
If this screening is consistent with export compliance, why is there a waiver?
Does Dell purchase or use personal information, gathered from a third party organization,in a screening procedure?
What does the waiver say?
Is Dell going to continue screening potential buyers?

As I look at the past posts, I am struck by a problem. If this screening is only for export compliance, then why is there a waiver? My understanding of the tiered country export laws leads me to beleive that there could never be a waiver.

I am withholding judgement pending the answers to the above questions.

Well, sheite, I might as well quit the NRA, GOA and others, turn in my gun and give up my rights.

The little girl is a tragic situation, but

1) I cannot do anything about it (except pray for the family)

2) It doesn't affect me personally

That's right!  If I'm not mistaken, "cookies" in your web browser are used to collect information on you.  Collecting information on people is big business.  Companies spend a lot of money on information like that for marketing purposes, and it wouldn't suprise me one bit if they use it for purposes other than marketing.  Like someone said before, it doesn't make good business sense to alienate folks like us because we are un-PC, but there are tons of companies that do.  I've seen big long lists of companies that contribute to the erosion of our freedoms.  Some companies even have the audacity to make TV and newspaper ads attacking our freedoms.  There are a lot of self righteous pricks at the head of a lot of these companies that have no problem making their views the de-facto view of the company, despite shareholder or employee opinion.  Dell has not right drawing conclusions as to one's intentions based solely on his or her [b]LEGAL[/b] occupation or interests.  If they want to stick with this screening and waiver crap, then that gives me more than enough reason to take my business elsewhere.  Who's to say Dell isn't guilty of tax evasion?  I mean afterall, they are in the business of making money.  Until they make a serious apology and get rid of this screen and waiver crap, I am not satisfied.  I have no problem with them screening export customers, as that is law, but not domestic customers.

Who's considered the cost to gun owners if this is nothing more than just a typical customer service screw-up?

Dell has no obvious anti-gun agenda now, but do you think Michael Dell or anybody in management sorting out this mess is going to see anything positive about gun owners as a result of this situation?  Especially if the feedback to Dell has included death threats and profanity as suggested on other threads.  Yeah, way to go!  

Maybe some think this shows our strength, but others may view it as the ravings of a bunch of nuts.  

I'd be very curious if our Dell people could tell us how the people they know inside Dell have changed their image of gun owners, if any.

Guys?

I will look into the bias angle more deeply, as the whole marketing/sales/screening thing is buried really deep in bureaucratese and quite unfamiliar to me (I am a tech).

But I HAVE personally spoken to the managers of the principal people involved in our end, and at least in Jack Weigand's case, it was a simple screwup of the sort that occasionally happens in any large organization.

"Never attribute to maliciousness what can be explained with simple error or stupidity".

If "Weigand's Combat Hamburgers" had tripped the process, and the same screwup had occurred, how many of you would be decrying Dell for it's Anti-Beef policies? Gun owners are justifiably prickly, yes. But that's not what happened here.

Like I say, I'll dig deeper and see what I find.

I think that the point being made here is that Dell believe that they can screen their customers merely by name. An earlier example was "Mohammad's Bombs" or something to that effect. In response to 9/11 was the excuse. Let's just point out how asinine this is. Does Dell really think that terrorists or potential terrorists are going to place an order using keywords such as combat, guns, or bombs? If they're going to use a name it'll be like "Mom's Bunny Shop".

So the point is that Dell implemented a piss-poor system for screening customers and got caught. The screening should be stopped and more intelligent methods implemented. (I can imagine this policy getting toss out at some high-level "Dilbert-like" meeting).

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,50723,00.html


There was an unfortunate series of events," said Dell spokeswoman Cathie Hargett. "We should have, when the name of his company triggered a red flag, followed up with him immediately to ensure that his order was not in violation of U.S. export rules. Knowing what we know about him now, we know that is not the case." Hargett said it was Dell's "mistake" and added that it grew out of Dell's attempts to comply with U.S. export regulations. "Export laws apply domestically. These laws apply domestically if it's for any of these stated purposes," Hargett said.

But she was not able to provide a reference to Commerce Department Bureau of Export Administration or State Department Office of Defense Trade Controls regulations that require approval of shipments to U.S. customers. Dell's export forms apply only to out-of-country shipments.


Hargett said Dell was revising its internal procedures to prevent such snafus in the future.

Dell's name is on the Linkshare website. Now I'm not stupid either I know Dell ain't poor. If I put something on a website regarding a company like Dell that was not in line with their policy I would say their lawyers would have me shut down and sued before the day was out. I could never be convinced this Linkshare post is happenstance with no credibility.When Dell makes a public statement that they do not/ will not support the anti-gun crowd then I'll buy or recommend a Dell.

Thanks for the explanation on the link issue DVDTracker...makes sense to me.  But I would like to see a very clear explanation on all these issues from Dell before this is over.

(off topic now)
Mr. Fight4yourrights, do you know you are doing the VPC a real favor with your stupid "vote from the rooftops" banner.  The VPC did a whole series on that stupid shit portraying gunowners as criminals and anarchists just waiting to gun down public officials if we dont get our way.  Thanks for playing right into their hands.  Don't mean any offense here, but just think about it for a minute.

It appears someone at Dell beat him to the punch.

Amen to that!

snipped from Jack Weigand's website:

It seems that all Mr. Weigand wanted to rectify this situation has not yet been addressed by Michael Dell/Dell Computers. Surely in their backpedaling they did not miss this SMALL detail? A strong pro-gun statement from Dell could put this issue to rest for good. Their silence has been DEAFENING. Anyone care to comment?

Any time i get the urge to buy a dell i get this image in my mind of some dumb&dumber (acually should have been in that movie) brain dead blonde ,,,,,Hey your're getting a Dell Dudddddeeeeeee......... that alone kills it for me........ actually you should get one of those packard hewlets now there is a great comp to upgrade!   in the lake with both of them!!

Seems like a lot of fuss about nothing to me. Somebody made a mistake. And you never piss on the toilet seat accidentally. You never say one thing, realize that it came out all wrong, and have to clarify yourself.

Take a breath and let it seep into your heads that all you are accomplishing by blowing this mistake up into a huge issue, is validating some of the major knocks the firearms community has to overcome. Some nut job flies off the handle over a miscommunication and starts shooting people, different nut job flies off the handle over one mistake and starts taking pot-shots with the intent of hurting someone else's livelyhood. The only difference is that nobody dies in one scenario. Still overreactive rash behavior. Lets behave like grown ups, show the world taht we are not a bunch of armed cowboys, and make a positive difference.

Rant off!

I've thought it over, and decided to keep it.

1.  It's primarily tounge in-cheek.  Yes, they won't understand that, but they also won't understand names like "oneshot-onekill".

2.  While tounge in-cheek, there is some truth to it.  Maybe the days of being "nice gunowners" is over.  Maybe they need to be afraid of us.   Our Founders understood the concept, and relied on it to make the government tow the line.  Unfortunately, we've strayed so far that government politicians and workers know they can do anything they like and get away with it.  DOJ admits that Lon Horuchi violated the Constitution following illegal orders, but refuses to prosecute.  Maybe the powers that be need a wake up call.

Dell...should they die like Smith & Wesson?  Nope.

Dell...will I buy another computer of theirs? Nope, afraid I won't.

They support Sarah Brady and her evil minions.  The friend of my enemy is my enemy.  Dell isn't actively evil, but they support it.  

Don't care if there are gun owners who build their machines (some guys at AOL shoot too, so what), the company is supporting people who hate us and our freedoms.

Dell has lots of company on HCI's website of gun -unfriendly companies...since they are still there, they won't get any dollars from me.

Per US export law, selling restricted technology to a foreign national [b][u]living in the US[/u][/b] is considered an export, even if the item never leaves the US.

Those of us who downloaded the strong encryption versions of Netscape's and Microsoft's web browsers a few years ago may remember that we had to fill out a form where we provided our names and addresses and swore that we were either US citizens or US permanent residents.  If we were not either, we couldn't get the strong encryption.

Any company that has to deal with export controls has to apply their procedures to US buyers as well, not just customers overseas.

This whole affair sounds like a normal corporate snafu to me.  We should put things into perspective here:
Weigand complained loudly about the treatment that his business received.  That was the right thing to do.
We all piled onto Dell with letters and emails of complaint.  That was the right thing to do.
Dell apologized personally to Weigand, and offered to give him his computer to free.  He declined, a very honorable thing to do.

We should now move on.  Dell now knows to not mess with the gun owning public.  That is a good thing.  We can make it not so good by being unreasonable and vindictive.  I would rather that we focus our energies on companies like:
Levi Strauss, a vocal advocate of the gun control movement PAX.
Hanes, whose foundation gave Sarah Brady an award.
The TV companies ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, [b][u]whose vitriolic anti-gun propaganda, masquerading as news, is directly responsible for the very existence of the gun control movement[/u][/b].  It is pointless to continue to rip Dell over this incident, while watching and supporting these media companies.

If you don't want to personally buy Dell, please don't.  But I think the call for a boycott is no longer persuasive.

There appears to be more cases...

http://www.sigforum.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/005418.html

[url]http://www.progressivefunds.com/hci/[/url]

speaks for itself

Dave, I didn't mean to point this at you personally, but at the forum in general.  I answered the specific comment about export laws, and then spoke in general about the issue.  I should have split up my comments into separate posts, sorry about that.

AMEN!!!

Sales Filter
Software Helps U.S. Companies Avoid Selling to Terrorists

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/TechTV/techtv_softwarescreen020301.html

"Companies that use Vastera's product include [b]Dell Computer[/b], Microsoft, Lucent Technologies, and Novell."


The headline was a sidebar to another ABCNews article lined in another thread about the pissy French and their opinion of the US (can you say "As IF?)

Now THIS is AR15.com [blue][i]synergy[/i][/blue]

Your name seems strangely familiar.

USPC40

-------------------------------------------------
[b][blue]NRA Life Member[/blue][/b] - [url]www.nra.org[/url]
[b][blue]GOA Life Member[/blue][/b] - [url]www.gunowners.org[/url]
[b][blue]SAF Supporter[/blue][/b] - [url]www.saf.org[/url]
[b][blue]SAS Supporter[/blue][/b] - [url]www.sas-aim.org[/url]

[img]www.ar15.com/members/albums/USPC40/alabamaflag.gif[/img]