Dell faces China PR crisis

Dell was facing a class action lawsuit in China at presstime, after customers accused it of falsely advertising its notebook CPUs in the country.

The country's second-ranked PC maker is blaming old marketing materials for its shipment of the T2300E processor in notebook models, to customers who had bought the T2300 processor.

Despite apologies and offers of a full refund, 19 Chinese consumers are going ahead with the lawsuit. The incident, which surfaced on an online Chinese forum, has snowballed into a PR imbroglio for Dell, which is also dealing with battery faults and customer service criticism from blogs and offline media around the world.

Dell retains local PR shop Proway in China. "Because we are such a big MNC, the media tends to pay much more attention," said Dell China corporate communications director Sharon Zhang. "We are trying to broaden our communications and network with mainstream and online media."

"Maybe in the past, (Dell) has done such a great job with products and prices and been such a darling of the industry," said a PR agency source. "Now it's dealing with a lot of the issues that bubble up for mature companies and sectors. Maybe it is just not quite as robust in handling these types of issues."

The news comes as Dell China chief David Miller departs to take over as Asia-Pacific president of key rival Lenovo.