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A court in New York has found Dell guilty of false advertising and fraud.

The company engaged in abusive debt collection practices, misled consumers about the financing terms for which they had qualified and failed to provide consumers with promised rebates, according to court papers.

The case arose after hundreds of complaints about Dell and its finance arm Dell Financial Services.

Dell now faces the prospect of a huge damages claim, and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has asked consumers to register their complaints at a special website so that damages can be assessed.

"Huge companies like Dell cannot continue to walk all over their customers and get away with it," said Cuomo.

"All consumers who were left on hold for hours, promised 'onsite' repair services only to be pressured to take apart their computers themselves, and subjected to numerous other negligent and abusive practices should register their complaints at our website so we can ensure the Dell is held accountable for its failed promises."

The court found that Dell and Dell Financial Services had deceived consumers as to the real cost of their PCs.

The company offered complex financing schemes, sold people onsite repair warranties and then refused to honour them and left customers waiting for literally hours on the Dell helpline, according to court papers.

The 26-page summation is a damning indictment of the two companies' practices, and represents a major image problem for Dell as well as a potentially huge damages bill.

Justice Joseph C. Teresi said in his decision: "Dell has engaged in repeated misleading, deceptive and unlawful business conduct, including false and deceptive advertising of financing promotions and the terms of warranties, fraudulent, misleading and deceptive practices in credit financing and failure to provide warranty service and rebates."

Dell has not decided whether it will appeal, and has blamed the situation on a small number of customer complaints.

Well, I'm glad they were called on it. And I'm typing this on a Dell.

HA! Good. I ran into their bullcrap many years ago, and will never go back, ever. Dell is evil. I'm happy to say I'm typing this on a Toshiba laptop I bought at Best Buy, who like to honor their customers' service plans.

A Soviet iPod. The mind reels....

You'd probably need a wheelbarrow to cart it around.

I loved the bit about "pressuring the customers to take them apart". If I had a desktop by any company, if there was a problem inside, the first thing I would do it open it up XD I lol at people who are afraid of opening their computer.

HA! Good. I ran into their bullcrap many years ago, and will never go back, ever. Dell is evil. I'm happy to say I'm typing this on a Toshiba laptop I bought at Best Buy, who like to honor their customers' service plans.

Well...I bought a Sony Vaio laptop from Best Buy last July and somehow, while charging it about 2 weeks later, the outlet must have had a short, because it fried the motherboard on the laptop (no lights, no power) and I took it to Best Buy, and rather than fix it there, they told me I had to call Sony to get it fixed.

HA! Good. I ran into their bullcrap many years ago, and will never go back, ever. Dell is evil. I'm happy to say I'm typing this on a Toshiba laptop I bought at Best Buy, who like to honor their customers' service plans.

Well...I bought a Sony Vaio laptop from Best Buy last July and somehow, while charging it about 2 weeks later, the outlet must have had a short, because it fried the motherboard on the laptop (no lights, no power) and I took it to Best Buy, and rather than fix it there, they told me I had to call Sony to get it fixed.

Vaios are crap though. Strange however, I've never had a problem with Best Buy here...in fact one of my friends on the east coast is a tech for Best Buy.

Vaios are too expensive for what they are.

I had a horrible cheap Dell Inspiron 1000 (£250 was the cheapest laptop around when I bought it) and I'm glad to be rid of it now. That said, I've never had any problems with it - it's just really slow. Even worse now my sister put Windows back on it. It was bearable with Ubuntu, but XP and whatever crap she's installed with it just slows it down horribly.

Typing this on a computer I built myself from parts - but I am using a Dell monitor which is, by the way, excellent.