Dell complaints

[zobbo]

(copied and pasted from my blog at http://blog.cottee.org/2009/06/i-hate-dell.html to save you having to read it there)

I have only had to shout down the phone twice in my life. Once was in 2005’ish I believe. The other time was this week. Both times were to Dell, although the first time was to technical support and this time was to sales support. It’s somewhat encouraging to know that their sales support is as bad as their technical support. I assume their presales support is better otherwise they wouldn’t sell anything.

So here’s the story.

One of the perks of my life is hardware. I have one old client from my pre Blue Fountain days and every now and again they fit me up with a new laptop. Due to some confusion, the first order, placed on the 24th was rejected. On the 26th (having mulled some more and upgraded some of the specs (including lighting on the keyboard and bluetooth), I tried to place the order again rejected again.

Approximately three hours later I suggested I use a different one of their company credit cards and I’d put in all the details myself. I also made the delivery address the same as the invoice address which I know can cause issues otherwise. I also added a digital camera to the order. To my joy, about thirty minutes late I got an order confirmation. Hoorah. Or so I thought. The confirmation page doesn’t mention the original order number but if I’d looked at the specs on the PDF it would have told me that they had issued an order for a laptop, the first spec laptop. I would have also noticed that it had no camera with it.

But at 18:39 on the 26th I got a Dell order check. They gave me two internet receipt numbers. One for the first order I’d placed on the 24th and one for the last order that I actually wanted, placed a few hours earlier. Those clever Dell people. They’d realised the issue and were asking me to confirm which one I wanted. at 19:03 I replied that it was ONLY the last order I wanted. And I felt happy with the world. Sad deluded fool I am.

At 21:31 on the 26th, I got another confirmation email. Odd – this was just for the camera. The order screen was still showing as the first order processing, the third order was for a camera only. The order screen for the laptop was showing the previous spec.

OK, I thought, I’ll ring Dell in the morning. Oh no you won’t matey. Once you’ve placed your orders Dell will not answer their phones apart from during working hours. Worrying. Still, I’d get it sorted Monday.

Sunday brought interesting news. My laptop was in production. Worrying. Even more worrying was another potential duplicate order message. This time the first order reference was for the second order I’d placed! The second order reference was a number I’ve never seen in my life and to this day I don’t know what it is. Entering it into the system gives me “We’re unable to give you an update at the moment”. I replied to this confirmation mail saying ‘DO NOT PROCESS ANYTHING, UNTIL i SPEAK TO YOU IN THE MORNING’.

The next day dawned and I prepared for the joy of customer support. Lady 1. Listened patiently and explained to me that the laptop was on the first order and the camera was on the second order. OK … but the first laptop is wrong – I replied to your confirmation mail which says I have three working days to reply. I replied in 30 minutes.

“Ah so sorry”, she says, but it is in production and can’t be stopped.

“Sorry? Can’t be stopped!? I replied in 30 minutes!”.

“So sorry sir.”

What should I be doing then.

“When it’s delivered you can return to us with an explanation and you can have your money refunded.”

Splutter. Er, you want to make a laptop – I don’t want. Send it to me. Let me send it back to you. Then you give me the money back. And then I order the right one again!? Did I get that right?

“Sorry sir, there’s nothing that can be done. “

Well yes – we can do something. We can refuse to take this ridiculous situation and tell them where to put their laptops. I am not sure how long I was on the phone but by the end of it I’d been promised her senior would be calling me to see what could be done. And I was exhausted. Having somebody just repeating to you something nonsensical regardless of what you said back was exhausting. I am told my voice was clear across the breadth and depth of the Liverpool office.

Man 1 phoned me back. He helpfully explained that the order was too late to be cancelled and that there was nothing that could be done. Back to the order check email I went. No budging. Why did they then process PART of the third order? He didn’t know but there was nothing that could be done. I told him that a) I would reporting them to the credit card company b) I would not be accepting anything they tried to deliver to me and c) I would then turn this over to the company solicitor.

This resulted in a 10% discount offer. Which threw me a bit off balance. But the fact remained. It wasn’t what I ordered, they’d asked me for a confirmation which they now claimed was pointless as it was too late AND they’d tampered with the third order. Somebody had seen that order, cut the laptop off it and just gone ahead with the digital camera. That was not automated. He even had the affront to tell me that I’d placed the third order for camera only. I vented.

“I’m sorry sir, can you tell me what you actually want.”

“I want the items on the third order. That’s all I want. Nothing else. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“The third order was for a laptop as well sir!?”.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhh.

He said he’d talk to somebody and call me back.

After that call (Monday 29th, about 13:00), I realised that the prices had changed between the orders as well. I was being offered a discount but the revised order had only added a tenner to the total price, so the whole unit cost must have gone down. So it was a discount on the old price. No wonder they were so desperate to flog me the original laptop.

So I awaited the call back. And waited. Today, Tuesday 30th – I phoned Dell at 17:30. “The person you wish to speak to is not available at the moment, can I ask him to call you back?”. Yes, I replied calmly. That would be nice. He has not done so yet.

Watch this space.

Update 1. Tuesday 30th, 22:28 - They’ve changed the status screen for order 1 to ‘shipped’. Looks like I’ve been totally ignored so far. Will be making another call tomorrow morning unless they phone me first.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

[zobbo]

Phoned again at 16:15. Told the man I needed to speak to would call back in 20 minutes. Were they sure? Oh yes sir, quite sure.

No call back

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

What was I saying about futility?
_________________
Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[LiquidSculpt]

I hope that by my writing this I can prevent at least one person from buying from Dell.

I am furious with Dell and the runaround I have received this last month of trying to get them to repair my year old, under warranty and expensive laptop. Dell was easy to reach and very attentive when it came to purchasing the laptop, but they were impossible to reach, unhelpful and downright resistant to fixing anything once there was a problem.

After owning my Dell XPS 1530 for about a year it completely and suddenly died (it had been crashing periodically for a month beforehand). I sent Dell two e-mails requesting help with this problem before the computer completely died. I received an auto response from Dell but never anything else. I have been calling and writing and waiting for Dell to repair my laptop for 33 days now and I still have a non-functioning XPS 1530 on my hands.

I was contacted a few days after I reported the dead laptop to Dell by a service tech and made an appointment with them. The appointment was a four hour window in which I was to wait for them to show up at my home to repair the computer. I took a half day off from work and waited. They never came.

I then made a second appointment for another tech to come to my home and took a second afternoon off from work. This time, it turned out Dell had ordered the wrong disk drive. The tech also said that the outer plastic case needed to be replaced as it was warped and cracked due to the laptop overheating. I was blatantly told by this tech that overheating of the XPS laptops was a huge problem for Dell. I have since Googled Dell and overheating and I find endless results. The tech replaced the memory and hard drive and said they would be back in two days with the correct disk drive and plastic case.

It’s 33 days later I am still waiting for someone to finish repairing the laptop.

I have made over 17 calls to Dell all with frustrating results. In my month of dealing with the non-existent customer service at Dell I have spent 12.32 hours on hold (I started to keep track after my first seemingly endless call), I have been transferred from person to person, and in the process my calls have been disconnected over a dozen times (sometimes after I had been waiting for over an hour). I found the English of some of the Dell reps to be so bad that communication was impossible (you will not be dealing with anyone in the United States), my e-mails have never been replied to, and so far I have missed two days of work waiting for techs to repair the laptop. I am looking at missing a third if they ever show up with the part. It has been an endless runaround with zero results or satisfaction.

It was finally around day 20 of this fiasco that I found out that the disk drive has been on back order all this time, but no one ever bothered to call me to inform me of this. Nor did Dell offer to send me a new computer while I waited even though they had to replace everything but the screen on my laptop.

At this point I am finally speaking with someone in the US about replacing the computer but my thought is why would I want another XPS 1530 that will have the same overheating problems? I have zero desire to go through this again let alone ever deal with Dell again in my life.

If you have read this far and are still considering purchasing a Dell, please Google Dell and overheating you will find endless articles and commentary on this issue. In fact if you Google Dell and anything bad you will find that there are ten times more issues than there are positive reviews. Also, if you look closely at some of the better reviews, Dell has sponsored them.

I did find an already a settled class action lawsuit against Dell for my problem however I missed the application deadline by three months.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/156993/does_dell_owe_you_money.html

All I want is a working computer and Dell has been nothing but a faceless behemoth that has taken my $1,500 and wits end.

Do not buy from Dell, you will be regretful.

[AssTyrant]

Report your entire experience to the Better Business Bureau.

Doing so usually lights a fire under dHell's ass enough to get them to stop ignoring the issue. (at least somewhat)

[dennisl59]

As for me, the final insult to a customer is to NOT make a phone call as a professional courtesy to a customer that is waiting for service to say we've been delayed or can't make it at all. Very Pathetic and Lame. I've had to make calls that I know would disappoint a customer, but at least I called to say so.