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Dell plans to share PRIVATE customer data with 3rd parties WITHOUT obtaining consent!?
So I received this e-mail today:
To: My Company Name
From: Dell Subject: Important Notice Regarding Your Dell Business Relationship
Dear, At Dell, we strive to provide the best customer experience. To better serve your needs, we have engaged the help of our channel partners in the award-winning Dell PartnerDirect program. These channel partners are authorized to resell Dell products and services, and many have earned specializations in areas such as Dell servers, storage, security, networking, desktop virtualization solutions, cloud services and solutions, data protection, systems management, and information management. Your account may be transitioned to and managed by one of the channel partners. In the event it is transitioned, Dell will refer and ask the partner to contact you to initiate the account transition. Dell will share your company and account information with the channel partner, including the following: company name (including subsidiaries) and addresses; company contact names, phone numbers, and email addresses; and information related to your Dell account such as, but not limited to, account numbers, purchasing history, past orders, pricing and discounts (including those set forth in your contracts with Dell), and anticipated orders in the pipeline. If your company does not want Dell to share such information with any channel partner, please reply to this email or forward your reply to velocity_opt-out@dell.com within thirty days of this notification. Unless your company advises us otherwise, we assume that your company has consented to the disclosure. Thank you for choosing Dell.
Dell Preferred Accounts Velocity Project 46
There are several problems with this, not the least of which is Dell is planning on sharing Preferred Account and likely other account data with unknown 3rd parties without getting consent. Requiring customers opt-out is NOT consent. If Dell shares my company's data or the data of ANY of our customers, we're in the Dell Consultant Network, we will immediately TERMINATE any active orders, return any orders received in the past 15 days, and take 100% of our business to HP. This would have NEVER been allowed when Dell was a public company and I'm betting this is just the start of the end of Dell as it treats its customers as disposable commodities.
TubaOrNotTuba
33 Posts
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March 27th, 2014 10:00
No, this is NOT a consent form, this is an opt-out form. Read the legal definition of consent. Opting out is not part of the definition OR process until the entire description is defined and presented to all parties.
Dell should have e-mailed and asked, "do you mind if we share all your private data with unknown 3rd parties over whom we really have no control other than a little piece of paper that if it were breached we really couldn't stop the dissemination of your data".
The fact is a great many people won't read this, won't respond, and will end up with personal and proprietary data shared with 3rd parties without ever actually having given consent. This will not hold up in court and Dell will suffer for this. I fail to see the logic in defending their method here.
30yearexpert
459 Posts
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March 27th, 2014 10:00
Um that was a consent form, you read it, you have the ability to cancel and move on. Dell only wants to make Customer Service better by bringing in other qualified Specialists to resolve any future services you may have with Dell or Dell Partner products.
TubaOrNotTuba
33 Posts
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March 27th, 2014 10:00
For some reason the copy/paste from the e-mail into this post doesn't format correctly (I fixed it for you. ChrisM), but read it, you'll get the idea of what Dell plans to do. HP better beef up their account teams, a lot of Dell customers may just be heading their way!
DELL-Chris M
Community Manager
Community Manager
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54.9K Posts
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March 27th, 2014 12:00
This is being investigated. When we know more, we will post.
TubaOrNotTuba
33 Posts
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March 28th, 2014 16:00
Seriously? No one cares what the requirements are, what's important is if Dell does the RIGHT thing and in this case it has NOT. It has taken the LAZY route in demanding opt-out vs. the proper and ethical route of asking for opt-in. This is wrong and if a single customer of ours in the DCN get moved because they don't read junk from Dell I will take every customer of mine to HP. Plain and simple. I will also be forwarding your e-mail to every trade magazine and social media outlet I know of so they can publicize what you're doing. It's wrong and you know it and your PR play-nice response isn't going to cut it.
DELL-Chris M
Community Manager
Community Manager
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54.9K Posts
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March 28th, 2014 16:00
That statement was cleared by our Dell Legal team. You may contact them via letter:
Dell Inc.
Legal Department
One Dell Way Round Rock, Texas 78682
DELL-Chris M
Community Manager
Community Manager
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54.9K Posts
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March 28th, 2014 16:00
TubaOrNotTuba,
In response to your post, we wanted to share that the email you received was intended to provide you with the opportunity to let us know if you did not want to work with channel partners by noting that you can respond within 30 days to "opt-out", or request Dell to not share your account information with a channel partner. Dell remains committed to customer choice so you can decide whether you want to work with channel partners or buy from Dell directly.
Requirements for obtaining consent to share personal information vary by country. Some countries require opt-in consent, by having customers affirmatively agree to the disclosure. For the United States and the Velocity Program, personal information of customers (such as names and email addresses of employee contacts) may be shared if we obtain the customer’s consent by notifying customers in advance and allowing them to decline the disclosure (known as “opt out consent” or “implied consent”). Dell will honor opt-out requests that it receives from customers.