A few weeks ago we wrote about Dell’s admirable move to bring a new level of transparency to its corporate IR department with a new blog. This follows the launch of Direct2Dell, a customer-focused blog that discusses new Dell products and services for consumer and business customers. The candour with which Dell used these forums to tackle the public’s queries and complaints made us all think the computer maker had well and truly moved on from its Dell Hell days of years past. Ahhh, not so fast.

Dell has had a truly hell week. It’s been busted by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority for publishing deceiving PC and laptop offers. And then it was found guilty yesterday in New York for a series of grievous customer service no-nos including failing to honour service warranties, hanging up on customers when they called to complain and dangling no-interest financing that nobody seemed to qualify for. I wrote about the matter here for The Times’ Mousetrap blog today.

As I point out on Mousetrap, there’s no corporate response from Dell — not on any of its many blogs, nor in a statement to the media, fueling an anti-Dell blog frenzy.

This couldn’t happen to Dell a third time. Could it?