Wish DELL could configure and ship laptops in the USA

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On my latest DELL order, I wanted Windows Pro as the OS instead of Windows Home, and this requires DELL apparently to ship all the way from China! I don't want to get too far off topic in the forum here with "made in the USA" vs. "Made in China", but this has me thinking for sure.

 

I guess having one worldwide shipping hub is most affordable for DELL, and I do like the low prices! But don't people in large countries such as the USA have enough volume of orders to justify a warehouse and configuration operation here? It would certainly make the order process a lot nicer. Is the real estate and labor cost just so high in the USA that it's economically infesible to even configure a notebook here instead of shipping them one by one all the way from China? 

 

For example, the estimated DELL delivery time was 13 days if you select Windows Pro. Then after ordering, it switched to 5 days estimated delivery which was great in the DELL order status! However, then customer service said it may take 7-10 days to get a tracking number from the carrier in a worst case, so it's hard today to say exactly when it will be delivered! I guess we've gotten spoiled to having a tracking number where you have a very good idea that the item is moving and when it will be delivered, so this feels very odd. 

 

I might have posted this before, but I'm a bit worried about the USA. I don't mind taking advantage of great cost savings manufacturing something, but it feels like we've gone pretty far from home when we can't even configure a laptop here any longer...

 

Anyway, there's my yearly plea for made in, or at least configured in, the USA. Will continue checking the DELL order status, until I order the next one next year if I have the same experience 😉

[Aaron44126]

This has been normal practice for Dell as long as I have been buying laptops from them.  Most of their systems ship from China.  They ship some desktops from Mexico.  The exception is if you get one of the premade ones (not customized at all) listed as available for immediate shipping...  Those can be stocked and shipped right out of a U.S. warehouse.  It makes sense, when the "factory" is in China, and people are buying build-to-order machines, of course they are going to ship from there.  And as long as the parts/labor market is the way that it is and people are building electronics in places other than the U.S. to save money, that's the way that it's going to be.

 

I did hear I think that Dell is looking to start building some of their systems in Vietnam.  There are other countries getting in on this too, like Apple shifting some of their production to India.  Still not quite what you're asking for...

[Reciever]

34 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

This has been normal practice for Dell as long as I have been buying laptops from them.  Most of their systems ship from China.  They ship some desktops from Mexico.  The exception is if you get one of the premade ones (not customized at all) listed as available for immediate shipping...  Those can be stocked and shipped right out of a U.S. warehouse.  It makes sense, when the "factory" is in China, and people are buying build-to-order machines, of course they are going to ship from there.  And as long as the parts/labor market is the way that it is and people are building electronics in places other than the U.S. to save money, that's the way that it's going to be.

 

I did hear I think that Dell is looking to start building some of their systems in Vietnam.  There are other countries getting in on this too, like Apple shifting some of their production to India.  Still not quite what you're asking for...

 

Even in the event of shipping from Mexico, its merely assembled in Mexico and not manufactured there. Not saying you stated otherwise, just an additional detail. I have also received PC's from Poland but that was during the covid pandemic when supply was low.

 

A majority of Dell systems that I work with come directly from Genco, which is one of the larger 3rd party distributors based here in the US where I facilitate the customer requirements. That being said I handle personally in the hundreds of systems a day for a single client. The unfortunate part of handling a single one off is that is very expensive and no one wants to pay for that service especially if it ends up failing, then the expenses double.

[kojack]

I have ordered over a dozen Dell systems in the past few years and never noticed where any were shipped from.  I bought the "in stock" models that appealed to me since I was upgrading them myself.  Next one I am going to see where it came from.  I am currently debating a surface laptop or an xps 13 for the wifey for our work moving forward. 

[Aaron44126]

28 minutes ago, kojack said:

I have ordered over a dozen Dell systems in the past few years and never noticed where any were shipped from.  I bought the "in stock" models that appealed to me since I was upgrading them myself.  Next one I am going to see where it came from.  I am currently debating a surface laptop or an xps 13 for the wifey for our work moving forward. 

 

Lots of times, the shipping status that you get (by checking the tracking number) will just show it shipping out of California or Illinois.  What is "hidden" is the transit time from China to their local shipping depots in the U.S.; unless they ship the package out of China individually directly to you via UPS (which they do sometimes), you will not see this.  They more often send a bulk package containing many systems from China to the U.S. via air freight, it is broken down into individual packages once it gets here with each one being handed off to FedEx, and only then is it marked "shipped" and you get your local tracking number.  (You can get in touch with customer service and they will sometimes be able to get you the air freight tracking info for your system, before it is actually marked "shipped" in the order status.)

 

I would assume that it works pretty much the same for any PC manufacturer that is offering build-to-order systems, but I only really have experience ordering from Dell.