Lisa said to me, “Maybe Dell will let me swap out my new battery for a smaller one? I’ll just call and ask.” I felt a spike of fear. Which was legitimised within two hours.
The call sounded painful from across the house. The first 10 minutes, it was clear she was talking to a robot. Then it was clear she was either talking to someone very stupid or someone very unfamiliar with English as she kept repeating, “No, I just want to know if I can swap out my 6-cell battery for a 3-cell battery.” She must have said it 50 times over 90 minutes. Someone even admitted to trying to make a commission off of her by selling her a new battery. That battery would have cost half of the price of a brand new netbook. In the end, customer service didn’t do anything to help her. It’s been years since I’ve needed customer service, so maybe every PC company is this bad now, but I hope not.
If you have any horror/pleasantly surprising stories of your own, please let me know in the comments. [BoingBoing, image from preemo at deviant art]
Steve
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:07 PMI had the exact same problem with Dell over is Aus, with the exception i was trying to swap my 3 cell for a 6 cell battery. Having worked in call centres I know how they work and its useless trying to tell your problem to someone who can’t deal with it due to lack of systems or training. But on the 10th transfer “to someone who can help”, i gave up.
Lucas
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:55 PMCliff-notes to my saga:
Purchased Dell laptop with uber-ultimate after care package. Accidental damage, stolen, dead all of a sudden, they would replace it no questions asked.
Laptop constantly zapping me, engineer came to replace mobo, still zapping.
Engineer came to replace casing, still zapping. Engineer came to replace the mobo for a second time, still zapping.
Support wanted to send another engineer to change the motherboard again… i refused. after weeks of too’ing and fro’ing i threatened them with the ACCC as they were failing to satisfy their contractual obligation with the after care service plan i paid for and before you know it i was given a new, upgraded model/machine.
I don’t think i will buy a dell again.
Ben
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 1:10 PMI have a Dell laptop that keeps overheating and blowing up the graphics card. It has happened about 5 or 6 times and everytime I have to call Dell support and go through the same analysis. I tell them it was the same problem as last time and they don’t seem to look up what caused the problem last time as most of the time they decide to replace the wrong part which does not fix the problem and I have to wait another few days for them to bring a new graphics card. They just keep coming and putting parts in it that just keep breaking instead of trying to find the cause of the problem.
Shane
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 1:26 PMI had a similar issue with support for my Drobo. Evey time I made contact with them, I had to re-iterate everything that the previous support people had told me, till I told them I had enough of their BS and their first action on getting a support request should be to review the customers history…
Nothing changes, everything remains the same :P
Shane
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 1:24 PMI brought a a new dell desktop based on the marketing that it would support dual video cards, cool I thought, so I put together a machine, adding two top of line video cards (as suggest by their customization wizard) and sat back.
The machine arrived (as expected, 1 card installed, 1 not). I promptly wiped open the case to install the second card and found that it didn’t have enough spare power leads (each video card requiring two).
Onto the phone I hope, they send out an engineer (who I might add was really helpful), took a look at the machine, agreed with me that the machine didn’t have enough power leads, but the power supply would need to be upgraded in order to support it…should have known right there I was in trouble, was assured that someone from dell would be in contact…
About a month later I raised ANOTHER docket, sighting the original complaint and the engineers response, to which I get a phone call stating that I would have to purchase a new power supply off my own back…let’s just say the conversation was less then polite from my end…
While the system as a whole is fine, it is bloody annoying when you make a purchase choice based on their advertising AND purchase the “upgrade” items from their own selection and it then fails to meet those advertised claims… :P
Shane
Josh
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 1:49 PMCall dell today, 6 different people.
then the line was so bad i just hung up.
i have never had as much trouble with them as i have now??
Steve
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 2:23 PMWe have Pro Support with Dell, and thousands of items in the fleet. The level of support you pay for on top comes back ten fold if you ever need it. When spec’ing a machine, opt for those few extra dollars to upgrade the support, it is worth it. I spend around 3 minutes on average when I deal with them, and if you pay enough you can be directed to a Sydney call centre for support, but that is usually only cost effective for business. When most big players get parts for around the same price, support is where the price difference is, and the cheaper you go the cheaper you get.
Kris
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 2:59 PMI bought a Dell laptop & monitor through finance three months ago. Great pre sales experience. Post is a whole nother ball game. I received the delivery details and confirmed back by phone. I then received another phone call asking me to confirm the same thing. They had no record of the previous confirmation. However, there was still no show on the day. I rang again (are you counting) to organise another delivery date. This time only the monitor turned up. I rang again, to be put through to their call centre in Malaysia to be told that becuase they manufacture the monitor and laptop in different places, they would be shipped separately but they could not tell me when the laptop would show up. I did not find this acceptable, so I rang again (we are up to 5 now) to be told the same thing. I finally had had enough and sent an email to the girl that had done the original sale and hey presto the laptop turned up the same day. This is a great example of how not to treat your customers and if you are going to move your call centre overseas, that you need to train them to assist customers rather than give the same unsatisfactory answer over and over again. Isn’t the customer always right or has that concept gone out the window with others such as responsiblity and accountability