Dell complaints

I worked for Dell for 8 months and it was one of the better jobs I have had. My boss was great, the pay was good and the people around me were awesome. So why did I quit? The number one reason I resigned are Dell's customers. They were some of the worse people I have ever had to work with and gave me a good taste of corporate capitalism.

These people were rude, conniving, and sometimes just flat out threatening. I was berated by a customer who didn't back up his data over a Windows corruption after I had highly recommended it countless times. The customer told me to "F*ck off!" when I called back to check on him and see if I could help in another way. I was also threatened many times by customers that they would never buy from Dell again over stupid things like their service tag not being in their BIOS.

This customer came in wanting to change the service tag in his BIOS. I told him that was not possible without actually replacing the system board. He berated me calling me a liar and posting all of these links for asset.com and another program.

When I was trying to research the issue for him he would send me messages every minute saying "Did you figure it out yet?! Hurry up dammit! I'm very busy today!" "I'm an MCSE! This should be an easy fix!"

After researching the issue, those links he posted to me were DOS based and they only worked on older Phoenix BIOS. When I asked him if the system was functioning properly, he said it was. I told him I couldn't replace the board if the system is working.

He jumps all over me and says "We will remember this when we buy computers again! By the way we spent 30,000 dollars on Dells two weeks ago" I had to get approval for this jerk! That was the last straw for me. I actually drove home screaming the whole way.

I resigned within the next few days. Sites like this don't know what some of us on the other end have to go through to appease some of your crazy and unrealistic demands.

Given that this was my first time working at a call center, I must say I will never work for another call center and will always side with the customer service representative or technician whenever I see posts on here complaining about "techs from india or out sourcing"

Those guys work very hard for what they do and if you don't want to talk to them, then stop being cheap and spend the extra 50 bucks to get a Gold Pro Support warranty and leave them alone.

Customers on this website are why I left Dell.

I can imagine your frustration with the customers but you need to realize that those customers all have gone through hours of frustration prior to reaching a human being at Dell.

As a customer and consumer, I demand and expect helpful customer service and as a rule I try to be polite with the person I am dealing with. In Dell's case, it is obvious that the company's focus is on their business customers and there is a less than caring attitude when dealing with individual consumers. When someone forks out $1000-$2000 and receives a product that breaks shortly after the purchase, the want it fixed. They don't want to be connected with someone they can't understand, transferred, hung up on, upsold, etc. Not saying customer rudeness is excused but it is understandable.

Dell had an excellent product and decent customer service in the early days but abandoned their business model a few years ago. It has been 4 years since I made my last (of eight) Dell purchases and although you can find complaints about every company, my HP, Asus and Apple purchases all gave me products that seem to be decent quality and the customer service of these companies has in my case been 100% superior to that of Dell.

Now that you are no longer an employee of Dell, perhaps you should purchase one of their products and when something goes wrong, give their customer service a shot....I believe you will then understand why the customers are the way they are.

PS I deal with a company that is considered the best customer service company in the US today....Zappos.com which is an online retail of shoes and apparel. Try going to www.youtube.com and type in Zappos and watch a few of the testimonials from employees and customers alike. They can't do enough for their customers and it shows in their sales growth (from zero 10 years ago to 1 billion plus today). Not spamming but definitely worth a few minutes to check it out.

I hate to break it to you fella, but it's not the customer's fault! The blame lies squarely on DHell's shoulders. Why? Well...........

1. Over the past several years DHell has cut corner after corner in manufacturing and testing to ensure that as many costs are eliminated from the manufacturing process.

2. DHell insists on shuttering as many U.S.-based facilities because they're too cheap to pay for employees that American customers can understand.

3. DHell insists that its "tech support" representatives follow a decision tree that arrives at anything but the actual problem, again to cut costs by not having to hire anyone with technical knowledge and to make sure that whatever the problem is, it's not DHell's fault.

4. DHell makes their "tech support" agents sell products and services that the customer does not want or need in order to wring more money out of the customer.

Of course there are more issues at DHell than just the ones I referenced, but I'm not out to write a book. I used to provide technical support at DHell in the US and I never had any of the issues you described. Naturally, being American helped and so did the fact that I wasn't hamstrung by having to use DSN. I understand that you might have been required to use DSN otherwise you were invited to hit the street, but that's DHell's fault and certainly not the customer's.

Maybe, just maybe, can you see if it was most of your customers saying the same things then it's not the customer and, more likely, it's the company you work for?

Either way, maybe customer service isn't your bag.

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Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Sorry dear. You have to realize, the pool was poisoned long before you got to it. You see, at this point everyone knows someone who has been screwed over by Dell. So they come to you already aggressively angry. Of course, what they should have done was buy something else, but they thought it was a 'great deal' and all those bad things they heard about wouldn't happen to them. Until they did.

The exact same thing is now rampant on ebay. Majority of sellers are legitimate, but the few who aren't have poisoned the pond so the instant ANYthing appears to go wrong with the sale the buyers react like "you're screwing me like all those other people I've heard about" and honest sellers are bailing out in frustration/disgust.

You must be rather young or you already would have heard the old retail saying "this wouldn't be a bad business if it weren't for customers". Now add to that the fact Dell has a far-reaching reputation as a bad business, and one good manager or one conscientious employee is not realistically going to overcome that.

BTW, when I worked there '99-'01, I had the best manager I ever had, I loved the company and what it stood for at the time, and I phoned customers who were always perfectly satisfied and very happy I was taking an engineering interest in the problem they had experienced. But you see, at that point Dell hadn't yet poisoned the pool. Now, they have, and you either play the poison game or you don't play at all.

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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

After 50 minutes and FIVE transfers later, I demanded to speak to a supervisor. I told him that I was given the wrong number to contact initially (Order Support) and that I was transferred back and forth between Tech and Order five times, with lengthy hold time in between. He asked me the number I dialed initially, and I told him that did not matter. He repeated the question; again, I refused to answer. HE THEN ASKED ME AGAIN, and again, I refused to answer, and told him it was IRRELEVANT, and to deal with the issue at hand and resolve my complaint. Believe it or not, my issue was simply this; getting a tracking number from them in order to send the computer to them for repair! Somehow, they were so inept that the shipping label that was produced had no number, so I couldn't arrange a pick up online! After an hour and 20 minutes, perhaps 30, the supervisor, having interrupted me AND the FedEx representative (who was sweet as pie, efficient AND knowledgeable), the problem was resolved VIA THE INTERACTION BETWEEN ME AND THE FED EX REP! Within five minutes and with clear communication (which includes listening), she and I had the issue resolved! Imagine that! All because some Dell schmo somewhere didn't know how to print a label correctly, and five reps don't know how to listen or climb out of those you-know-what trees, or a supervisor is too busy listening to himself talk to help with a problem...

And mind you, throughout all the interactions, with every single rep and with the supervisor, I never once yelled, called names, cursed or anything. I pointed this out to the last three reps and the super, believe me.

Oh no, dear, it's NOT THE CUSTOMER! The blame lies squarely in Dell's very large and international court...

Dhell loves hiring Chimps to do the work. If they could they would put lab rats on the line if they could manage it and save money. Most smart people soon either are let go do to their call load being not enough or they smarten up and leave. And the last is that Smart people at dhell are laid off first. Take my advice and leave Dhell now. Your going to end up hating the place and dumbing yourself down to the Dhell level of Stupidity!

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Former employee of Dell and can say that they
definitely Suck!

Well I finally left Dell in May because I just couldn't handle it anymore. Dell screwed me out of unemployment for a good 5 months and refused to help me. Thankfully the appeal judge saw through Dell's crap and gave me the money I deserved. The HR lady was so rude and hostile.

I wanted to apologize to you folks. You were right about Dell. I just didn't see it all that clearly until I myself got screwed over. My apologies to everyone. I look forward to sharing my experiences and helping out best I can.

No harm, and gracious of you to say. You see, we weren't being smug or cynical, but prophetic.

We've all been associated with this company 5-10 years, as employees, contractors, customers, journalists, and the story never changes. The bottom line is always "Dell screwed me".

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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

I guess the little piggy did go wee wee wee all the way home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F_G2zp-opg

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http://computersetc.conforums.com/

I think its a pretty safe bet that from your grammar and style you are from the US and I'm guessing with that guy and the $30,000 you worked on their business support side. It seems like thats a totally different ballgame, as they have too much money to lose by pissing people off too much. All I can say is, their personal PC overseas tech coverage seems to be the equivelant of the Island of misfit toys at Christmas time. If you ever buy a Dhell computer (shudder) and call them, all I can say is YOU WILL UNDERSTAND.

Also, I worked in retail management, people are just a pain in the ass in general to deal with (thats why I made a vow never to be in retail again). You will find anywhere you go in support, you just will have a percentage of people being dicks well, because they can be.

Customers are the same no matter where you do support. Try doing Mac support for a while. I have never heard the monitor called "the TV" so much in my life.

i can relate because i was a previous dell employee as well. there is a lot of cost cutting going on and dhell's decision to do so is making things worse especially for customers who end up being in our ear. agents are too stressed by the irate customers so people where i came from disconnect calls, transfer customers around just to avoid talking to someone extremely frustrated, etc. but guess what, managers from where i came from are worse! they push us, agents to have great numbers but all they do is tell us how we are failing on a daily basis while they go run off with their extra marital affairs! even the hr lady is having an affair with a married supervisor and it was tolerated! talk about dhell being big in ethics?? i think it's total BS! when you get in they tell you professionalism is the best in dhell, soon you'll find out that a lot of unethical "activities" are happening. i am so happy to be out of dhell!

I guess it goes both ways. Good and bad with the callers and the Dell tech people.

I know what it's like dealing with people who aren't good with computers. Like let's say I'm gonna upload a large video file to YouTube for someone. The file is nearly a gigabyte in file size. The upload will take a while, even on cable. I start it and a minute later the person asks to see it on YouTube. I explain that it's still uploading. No matter how many times I explain file size and upload speed, the person just does not get it. He or she thinks it should already be on YouTube ready to be posted on their Facebook wall.

Or I tell someone a certain computer has 4 gigs of RAM memory. That person says, "only 4 gigabytes? my computer has 120." I explain the difference between RAM and the hard drive. They just don't get it. It's like they can't even start to open their mind to what I'm explaining. I display my two hands and I'm like, "okay, imagine having two hands. It means I can do more than with one hand. Now imagine this computer has 4 hands, that's what it's like to have 4 gigabytes of RAM. The hard drive is storing information." They still don't get it.

Thing is, Dell can still cut down on this by turning out better quality products. As for explaining things like I've tried to do and web browser features and things, people can do that for each other. And it works better with computers that work properly. Sure Dell will still get calls about this. But overall they'll get less calls if they cut down on calls because of components that just stop working.

I never understood why they think the employee gives a single fuck.
Would you complain to the gas jockey that the gas prices are so high?