Dell complaints

[Omega]

I work with someone who has an Inspiron 6400. He gave me a chance to check it out and play around. Overall he says he's really happy with it and truthfully, the laptop is quite nice.
While talking about it, he said to the effect of: "Listen, you'll have to order from Dell, and that is probably the only bad thing I can say about them."

Basically he was right.

Ordering my laptop was the single most ridiculous experience I have ever gone through. I think Dell has established policies to look after customers, but good freaking luck getting them implemented!
Basically anyone you talk to on the phone may as well not even work for Dell. None of them have been given authority to do anything in any situation?!
Buying my laptop was a giant circus of errors. What a total gong show. I had requested the laptop be delivered to my business and the cross eyed Indians on the other end are of course genetically altered to screw that up. They ended up placing an order that goes to my home address. Before the order had even shipped, I was told they couldn't change the address. I had to cancel my order and re-place it (aah! more chances to screw up!) to get the right address. What a ridiculous arbitrary and self-imposed limitation, Dell!!!! I spoke to some cranky jaded woman on the phone, in Canadian support no less. Wow! I'd have to say she was the worst of them all. She lied to me in two direct ways:

o She has no access to email.
o Dell can't expedite the second shipment to make up for having to place it.

I sent some very carefully targeted and worded emails, and I finally got results. An express-shipped laptop, apologies galore, and hey, even my rep from the Canadian customer care office managed to email me?! Surprise! Suffice to say, I took the careful time to outline her dishonesty, who lies to their customers like that?!?

My advice is when you're dealing with Dell, don't come in from the bottom. Come in from the top. You can order a Dell PC, but what you get ends there. To get customer service, satisfaction & quality, you just have to escalate beyond their rubber wall of jaded low-pay representatives.

I ordered what I think is a very nice high end laptop. I'm very familiar with computer hardware, none of this is new to me. Neither is dealing with revolving door support systems.
I make sure I got the best. A nice 9400 with all great hardware. I don't think anything will be wrong, but obviously I have my concerns for various problems that may or may not crop up after getting my laptop:

o Dead pixels (they are NOT acceptable, don't let anyone get away with this!!)
o Component failure.

To these issues I have one very valuable consumer tip: Credit card charge backs. They get results every time because it loses Dell money and borks their credit (loses them MORE money). Do not be afraid to use them, it is your right as a consumer and your last line of defense.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[MADMATAGAIN]

Good post.

I was almost at the point of doing something similar once. It was an aftermarket company for Jet ski parts and I was not happy with them AT ALL.

I found a little timer that I put in my email sig and titled it ,"time until chargeback for your product", and gave them like 3 days. I never had to use it though.

I ended going with someone else product and just getting a refund from the first company.
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Winter sucks!!!!!!

X-H2o.com

"Dell is still the best way to go at this point in time for most users and for sure most businesses"....Me.

[ojchillinndc]

I actually live in an area with one of those few Dell kiosk. So I went down there with hopes of seeing the XPS M1710 for myself. A Dell rep in a chat room told me they may not have it. (Let me jump tracks here real quick. This rep was an American but he was stupid. I asked him about something on the laptop and he told me that the XPS doesn't have that. I told him ummm, it's on your website. I'm looking at it right now. Oh, uh, yeah you're right. What a dumbass. Back to my original post). So I went down to the kiosk and the had an Inspiron laptop with the same chassis that XPS uses. The Dell rep talked me into ordering it right there and then. I was like, umm I don't know. He was like, I can get you $100 off the purchase if you let me order it for you. I was like SOLD! Here's my money. BTW, I never ordered any of my DELLs over the phone and I won't have to worry about that since I won't buy their product anymore.(Go read my other post) Just sharing. If you have one near you, go to the kiosk and order your Dell, you may can get a deal. And plus the people or friendly and AMERICAN!!!
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I'm burning in the depths of DELL!!!!

[DOC_Is_Evil]

Ordering from a person instead of over the phone or online gives you an actual human being to scream at instead of having to play dumb phone tag games, or deal with people hiding behind emails...It also makes it easier to tell when someone is lying to you, since it's harder to lie in person than it is over the phone.

[Omega]