In today’s economic climate, I would expect a business to strive to perform their best on the all important area of customer service. I must say that my most recent experience with Dell has not only left me frustrated, and disappointed, but also downright angry.I ordered a 70-200mm Canon L lens f/4 with the next day shipping option as I needed this for my son’s graduation. I was quoted a delivery date of the 9th, his graduation is the 10th. I had to go ahead and call Dell Financial to verify my information, not a problem. Order went into production and the order screen again showed up with a delivery dated of the 9th. Lo and behold, over the weekend I checked the status and the delivery date changed to the 16th! I did not receive a single call nor an email on this from Dell. I would never have know unless I stayed on top of it.I started a chat process to address this concern this morning prior to work. For him to tell me it was now backordered and there was an issue with the stock order and that I needed to call a phone number took 30 minutes! THIRTY! Perhaps if he was not chatting with several other people at the same time I could have been serviced faster. The chat function was worthless as it not only wasted my time for a simple inquiry, but also solved no issue and I was instructed to call in to cancel the order, they cannot cancel via chat.So I call and of course get placed on hold for 13 minutes and when connected I get a very rude and unprofessional young man. This kid could not shut up and would continually finish my sentence for me and then would continue on with his mouth-never letting up-until finally frustrated with his attitude I raised my voice at him and told him that I did not appreciate how he was communicating with me. He then informed me the order could not be canceled because it already went to shipping! Shipping? How? On the order screen it still says In Production, not shipped or sent to vendor! I asked to be transferred to a supervisor as wonder-boy stated there was nothing he could do. Of course guess what, yep, mysteriously I got disconnected from the call. So 25 minutes of cel phone time down the drain.So here is my question to Michael Dell. How do you expect to prevent further layoffs in your company, turn around the dismal reputation your company has in customer service, when you put your customers through such an ordeal? 1) Had to call and wait for DFS verification2) 30 minutes on chat to waste my time, had to call in to cancel3) Wasted another 25 minutes dealing with a very rude and unprofessional individual to tell me it cannot be canceled4) And yet still, my order is still not canceled and you expect me to waste more of MY time to return the item when it arrives?I ordered the lens from another place-a reputable location which I know will actually get it overnight to me. I also have a laptop for my son on order with Dell-In Production-though I have no idea what that now means with this company. I will continue with this laptop order though I expect an issue to arise from this. However, I will be canceling my account with Dell. Not only that, as I conduct training for my company including customer service, I will make it a point to ensure that I mention Dell when dealing with how not to deal with a customer. I will also ensure that every single person and company I deal with from this point on gets an earful on how Dell lost me as a customer. I have spent well over $50k in computers, electronics, etc in just the last 4 years with various companies, most recently a Canon 5DM2 with Dell. Dell will no longer receive a penny of this from me. < ADMIN NOTE: Order number removed per privacy policy >
Your experience is fairly typical. This is a company that wants to fail. My organization has purchased $1.2 million dollars in computers over the last 18 months. Last summer I was told the model that I was trying to order was discontinued but that a better product was available. I had end of year money to move, so we purchased. When staff got around to imaging them about a month later, we found that they did not meet our placement requirements. I called Dell to get an RMA. A month later, no RMA. I was told today that the company didn't want to issue an RMA because of the economic hardtimes, and that instead the sales rep would have to shop around for a customer. This company is so layered with management it has totally lost sight of the customer. Dell cares only about sales quotas. It cares not a fig for the long term relationship with the customer as a strategic partner. It deserves to follow the road of Gateway.