I don't feel any better.
My kids’ stepmom has very generously been giving them Dells for Christmas gifts for the last ten years. At first it seemed like a great idea, but the reliability of the machines has turned into a disappointment, and the customer service is a disaster.
What’s interesting is that if you call customer service, they will ask you “Is this a personal computer or for business use?” or words to that effect. If you answer “personal,” you’ll be shunted to Bangalore, where some very snotty and incompetent CSRs will fail to handle your problem.
If you answer “business,” however, they’ll roll out the red carpet for you. First they say, “If this account is with a company with less than 5000 employees, press 1. If this account is with a company with 5000-10000 employees, press 2. If this account is with a company with over 10000 employees, press three.” If you press three, they set off fireworks and send over a bottle of champagne while they wait on you hand and foot. And they’ll do it in ENGLISH.
Cancel the payment already.
Email them and tell them that you are canceling your order. It will then show up in two days. It always works for me.
I totally understand your frustration. Having just had in the last few months the occasion to purchase several computers for my business. I realize Dell has major problems, but then so do all the other computer manufacturers. They are all getting their parts from China and their customer service/tech staff from India and are at the mercy of China’s low quality and India’s language barrier.
After a lot of research I decided to put all my eggs in Dell’s basket and called their order department and told them how many and what computers I wanted to order. I also told them (by the way.... it seems their entire sales staff is USA based) that I would give them the order for this and future orders (it will be sometime before I have the illusive future orders, but for now it seemed to be leverage)if I could have a prompt ship date and North American tech support for a 4 year service plan. No problem, they said. If you insist, it seems they have that option. When I had the inevitable problems crop up with making my peripherals and software work on Windows 7, my tech support (they call it “your North American Tech Team Red”)was reached with no more than 3 or 4 minutes hold, and they worked with me on each of the problems, patiently till resolved. Oh, I have no doubt the cheap Chinese parts will go bad, but they will cover them all and send a local tech company guy out to replace within 24 hours if necessary. About all I can hope for and better that having to lug a machine in to Best Buy for the same sort of inevitable repairs, I guess.
But them the story turns just before Christmas. In November my school teacher son told me that his old HP computer had crashed. I figured that a new one would make a great Christmas gift, and he would be in heaven with a Dell XPS Gaming model... not quit Alienware, but he next best thing to it. I ordered and they promised to have it here by Dec 24th.
But at the last minute they sent an email saying shipment would be delayed till after Dec 31st. I spent 6 hours on the phone working my way up the chain of Indian service reps who all read me their scripts saying “sorry, but...”, and not at all understanding why Christmas gifts had to be given on Christmas Day.
I went shopping at Best Buy and found a replacement (they actually had the same model with more memory and a much better graphics card for a lower price.
I took great satisfaction in then calling Dell and canceling my order. The next day I got notice that Dell had shipped afterall, I wanted to shout “why didn’t you just say so when I called you yesterday instead of telling me “sorry, but....” but I told them when it arrived I was sending it right back and I so wanted to tell them where they could put it when it arrived back, but it being Christmas and all, I toned down my rant. They had the gall to offer me a whopping $50 if I would accept the shipment ... can you believe that.
I said, “sorry no deal, and not only have you lost this sale and will have to eat the shipping both ways, but I will think long and hard before giving you any future orders.”
Oh, I know, I’ll most likely still buy Dells in the future, as I already said, the alternatives, especially when an off-the-shelf model is not going to be right. But it was nice to give them back some of their own medicine for once.
“Good luck getting anyone who has English as their first language . . . .”
A few years back I called Dell to order a replacement power cord and got some gal who must have been located in Vietnam who had no idea what I was talking about and couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of transferring me to someone I could converse with (like maybe “Steve” from Bombay).
I’ll never buy Dell again.
Try www.cyberpowerpc.com
Great prices, great rigs...
Bought a DELL about 3 years ago. NEVER AGAIN. You want to know where mine is sitting? With its 5 year warranty? IN MY LAKE BEHIND MY HOUSE.
TOTAL GARBAGE.
I got so fed up with it breaking down, blue screen, and retarded help or lack there of from India...I used to be on the phone up to 3-4 hrs at a time with India and their tech support.
NEVER EVER EVER AGAIN.
F-ck Dell.
I too have bought my last Dell anything.
I have purchased three computers and that is
enough.
I have been told they are putting the cheapest
parts in that they can buy.
This is why people quit buying American. One
spends their hard earned money, but the CEO will
sell them junk after several years building up a
business. Guess they have more than enough to live
on. Hope so anyway...they are really disgusting people.
Easy fix. Do-it-yourself: http://www.newegg.com/Store/Computer.aspx?name=Computer-Hardware
Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) has underperformed its peer group in the stock market by a wide margin. Dell’s shares are off over 30% over the last two years while the share of Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) and IBM (NYSE:IBM) have shown impressive gains. The PC industry’s score has been steadily increasing in the American Customer Service Index over the last decade, up from a 71 of 100 rating in 2001 to 75. Dell’s score has dropped from 78 to 75. Dell trail Apple, Toshiba, and HP is many Consumer Reports measurements of laptop computers by screen size. It does somewhat better in the slow-growing desktop business and has abysmal scores in the fastest growing part of the PC industry—netbooks. In the netbook category Consumer Reports ranks Dell behind seven other manufacturers. In Forrester’s recent Customer Experience Index rankings, Dell was behind every other PC maker measured. Dell employees have been through a series of layoffs which included 8,800 people in 2008 and at least another 1,400 last year. Dell fired another group in November.
If I were to buy a laptop, I'd only consider the Latitude or Precision laptops at Dell, an Apple with dual-boot, or an ASUS laptop. Of those, the Apple is the most expensive, the Dell is hard to get without being a business customer (but buying from the Dell Outlet is how I've done so in the past), and ASUS is the best, easiest and cheapest choice.
With Dell, they have an excellent Next Day Onsite service with the CompleteCare option to cover any coffee or drop damage you may inflict on it, so when someone shows up the next day, there's never a question about “warranty” or “abuse.” I believe there are similar options with the other two companies, though. For a laptop, I would ONLY get one with such options, as they require custom parts that are often only available via Ebay or specialty shops to fix.