What's Next for Dell Customer Service

jb56013 — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:01:10 GMT

I am by far not a fan of dell!! But I would have to agree with Todd on this one registry errors are almost 99.9% of the time cause by software you gotta love Microsoft. If you are one of the few and it is being caused by hardware good luck on getting that fixed, I v'e been trying to get my DVD Burner fixed and the over heating problems with my studio which has been a nightmare so I pretty much gave up and stopped selling dells at my store till its fixed.

Fereginey — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:58:53 GMT

I will never purchase a Dell again. From the day I received this "laptop" there were registery errors. I have spent

more time on the phone trying to resolve issues. Most of all trying to understand the people I am forced

to speak with. I push one for english and recieve a person I cannot understand. I am fed up and will tell

everyone I know about this company and their terrible customer service.

jb56013 — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:43:08 GMT

I really must be getting under someone's skin, My third post was again deleated, huh. The truth hurts I guess.

New Premium Service for U.S. Consumers: Your Tech Team

Direct2Dell — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:36:19 GMT

Last year, we experimented with a new type of service. Lionel blogged about it back in April It was provided

re: What's Next for Dell Customer Service

Jerry Saperstein — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:24:23 GMT

I should have learned my lesson about Dell two years ago when I encountered problems that dragged on for nine months or so until John Blaine and Dick Hunter got involved.

Silly me. I bought an Inspiron 1720 only to have the model discontinued apparently within days or weeks of my purchase. Inspiron 1720s showed up in the Outlet for less than half what I paid. Of course, Dell would do nothing, so that one is going to arbitration.

Two weeks or so ago, I wanted to buy a PlayStation 3 usaing a promotional coupon. When I went to place the order, I was informed I had already redeemed the coupon. Huh? I had just gotten the promotional code less than an hour before.

The half-dozen or so email exchanges with I presume India would have been hilarious if they weren't so irritating and frustrating. One brilliant Dell rep informed me that the coupon had expired on October 30, which was still a week in the future. Since I'm heading to arbitration anyway, I purchased the unit at full price.

I received an enil telling me the unit would be shipping late. No big deal. I spotted another coupon early today and this time got 15% off on a PlayStation 3. Not two hours later, the PlayStation I was told wouldn't be shipping until October 31 was delivered. When I called to cancel it, the third rep I spoke with told me promotions cannot be used with Dell Preferred accounts - just before he disconnected. Needless to say, I received no call though the Dell rep knew who I was and had all my contact information,.

Put bluntly, my opinion of Dell is very negative. In my opinion, Dell is ethically bereft and lacks a moral compass. I have to laugh every time I see its noble mission statements and the other nonsense put out there to placate the public.

Needless to say, I'll be blogging of my miserable experiences with Dell. If I can keep one person from making the mistake of dealing with Dell and avoiding the misery of Dell Hell, I'll sleep better at night. I know that two years ago I cost Dell a number of sales among my clients. After Dell responded - nearly nine months after my nightmare began - I was momentarily convinced that Dell was trying to change its ways, but having tried to deal with Dell again, I see it is still the same predatory operation it has been for years. Anyone who does business with Dell is just plain foolish.

Surprisingly, after posting the first version of this commentary, I was contacted by someone from Direct2Dell. Perhaps my immediate problems can be resolved without the need to litigate, but quite frankly I am tired of all the hassles involved in dealing with Dell. There are other companies where the drama factor is far lower. My problems, quite honestly, are small. But email queries that were supposedly moved up the food chain remain unanswered. Yesterday I had to go through three people in India, the last of whom intentionally or not disconnected from me. I presume from the failure to get a return call that neither he nor his employer Dell have any further use for me and think I will just go away as do so many of their victims.

Wrong.

Hopefully the day is not far off when the mutlitudes of Dell victims will have their voices heard by market regulators and legislatures and Dell's predations upon consumers will be brought under control, if not ended. Right now, though, Dell is winning the battle and consumers suffer.

Jerry

re: What's Next for Dell Customer Service

Joannie — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:46:42 GMT

The old days, before outsoucing to India, customer service people actually had the knowledge and authority to take care of customers. I understand that stock holders and corporate execs have to have a payday but if not for me and you, the Dell customers, there would be none. Why then, do they subject customers to the torturous experience of trying to talk to tech support people who are not allowed to make a decision. I spent an hour on the phone with one of Dell's Indian techs and really, he was a very nice person but when I told him everything that was going on and everything I had already done to trouble shoot, did he take me through every single step all over again. It was obviously Dell didn't trust him enough to allow him to veer from the script so why should I trust him when he tells me I have to restore my operating system and I will lose all data stored on my hard drive? No, I will not. So, I have spent a couple of days with google, trying to find my answers.After the excruciating call with tech support, I nearly had to hang up on the guy because they have a script to go through before they can let go of the call. Argh!

Yesterday, I was on the Dell site trying to find a hard drive for my desktop. There was one used 80mb listed. No thanks. So I called customer service and got a young lady, again in India, with a very bad line connection. It took her a while to get the answer for me but she did. Anybody want a 250mb hard drive for $545.00? Yeah, me neither. I told her thank you and I would try to find one on my own and again, that darn script.

I have known a lot of people from India and none are idiots. why then does Dell treat them as though they are and not allow them to really serve the customer. They need training, yes but it would be worth it not to have someone like me looking at Apple for my next computer purchase.

I really miss the days when customer satisfaction was important. These days it's torture them until they go away. I'm going away.

re: What's Next for Dell Customer Service

Puzzled — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:01:34 GMT

I am getting the message which says "Battery cannot be identified etc" on my 1501. However, there does not seem to be anything wrong with the battery or the charger. Apart from this message everything seems normal. I have spent a long time looking for a solution, but although there seems to be a number of people having the same problem I cannot find one. Can anyone please let me know how to get rid of this irritation? I am certainly not going to buy a new battery. If necessary I shall put the money towards a new laptop.

re: What's Next for Dell Customer Service

Doug Thieme — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:07:28 GMT

I own a dell XPS M1530. I bought it in March 2008. I also elected the 3 year in-home warranty service. My first repair call was made withing the first week I owned it. The fan sounded like a plane taking off. A tech was dispatched and showed up on time and he replaced this. In July we had another issue with the LCD and other major issue(it stopped working!) and we had to send it in an pay $600 to fix it. My wife spent countless hours on the line with dell techs to get this fixed. Then today the top of the frame around the LCD panel came loose. I have been on the phone with dell customer service now for 2 hours and I am still waiting to get a tech dispatched to fix my laptop. I have been transferred to 5 technicians and have escalated to 3 different supervisors. Each time I have been asked the same questions. After escalating with two supervisors (of course I was transferred from one to another), the second one agreed to dispatch a tech. He assured me there would be no other transfers and he'd get someone out to fix it. Then the tech came on the line to explain that I was in the wrong department and that he could not dispatch for XPS machines. This revelation came over 1.5 hours into the process- and after I provided my service tag which provides detailed information on my laptop and its configuration. How do I know this? I went to Dell's website and looked it up. Your service tage shows the model and current config of your laptop. I also identified the type of laptop on my first call. Despite this, no one in customer service seemed to know when kind of machine I had even though I provided the same service tag and reference number on each call. As of this writing. I have been on hold for 15 more minutes waiting for the cs rep to dispatch a tech.

This is the worst customer service experience I have ever had for any product I have ever purchased. I can say at this point that this will absolutely be the last dell product I ever purchase. This is a shame- since the reason I bought my first dell product years ago, was because of their great customer service. I own two dell desktops and two laptops today, and this is my fifth dell product. Whoever the head of customer service is at dell should be dismissed. The decision to outsource customer service was one of the worst decisions I have ever seen given the experience I have had with this most recent purchase, when compared to my first purchase with dell.

I will be sure to do my homework on the web when purchasing my next PC or Laptop.

I hope others will profit from my experience and avoid dell at all costs when shopping for a pc or laptop.

re: What's Next for Dell Customer Service

Rhonda A. — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:40:16 GMT

I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1520 in January 2008. I have had nothing but problems with the laptop over the last nine months. The system continually crashes. The memory and the hard drive were replaced and the system still crashed. At one point, it crashed in front of my clients at a key moment. I work as a business consultant and having the computer crash on me in front of them impacts my business. This is unacceptable. I have put in over 80 hours of my time trying to deal with the problems -- 80 hours of time that I didn't get to bill out, 80 hours of time that I didn't get paid. As an independent consultant, when I don't bill out my time, I don't have an income. This is unacceptable.

A refurbished computer was sent last week. I have been told that the warranty will only be as long as the time left on the computer I purchased, which is three months. This is unacceptable. Given all of the problems I've had on a new computer, I can only anticipate the problems I'll have with a refurbished one. I have spoken with several people and the it seems your policy will not provide for a one year warranty on the refurbished computer. Today I was put on hold twice for over sixty minutes each while I was supposed to be waiting to talk with a supervisor. Both times, the phone disconnected. I'm sure you can understand the extreme frustration I have with a company that seemingly doesn't care about it's customers.

If Dell is so sure the refurbished computer won't have problems, then why would you not treat your customer with respect and make an attempt to improve the poor experience with Dell by giving a one year warranty? There does not seem to be a focus on the customer.

I have spent many hours waiting for calls that haven't come and being put on hold when someone does call. There seems to be a lack of accountability by the reps - they always push it off to someone else's problem (if it's hardware, they say it's a softwar problem and vice versa). I currently have left several messages over the past three days for a rep to call so that I can get the refurbished system up to speed. I still haven't heard from anyone. Is this acceptable as a response time? I don't think that this is what you advertise.

I have hope that Dell will do what is right and take care of a customer that has many hours of frustration put into a new computer. If not, be assured, I am in contact with Fortune 500 people every day and my experience will be related to them. I hope it doesn't come to that.

re: What's Next for Dell Customer Service

michael visuvasam — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 07:48:39 GMT

hi,

my sister resident in us gifted me a dell laptop. within weeks, the lcd was not working as I open the laptop, the screen flickers and only the black screen is seen. I desperately tried direct service centre of dell in Chennai. to my disappointment there was none. Dell keep going you can fool the customer as much as you can.