Dell Laptops Smell Like Cat Urine, Company Says Problem Was Fixed

If you purchased a Dell Latitude 6430u in the last couple months you may notice it has a very strong and disgusting smell. Consumers of the product claim it smells like cat urine.

Back in June a customer who goes by the name “three west” mentioned the odd smell on a message board. Dell suggested simply cleaning the keyboard but that did nothing to stop the smell. A short time later other customers began chiming in, also noting that their Dell laptops smelled like cat urine.

After the Dell urine thread was created one user wrote: “I thought for sure one of my cats sprayed it, but there was something faulty with it so I had it replaced. The next one had the same exact issue. It’s embarrassing taking it to clients because it smells so bad.”

On October 14 Dell’s senior technical consultant Steve B posted the following message:

We really appreciate everyone’s patience as we work thru this issue. The problem has been resolved and the past few weeks I have been waiting on engineering to release detailed information on a root cause and resolution. We are currently waiting on final engineering failure analysis for a definitive root cause which is expected to come any day now. Once we have this, we can make an official comment. In the meantime, I’ll provide a few details of what we do know.

• The smell was related to a manufacturing process that has now been changed
• The smell is not in any way related to biological contamination
• The smell is not at all health hazard
• If you order an E6430u now, it will not have the issue

As soon as we have final engineering failure analysis, more information will be posted on how to immediately resolve the issue. We hope to have the information this week so please keep watching this thread.

So hey, it could be worse! Your computer might smell like urine, but it’s not actually urine.

Customers are not happy with Dell’s half response, writing: “So when you write that the ‘problem has been resolved,’ do you mean that when I open my computer it will no longer smell like a pack of well hydrated feral cats have used it for target practice resolved, or do you mean that you have resolved the mystery of what has caused the problem?”

We’re not sure if Dell Latitude 6430u customers will receive a new computer or a pair of nose plugs from the company at this time.