Dell complaints

[mick_blu]

20 October, 2005 BY REGISTERED MAIL

Dell Canada
155 Gordon Baker Rd., Suite 501
North York, Ontario M2H 3N5

Dear Sirs,

Re: My extreme dissatisfaction with your service and product

This letter is the source of the email I sent you via your “Contact Us” on your website which was sent on October 14, and to date has garnered absolutely no response whatsoever, not even an acknowledgement of receipt. If you had an actual email address on your website instead of the wretched fill-in forms, things would be much easier!

Earlier this year, after much research, I chose Dell to be the supplier of our new high-end colour laser printer. I selected the 5100Cn, ordered it over the phone and it was received very promptly.

As we do a fair amount of black printing it wasn’t too much later that I needed to order toner. This was done by setting up an on-line order process and successfully achieved, and at that time I received an email confirming the account set up, the password access, etc.

Some time later, the printer advised me via its display that it was going to need a transfer roller replaced. I went to the website, located the part and tried to order it. I’m sorry, your account is not set up for Canada came the automated reply. Repeated attempts to activate the account, including trying to set up a new one were unsuccessful (it seems you can only have one account to a phone number). In frustration, I called your 1-800 number. That’s when the “fun” started.

“I’m sorry, you have called the wrong number, you need sales - I’ll transfer you” became “I’m sorry, you need service - I’ll transfer you” became “I’m sorry, you need sales - I‘ll transfer you” became “Toner sales are…” and so on, for a good 45 frustrating minutes. Bounced from person to person, extension to extension, ignoramus to ignoramus. No-one even knew what a transfer roller was, let alone how I could get one. Almost everyone suggested I order it online, yet no-one could “repair” our non-functioning account. Repeated requests to speak to a supervisor were inevitably met with responses advising us that there were no supervisors around or available.

Finally, I was somehow transferred to Ajay Gupta, 1-800-387-5752 ext : 76036 who was a ray of sunshine. He took it upon himself to help and placed an order for us for two transfer rollers. I received an email advising me I would have the part in two days. Great! Finally, someone who cares.

Well, not so soon is happiness to be found. The part doesn’t arrive as scheduled and promised. And then, joy of joys, your wretched printer decides that it has given us enough time to get the part (it obviously is not programmed to handle Dell’s monumental inefficiency) and it simply ceases to function!

I have been in the IT industry for over 25 years, having worked for Burroughs, IBM and Hewlett Packard in that time, before opening my own business where I was a national distributor of PCs and peripherals for many years. In all those years, using many different brands of printers, (including Lexmark who, I believe, makes the Dell printers) no manufacturer has ever had the temerity to make a printer cease to function when a consumable runs low. Warnings are issued, print quality reduces, but the printer keeps functioning.

How dare you do that? Who are you to tell me that I can no longer print? My business has chosen to rely on your product to have my invoices and production schedules printed by your machine. Do you expect me to keep a spare printer on hand (or even a crate of monkeys with ball-point pens) to use when your printer decides I need to replace a part that is showing absolutely no signs of deterioration other than some mathematically derived determination based on the number of pages printed - and probably just on page count, never mind the amount of toner used on those pages! It’s like your car refusing to start because you delayed having an oil change!

This is the second such part that this printer has experienced total shutdown from in its brief life (the warranty is still until February 2006!). In both cases we were unable to restart the printer and had to wait until the part came in before the printer could be used again.

In addition, when the printer was new we experienced a very disturbing phenomenon when attempting to print from a DOS-based application (our primary accounting application is a legacy app that prints to a PCL printer). After every page of printing a spurious second sheet was printed that contained only one line of print (generated by the printer or its driver) that was “@PJL EOJ NAME=“XXXXXX” where XXXX is a hex string that varied from page to page. Despite multiple calls to your tech support no-one (and I mean no-one) was able to even understand the message, never mind help me with it.

I then took it upon myself to research this using the web as an encyclopedia, and after printing out a 75 page PJL command manual from HP’s website I discovered a simple escape sequence that needed to be sent to the printer to suppress this spurious printing. Had your printer been provided with a technical reference manual (as pretty much all printers I have bought in the past have done) I would have been able to solve the problem far sooner. Unfortunately your manual merely tells you how to change consumables and little else!

In sheer frustration I asked one of the many people I spoke to, to send me a packing box as I wanted to send the printer back because a printer that doesn’t print is of no use whatsoever. The response (inevitably) was “I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”

Now, my question to you is, how do I make that happen? I cannot live with an expensive ($1,300++) printer that is unreliable and non-functional, and whose support is non-existent. Instead, I need to buy a printer locally from a vendor such as Staples, where I can get supplies 7 days a week, and where I can actually speak to a human being who cannot palm me off by transferring me to someone else, etc. etc.

I want to return this frustrating printer to you. I want to return to you the additional supplies that I have bought. I want my money back. I want my frustration to end. I need to run my business, not have my printer run my life and business for me.

I would very much like a copy of this letter to go to Michael Dell, but I am realist enough to know that won‘t happen. You will shield him from letters such as mine, even though he should know and respond.

I am opening a new production facility and was thinking of using Dell as the PC supplier. I had even gone so far as to choose the particular equipment needed, but there’s no way I could afford to do that now. I need reliability, and you appear not to be able to make that happen.

Over to you.

[ShaftDu]

moral of the story:

Don't buy a printer from Dell cause you are going to get screw by the cartiages.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

If Dell can't:

A) Open a functioning business account for the purchase of consumables,
B) Answer a simple technical question from a knowledgeable technical user,
C) Ship consumbables ('transfer rollers' are consumable?) in a timely and reliable manner,
D) Direct business customers to the proper telephone extension on the first attempt,
E) Recognize the names of their product's common service parts,

what CAN they do?
_________________
Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[mick_blu]

Hey Rocke_T_Sinetist, that is the most succint and appropriate comment. It says it all. Bravo!!

[AceBandge]

I would recommend buying HP. The transfer roller gets replaced when you buy a new cartriage. That's why you still see all of HP's older Laserjet II and III still working and HP is still making toner cartriages for them.

Also they have made some awsome improvements in their techsupport:

1yr warrenty free = Dell is only 90 days
1hr email resonse time.
24/7 phone support
HP cirtified techs in CompUSA, BestBuy, etc...
Email and Online Chat support, even after your warrenty runs out!!!
The printer can even Page, Email, Instant Message you, letting you kow if your getting low on toner. It can even order it for you if you want.

They just came out with a new business ink printer (K550) that is down to 1.5 cents per page and it prints 37 pages per min. Look it up this thing ROCKS!!!

HP even has an Color all in one Laser that is at break neck speeds, and it is under a thousand.

BAM!!
_________________
AceBandge!!

"Defender of the Galaxy..."
(he says as he stumbles and falls off the stage)

[paul_dellcc]

HP has their tech support in India too...
_________________
I see DELL people!!

If we don't remember our past, we can't understand our present and we can put in danger our future...

[Ex-Regulatory]

It is worth mentioning that Dell uses HP printers (specifically the HP Model 920C) to do system qualification testing for regulatory certifications.