What a joke. My company wouldn’t stay in business two days if we treated customers like that.

The upgrade required tin snips to fit the back port mask, and completely fubar’ed my IDE chain. Pursuing support ( at this point due for both the machine and the new mainboard ) was a total fiasco.

My Warranty has been invalidated, my IDE chain still refuses to work with their DVD drives. And of course their new spin on customer support surmounts to what can only be called an oxymoron.

It is astounding the travails I’ve gone through, with executive support, and their consumer advocacy group both calling to assure me, I am indeed screwed.

In my twenty five years in the computer industry I have never been so flummoxed by company in the consumer market.

It was also surreal, receiving advertisements and customer satisfaction survey requests associated with my ignored and refused pleas for a resolution to a problem they caused.

Please take my hard earned advice, look at either HP or Apple as a supplier of desktop hardware needs - I wish I had.

December 10, 2005

I had previously believed that Dell was a quality company, however my recent experience has left me realizing that it is suffering major customer service problems and its stock price will likely be affected eventually.

The quality of the computers it sells is as important as its ability and desire to service its customers properly.

My experience in what should have been a routine order is as follows:

I created an order on-line on December 3rd, but called to get some advice on a couple of issues. Before calling my “cart” already reflected an instant $50 rebate as well as a $50 mail-in rebate, free shipping and a free monitor upgrade.

When speaking with the salesperson (Mark Lewis at extension 7134430), he enticed me to apply for credit with Dell Financial Services (DFS) and said that if I was approved, it would result in another $50 discount on my order. I did not want to buy it on credit, but decided to do so based on the $50 additional discount that he promised. I was approved, and the order was completed.

When I checked back via phone a day or so later, I was told that there was no additional $50 credit available, and that the original $50 (which was there before I even spoke with Mark about Dell Financial Services) was the Dell Financial Services Credit. I made about eight more calls, before someone at DFS told someone at Dell Customer Care, to apply an additional $50 discount to the order. However, when I checked back a couple of days later, this had not been done.

I therefore called Mark’s manager (Michael Cooper, Jr. at extension 7137957) and after about four conversations with him, he agreed to reduce my order by $75, due to all the trouble I encountered so far. However, when I called back to verify that he had done so, I was told that this $75 had not been applied to my account. I therefore started the calling process again, leaving messages for Michael Cooper, but he did not return my calls.

I eventually spoke with a person (per him, his name is John Williams) who said that he was on the phone with me days earlier and that he was the employee who was told by the person at DFS to provide a $50 discount. However, he had not done so and could not explain why he had not. In this current conversation, he said that he would apply the $50 discount, but that it would take three days for it to show on my account.

He said that he could not trust customers since they often lie and say that they were offered discounts that they were not actually offered. However, it is unethical at best, and illegal at worst to simply not provide a discount because one feels that a customer may have lied. An employee should research each situation first, and based this, either grant the discount or deny it, not simply deny it out-of-hand because they feel someone may be lying.

In addition, when Mark ran my credit to apply for the DFS financing, he badly misspelled my name and address. This resulted in erroneous data on my credit report, which I obtained after this transaction. In fact, these errors were reflected on the Shipping and Billing addresses and I had to make about six calls just to have this fixed.

Even after all of this, the e-mail that I received from Dell has my name spelled wrong.

I will likely have to dispute the entire amount under the Fair Credit Billing Act. I will then determine if there are enough other customers that would be willing to provide documentation in order that a class be certified to initiate a class-action against Dell for false and deceptive sales practices and various federal credit violations.

Drake Ross

Now inb Nove 2005 I bougth another one and I won’t be able to do the installation for more than 21 days, I am sure if I have a problem they won’t give me my money back. I bought it and I am all ready sorry did it

Dell sent a system to the wrong address (well over two miles away), then suggested I should collect it from there! Naturally I refused. For about three months I fought with them to get my money back. Eventually, after my bank’s intervention, I got my money back, but my health had suffered a lot.

Trying to get any sense out of them is nigh impossible. No proper address, no proper company phone number, nothing. Just an impenetrable wall of confusion. I feel ill just thinking about the memory.

Right now I have a fujitsu siemens system (winxp professional installed as standard) with a sony x-black monitor (sublime) and love them. There is still some quality out there, but you have to do a bit of research before buying.

Please anyone reading this, don’t make the mistake of buying a Dell!

I would at least like to write him and his company before I start using my own Dell’s Hell experience in teaching new business students how not to run a company. I will be using this experience to show them the absolute worst customer service ever and having been in corp. sales I thought I had seen everything. Funny thing is I am not sure the corp. people know you can’t negate this kind of bad PR-ever, no matter how much ad time you buy.

I remember getting a Dell in 1995 or so for my girlfriend. She opened it up, tried to put a game on it, managed to mangle the operating system, and spent the night on the telephone with competent customer support getting the OS re-installed.

Contrast this to my recent experience with a corrupt HD on my brand new top-of-the-line Dell XPS. First, I call customer service. Wait on hold for 30 minutes. Then an Indian guy with an American name comes on the line. He has me go through some troubleshooting until he realizes I have XP Media Edition. Oh, says he, I must transfer you to the Media Edition people. Now I listen to 30 more minutes of bad on hold music before getting an American guy with an American name. I explain my dilemma and he says, “sorry I can’t help you — you need to talk to the India guys — I just deal with problems hooking up TVs to computers.” I beg and plead to not be put on hold again, but to no avail. 30 minutes later, I talk to another India guy with an American name who almost transfers me back to the Media Edition guys but fortunately does not. Two hours or so later, we confirm what I thought was the problem — my HD is corrupt and I need a new one.

Next, we have the saga of getting the new HD. The India guy says he’ll mail me a new one — I install it and send back the old one. Friday, the day when the new HD is supposed to arrive rolls around. No HD. The Indian guy calls up to help me with the installation. I inform him no HD. He looks in his records and wants me to run more tests. I get totally PO’ed and tell him I am to angry to deal with him right now and hang up. 5 minutes later he calls back. I tell him to leave me alone and hang up. 5 minutes later the same guy calls back. I enunciate very clearly, D-o n-o-t c-a-l-l t-h-i-s n-u-m-b-e-r a-g-a-i-n. No more phone ringing.

The following Monday, an American guy shows up on my doorstep with a new HD. He installs it. So far it seems to be working fine.

I will never ever buy another Dell again as long as I live. Sorry, but the customer service has gone to HELL over the past 10 years, and so can DELL as far as I’m concerned.

In the meantime, while my XPS machine was out of commission, I filmed myself speaking with Dell Customer (Who) Care(s?). I have about one hour of footage documenting my struggle to get someone to help me resolve my situation. I also emailed Michael Dell to let him know about my negative customer experience. Nevertheless, my collections nightmare continues to smolder.

Is there someone who might be interested in the video for documentary purposes? Perhaps Michael Moore will delve into the phenomenon of large corporations investing so heavily in marketing and sales yet turning their backs on their customers through offshore customer care centers (India, Panama, etc.). It’s bewildering that such an integral part of running a business, customer service, is paid so little attention by Mr. Dell. Perhaps a new slogan for Dell: YOU BOUGHT A DELL, NOW GO TO HELL.

I am collecting Case #’s and still haven’t resolved it yet.

In other words, you can have the coolest products in the planet, but if you can’t lend a support system for them, you’re as good as yesterday’s newspaper.

If you own a Dell and have ever tried to reach the customer support line, you can emphathize with this: the length of time on hold with Dell customer service representatives was the #1 complaint.

Moral of the story, Mr Dell: don’t increase revenues at the cost of service capabilities.

Customers are still frustrated by PC technology so pay attention, Dude.

I wanted to add a second hard drive to an older machine, so I called Dell to order a $6 mounting bracket. That’s all. The JERK I dealt with asked me, “what is your intended use of this computer?” I told him I didn’t think it was any of their business what I use the computer for, and that I wasn’t gong to answer the question. He replied, “if you are not going to tell me, then I am not going to sell you the bracket.”

It was a good thing at that point that I was here and he was in Bangalore, instead of behind some service counter, within arms’ reach. I invented an interesting but false story and eventually received the bracket.

If I have a warranty repair for my truck, I take it to the dealer, and get it fixed free. They do it fine.

Any other service, I take to a shop I’ve been going to for years.

When the dealer calls after the service with the damned questionnaire, they always ask “How likely would you be to get your vehicle serviced here again?”

But they don’t leave any room for the qualifier “I’ll bring it back if the service is free…”

So how valid are the answers I try to give?

Not everything is yes or no, or 1 thru 5.

As I write here the simple way to find out if customers like you (are satisfied) is to measure how many times a business fails to follow through on the 4 or 5 basic expectations of their customers.

No surveys necessary. Just roll up your sleeves and see how many times you’ve dropped the ball for customers like Jeff Jarvis.

Full disclosure–and a laugh or two–I’m a Dell shareholder, and only because of their business model, the cut rate price thing, which is brilliant. I’ve made some money on the stock, but only because the general public is–like I was–stupid, and falls for the PR spin that Dell is the greatest thing since, well, sliced bread.

My actual gripe though is about how they’re _tracking_ customer satisfaction. When I interact with customer support, I’ve grown to anticipate a follow up email asking me to rate my experience, and that’s fine. Last time around I noticed everyone that I spoke to would remind me at the end that my experience with them would rated, which is OK I guess, but then they even started to ask me what I would rate them.

Finally, today (before I get the actual email to rate the interaction with them), I get _another_ call, reminding me that I’m going to get an email about my experience with them and asking me what grade I would give.

Huh? That’s the third time you’ve asked! Why don’t you just wait until I respond to the email survey?

I get that they have to track satisfaction, but do you have to annoy me about it (and call me in the morning while I’m in the shower at that)?