If You Want Good Customer Service From Dell, You Must Pay More
from the oh,-that's-nice dept
I've talked many times in the past about the awful experience I had in 2000 with my Dell laptop. After being a very happy repeat Dell customer since 1993 I will never buy another machine from them. Their customer support experience (which had been great, the few times I had problems in the 90s) was now terrible. It seemed that in the past year, there have been a number of examples of how that service has become even worse. Dell says they're trying to respond to these criticisms, and their latest move is to make customers pay extra to get the customer service they deserve. On the face of this, it might make sense, but if you look a little more deeply, it's a sham. When I bought all of my Dell computers over the years, they certainly weren't the cheapest machines out there. I had paid a bit extra with the expectation of the "world class" service Dell promised. The price of that service was already built into the price of the computer. To now start charging even more is to charge customers twice. Also, this only gives Dell more incentive to avoid fixing the root causes of their problems, since their customer service operation now becomes a profit center.
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Another horror story
to upgrade my old Dell laptop. For some items I had
good service, but I would never make the mistake
again of ordering a part listed as out of stock.
After they placed the item on back order, I attempted
to cancel the order through their customer
support line. After several weeks the order
still hasn't been cancelled. The customer support
people are pretty much cutoff from the people who
fill the orders. They have no names or phone
numbers for them, as was explained to me by a
Dell customer support person. All they have is
a general email address for the other department!
They also sent me a CD burner I didn't order, a
slower model, because they were out of stock
for the one I ordered. This might have been ok
if they asked for my permission to change the
order. Although it's their stated policy to ask first,
they didn't bother. Probably thought I wouldn't notice.
When I called them up about it, the customer
service guy claimed the faster model was no longer
produced. I saw it listed on their web site a week
later, ordered it and received it a couple days later.
I won't say for sure the guy flat out lied to me, but
it's pretty suspicious.
They did give me credit for the slower model when
I sent it back.
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Dell Service
Last year my computer crashed and I found out that my hard drive had burnt out. I don't know how, I'm not a game user and all I do is word processing, web surfing and email. So, a local tech guy in NYC said he could retrieve the data from my drive if he had another one exactly like it. Well, I've had the computer for a year or two so I called Dell and ordered the new drive. It seemed pretty easy and I had the service contract still valid, so it seemed like everything was going to work out fine.
Anyway, Dell kept on sending me the wrong hard drive and their licensed technician kept on bringing me a hard drive from a different manufacturer. This happened about 4 or 5 times, no matter who I spoke to at Dell they did not undersand that I needed to get the same model I had just so I could replace the mechanism and retrieve my data.
Well, I finally called up with a very tech savvy friend on the line who spoke to a foul mouthed service rep at Dell and complained/explained in a nice manner what we actually needed the same drive. This service rep was rude, inconsiderate and had no idea what he was doing. I was so offended, but my friend, realizing this guy would get us no where demanded to speak to his supervisor. Finally we got somewhere and found out through the Supervisor that the hard drive I needed was no longer manufactured and they couldn't give me another one. This took over a month for them to tell us this. I explained the profanity that was used by the previous service guy and the supervisor said he would review the conversation(I guess it was taped).
Dell stinks in terms of service and I would rather us HP or Sony any day. Their service record is one of the biggest fraud's in the past two years. My tech friend was in the process of buying over $300,000.00 worth of computer equipment/network from Dell to set up a New York based office for his Japanese clients. He stopped in the middle of the order and went directly over to IBM small business, because Dell failed to let him speak to a service rep and find out their true support capability.
These guys stink and more people should kmow about this. Oh and I hate that annoying commercial with the retarded kid who spoked pot once and has been permanently brain damaged. He's not cool, he's an idiot just like Dell.
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Re: Dell Service
I had a picture (apparently I deleted it...so if someone else has it I'd appreciate getting another copy of it...) of the kid from Dell (from one of the more annoying advertisements,) with a pitchfork and devils horns saying "Dude, you're going to Hell!" Was so funny I nearly wet myself laughing so hard. Too bad I lost it...
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Poor Dell Customer Service
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dell custermer service
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