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I Hate Dell

Oh lord where to begin. I have so many stories with dell that it would literally take me weeks to write them all down. All but 3 are negative. So I will use my latest one.

I have waited 5 weeks for a dell ownership transfer. I have spent about 12 hours on the phone and been transferred a hundred times getting equally incompetent people each time. I love how each person has contradicts the previous one. Needless to say I have tried 3 times (10 business day max transfer time) now to transfer ownership of my laptop and each time nothing happens. My favorite is the "oh we can't do it that way, we have to do it this way so you have to start the process over". I have transferred 3 products in the past with no problems but for some reason they are being d-bags at the moment. I get to call them up on friday to yell at them again. Yay.:mad:
 
Chris_B said:
They always ask for some bloody "service tag" when its a monitor and ive owned 2 so far and ive yet to see this mythical "service tag" on the box or anywhere on the monitor.
Click to expand...

LoStMaTt said:
If they stamped service tags onto monitors just like everything else there
Click to expand...

Steve said:
Tom asks for my the service tag number located on the back of my system. So I read him off the serial number of the LCD.

Tom is annoyed that I am stupid and repeats, he needs the service tag number located on the back of my system.

I tell him it is not a computer, it is a monitor and that I bought three of them at the same time.

I repeat the serial number.

Tom, very annoyed this time, tells me to look on the back of my computer for the service tag number. Again I repeat that I only bought the monitors from Dell, there is no service tag number on my PC.

“Tom” is furious that I am not “cooperating” and assured me that all PCs have a service tag number.

I explain to him AGAIN, I only bought the monitors from Dell and I tell him that I built my own computer, therefore it does not have a service tag.
Click to expand...

Creamy Goodness said:
thanks to the non-existent system tag. I had to look up on google wtf to tell them when they demanded a system-tag.
Click to expand...

WTF? All of my Dell monitors have a service/express SVC tag. I just read off the tag number and everything is fine.

LCDTag.jpg
 
I used to work for Etelecare, who did support for Dell. I quit after three months because instead of trying to help the customer we focused more on filling dead air, documentation, and other unimportant crap. Seriously-fix the issue, and they'll be happy. Also, they released Vista into the wild but didn't have any information in the knowledge base. So we'd have to "wing it' on Vista calls. Well, considering at the time most of the techs did NOT have Vista and couldn't get experience, it made supporting it difficult.

Dell is a shitty company, through and through. I wish they would collapse.
 
We've been through 6 sales reps since the economy started to tank.

I’ve never even spoken with our new sales rep. Nguyen is his name, haha. I only get SPAM from him on occasion when they are having a sale on servers and routers.

Hell, 1/2 the time I find better deals through the Internet than my reps can offer. Other times they will try sticking us with shipping charges unless I order through the Internet.
 
मैं तुम्हें कैसे मदद कर सकता हूँ?

(How Can I Help you?)

Dm
 
Dell's tech support is hit or miss but that is not exactly a shock and is not isolated to Dell. I worked for Dell tech support out of Tampa for awhile, we were not Dell employees however we worked for a company called Stream. Up until they landed the Dell contract the building was solely devoted to AoL "support". I only mention that because we inherited many managers from the AoL side and unfortunately also got stuck with their mindset later on.

These people were more often then not, about a tech savvy as wet toast and if something was not able to be uninstalled/reinstalled...they were out of their depth by an order of magnitude. Trying to explain to people like that why you need to set up a customer callback, or send a part when the software does not tell you to, or send a tech out as opposed to having the elderly/tech illiterate/just plain dumb customer finger fuck the guts of his rig is like trying to explain astrophysics to a toddler with ADD. Our queue opened shortly before the release of Vista...but here is where it gets fun.

Up until the queue opened, there were Dell badged employees everywhere, our trainers were Dell badged, we had Dell badged people to go to for issues/questions/support...pretty much anything. They kept on assuring us that call time was irrelevant and servicing the customer was priority one. For some time this was indeed true and it was actually a pleasure to work there. Nobody would jump on your ass if you spent a bunch of time with somebody to fix up their issue and if you had a ball breaker of a call, nobody would bother you if you just needed to walk away from the headset for a minute or two. Helping the customer was our priority, maintaining our sanity while doing so was supported. That environment did not last.

Once the Dell trainers were gone and sightings of any badged employees reached the same likelihood as seeing Yeti strolling through the parking lot while wearing a "WWJD" T-shirt, things became very different. All of a sudden you were tied to your headset like it were a barbed wire leash and of course 'handle time' creeped in as a key metric and quality soon suffered. I still was not clear on if it was a metric Dell measured us by but it sure mattered when it came time for shift bids/raises. Personally, I think it was just Stream trying to force as many calls down our throats as they could to maximize profit. The customer always gets fucked when that happens....see India.

The folks who do repairs on portables are also not Dell employees, nor are the techs that come out to your home/business. Quality there varies so much its not even funny. If I had a dollar for every customer I had to speak with who sent in a portable, only to not see it for a month or more then get it back with the same or another issue I could have doubled my hourly wage.(slight exaggeration).

The biggest issue with Dell's support and many other companies support is outsourcing. It does not matter if the outsourcing is done in India or right here in the States. Quality always suffers when the people doing the work have no stake in or loyalty to the company they support but are instead held accountable by a third party who often is less interested in doing things right as they are about doing things just well enough to maintain a contract. Or worse....to juice one for all its worth and hope its just too much hassle for the primary company to start fresh elsewhere.
 
none of my monitors have the sticker for the service tag. I have replaced monitors for customers, and none of them ever had tags. I guess they finally starting using them on the monitors as well.

brom42

How new are those?
 
butundo said:
I always recommend getting the tech's ID number at the beginning of each call. They all have them, even if they claim they don't. I have filed many complaints against these boneheads that terminate the calls, or who just don't have any common sense. That is why it is important to get their number.
I had a women who kept telling me to go into the bios and check the power settings on a machine that didn't have any power. I had already replaced the systemboard and needed a power supply. After asking for her super, since she didn't understand "No power", she disconnected the call and filed a complaint against me, claiming I was unwilling to troubleshoot. I was so happy, because there was a record of who she was. I then filed my own complaint, and so did the customer. I bet she didn't last too long.
Click to expand...

this stuff doesn't matter to the call center though. Call centers are all about call metrics and if they meet them they are gold if they don't they hear about it. Thats all that matters to a call center emplyoee/supervisor/manager. I worked at a call center for 2 years (worst job I ever had) and, first, the hire ANYONE....doens't matter wtf you know, they'll train you on what you need to know and thats it. You live or die by your call metrics, you'll do anything to meet them, include lieing, transfering, hanging up on people.

If you complain to someone and give them an ID number, that number is in one ear and out the other. It won't be put in any notes nor will that ID get reprimanded. Only time it will matter is if it involved a CC and said person purchasing products that the person didn't ask for.
 
Dell is closing their tech call center in Twin Falls, Idaho, where I grew up (and live 2 hours from in Boise now). Laying off over 500 people, the 3rd largest employer in the city. Many of my friends and customers have put in 7 years of their lives working for Dell, making a wage that was a little above the avg for the region, and enjoying the benefits of working at a company such as Dell.

I have a buttload of bad Dell support stories, but I figured this one is the worst.
 
Called up Dell regarding one of their keyboards that had a short in the cable. What did they suggest I do? Get a USB extension cable, or move the computer closer to the keyboard. :rolleyes:
 
On support with american tech right now. 1-2 min on hold before he answered. I explain situation and parts that I need. Told to give him 2-3 to find and order parts. This is how it should work. If I had the indian call center, I would still be giving him my DCSE number. They are supposed to order the parts we request, but they usually give us a hard time. The american's just order the parts, unless the tech asks for something completely unrelated. Then they have the right to question the tech's request.
 
Yeah they finally started putting service tags on the new monitors, maybe in the last year or two. Old ones definitely don't have them. I remember by the time I made my second or third call I had figured out I needed to give them the invoice number to get anywhere, but the stupid official invoice they printed and mailed to me accidentally had the Invoice and Order numbers swapped. It's like they go out of their way to make things as painful as possible. Even the menu system, I had to choose "computer support" because if I let them transfer me to "accessories" they only know how to troubleshoot MP3 players. *sigh*
 
I've made posts about it before but let me reiterate. I bought a Dell XPS M1710 gaming laptop. I got one year warranty. Shortly after warranty subsides my power brick goes out. Replacement=$100 fine. Two months later my Geforce Go 7950 GTX starts to crash during gaming. I then start to get red artifact lines all one the windows desktop and during boot. After doing some searches online for others with the same problem it turns out large number of the A0 revision of the 7950 GTX are having this problem. Most of the time this is manifesting itself during the warranty period and is the card is swapped out for a later less troublesome revision. Dell goes through multiple revisions until the problem is corrected. Dell refuses to acknowledge there's a problem even after being demonstrated evidence to the contrary. No replacement is in order I'm told, I'm out of warranty, and it's the luck of the draw that my card dies an early death. They do offer to sell me another, but the best offer they can make is $750. After doing more digging I come across the fact that many cards are affected by solder bump problem. The cards that manifest this the most are laptop cards as they go through more heat cycles(heat up....cool down), and the range of those cycles is greater due to the cramped confines of laptops. I happen upon the baking trick here on the [H] and my 7950 GTX lives on without giving Dell any more money. The end
 
Dell's support is going down-hill across the board- the only difference between business and home support now is that Business speaks English as the primary language. Gold Support today is where Business was about 3-5 years ago. I remember when I could e-mail Dell Gold with a run-down of the problem, troubleshooting performed and part(s) requested. I'd have the parts next day- no certification needed. Now it seems they will not send you a part before a minimum of 3 calls. In a large organization, it's cheaper to skip any warranty and scavenge/replace yourself.
I mostly deal with Business support for my business and it seems the same rules are in place. It's typically cheaper to bill my customers for my time and the replacement part then to deal with Dell's parts replacement labyrinth. I remember a MoBo that had bad USB ports- Did all the troubleshooting including replacing OS, disabling all extraneous devices, etc. The board had no legacy connectors so USB had to be enabled. It would even crash/freeze before OS loaded and in the BIOS. Dell insisted Windows was the issue. 10 hours total on the phone finally got a new MoBo. Guess what? Fixed it immediately.
More recently I had a Precision M4400 that went bonkers. Ended up getting a new M4400, but had to wait OVER FOUR WEEKS from the time I called in to the time I received a working laptop. Their SLA is a joke. Their top-end support offerings require a user to follow troubleshooting steps that are frankly un-necessary. They'll even have you scavenge parts off of other computers.
Some of the troubleshooting they have you do is completely un-necessary. I understand troubleshooting, and I understand I don't think of everything, but when they take you down the wrong path completely, and you ask what they are hoping to resolve/test, they can't answer. If you can't even provide the expected result (part pass/fail) what's the point of the test? And the #1 way to get you off the phone? Run the exhaustive buil-in test. Takes 3-5 hours. Call us back later.
It happens time-after-time. This is corporate policy. Dell used to be top-end, They are still huge, but are no longer top-end.
 
DogChainX said:
Called up Dell regarding one of their keyboards that had a short in the cable. What did they suggest I do? Get a USB extension cable, or move the computer closer to the keyboard. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

From what you and others have described, Dell has reached its bottom, could be why they are now being sold at Walmart. No where else to go but up from there. If they sell well at Walmart then they have found their niche in the market place.:D I hope their prices reflect that.
 
Working late, all alone, laughing at this thread.

I just checked the 14 DELL monitors we've got, none of them have any kind of service tag.

But the funniest Dell story I've heard has to be when somebody here called Dell to get a computer replaced via return, but was forced to have a Dell 'certified' technician come and fix it.

Needless to say, a bunch of PhDs don't really give two shits about much, but they do get a little upset when the Dell tech pulls the USB cable conntect to the $300 PC, hopping it would detach from the USB port, but instead breaks the $900,000 TOFF-SIMS connected by pulling out the it's circuit box and USB wire.

Luckily, a technician for the broken equipment was close by, fixed it that same day and billed Dell around $700 in repairs.
 
Agreed, my HP is decent, and their support has been ok for me. Lenovo's been practically perfect, only fault is they sent me a 15" chassis base instead of a 14".



As to Dell, their completely dropped support for their MP3 players has made my life a bit of a hassle in the past month, thanks to my parents moving to Windows 7. Luckily, a firmware was available to make it usable, but it of course required wiping the MP3 player, and one of my laptops so I could install XP on it to do the firmware update.

I had my old E1705's videocard go belly up. A friend of mine's Inspiron 14 something went out for a new fan and keyboard, and some other stuff, only to come back with a new keyboard, and still overheating. They dropped the 4 year Complete Care warranty on his E1705 to 1 year standard, without him knowing about it, so when his E1705 started overheating, I ended up helping him open it up and fix it.
 
Bought a Dell D810 off ebay some years ago. Serivce tag said the laptop had the full gold coverage for another 2 years or so. The transfer of ownership said all i needed was the service tag and express serial number or something. The number 4 key popped off. I wanted a new keyboard. Talked to tech support, they said they couldnt send me a keyboard because the warranty wasnt in my name, they sent me to customer service. Went to CS, they told me to fill out the same crap i already had done, and that it really shouldnt matter since the laptop has coverage on it. Went back to tech support, told them everything. They referred me back to CS. I never got my keyboard.
 
Yes, funny with a monitor too. They sent me 3 bad monitors wow the 4th was a charm. To get the 1st monitor shipped out was like pulling my brains out it was bad. Than when we got the 2nd monitor i knew it was going to be bad cuz the model series was bad. Lol the 3rd was bad. But they got it right with the 4th one. No it wasn't a different model as i hoped but they got it right and it still works... "knock on wood"

Hopefully you can get yours repaired.
 
I am a dumbass. (Hi,dumbass)

I come here tonight to tell my story.
So...........I bought my daughter a Dell Laptop at Best Buy......double trouble, I know, really double stupid......but it was rather a difficult problem for her school project that needed help fast.

Laptop is OK, actually runs pretty well........one month in, optical drive dies. Won't load a disc, won't run a disc, no burning discs, no nothing.......seems simple, call and get a replacement.

I was on the live chat essentially all night jumping through all the hoops, until I called the guy in India and made him listen over the phone to the noise the drive made when I put a disc in it.......finally Dell sends me a refurbished one to replace it.............not a new one.....a re-do.

Next, the HDD bricks............computer won't boot at all.......unless I put in an OS install disc.....thought I'd reformat and that would be that............nope, won't boot after install and then bricks entirely.

Now this is a 6 month old machine.............I don't think I've ever had a HDD brick, ever.
I ordered a new one from newegg, more space and 7200 RPM. Installed it and then called Dell and for fun requested a NEW HDD..........no way white boy.........you get a refurbished HDD just like the one that broke................never again.:rolleyes:

I do like their monitors though............I think I have 6.:D.......none have a service tag on them.
 
Part of PC's problems (or perceived problems) is because of companies like Dell who use the cheapest parts available, load the computer with trial crap and offer a poor warranty service. There's where PCs and Microsoft have been hurt the most because the poor experience of a PC is directly thought of as a problem with Windows (for average user) and the platform itself

As much as I dislike Apple and their ads, I'm thankful they are there to make these companies work harder and provide a compeition. Thanks to Apple, PC makers started to remember that there is something called design and neatness when it comes to computers. You dont need to be over the top like Apple but there is at least a minimum that they have to provide to their customer rather than making bulky computers looking like crap. There was a time when Dell thought they could pull any sort of crap and get away with it because they had no competition (the fmaous I'd sell the company quote about Apple). For years they sold poor quality PCs and crippled the PC experience

They are going down and they deserve it!
 
Steve said:
This was three years ago:

21” Dell LCD monitor is ghosting really, really bad two months after I bought it. Manufactured only two months before that so the thing is only 4 months old total.

http://www.****************************/dell_LCD_ghosting.jpg

Call tech support, get someone with heavy Indian accent named “Tom.”

“Tom” asks for my name, I say Steven Lynch…he calls me Mr. Steven for the duration of the call. :(

Tom asks for my the service tag number located on the back of my system. So I read him off the serial number of the LCD.

Tom is annoyed that I am stupid and repeats, he needs the service tag number located on the back of my system.

I tell him it is not a computer, it is a monitor and that I bought three of them at the same time.

I repeat the serial number.

Tom, very annoyed this time, tells me to look on the back of my computer for the service tag number. Again I repeat that I only bought the monitors from Dell, there is no service tag number on my PC.

“Tom” is furious that I am not “cooperating” and assured me that all PCs have a service tag number.

I explain to him AGAIN, I only bought the monitors from Dell and I tell him that I built my own computer, therefore it does not have a service tag.

Looooong pause

<super thick Indian accent> Mr. Steven, you built your own Dell? This I cannot believe.

*click* Tom hangs up.


Now I have triple 22" Samsung monitors and the customer service is phenomenal. You submit an RMA. They send you a monitor VIA the closest UPS store to you. You take your monitor to the UPS store, swap them out and you are done. Sweetness.
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your name is steven lynch? lol I'm a huge fan :D
 
LOL to the story above. Wow, Tom is teh fail.

I do have to say, at least for me, while Dell's service is really, really, really lacking, they make some great products, and their laptops are tanks (at least the ones that i have used)
 
Kyle, you live like 30 minutes from there, why not go down and kick some ass!?!!
 
It's no use to check to see if you dell display has a service tag. none of them do. and they never have. the only thing that they have a serial number.
 
I have called and asked for a repair quote in writing 5 times now, and I have not received anything at all from them. I'm going to attempt call #6 tomorrow...
 
I hate Dell because my $1600 17" E1705 laptop was poorly designed to remove heat and the video card fried and it no longer charges batteries and needs a new mobo. The notebook forums are chock full of failures of this model. And don't try suing Dell, since their home-court advantage arbitration agreement makes losers pay legal fees.

I thought I was saving money by buying a Dell.

Next time, I buy a Mac, and its industry-leading customer satisfaction ratings.
 
butundo said:
none of my monitors have the sticker for the service tag. I have replaced monitors for customers, and none of them ever had tags. I guess they finally starting using them on the monitors as well.

brom42

How new are those?
Click to expand...

March 2006 and my previous 2 2001FPs were purchased in '04. So nothing new here.

I purchased the 3007 off of a dude that resold new monitors on Ebay.
 
Gott said:
I've only used Dell support on their business level and they've been pretty good.
Click to expand...

Ditto. I resell their stuff. Business support is great. Home user stuff sucks. Of course, I get prefered support for being a reseller, though
 
i have been on both sides of the dell warranty expierience. as a user and a warranty tech... its never fun. i know of several times that dell has shipped out wrong parts, several times for the same ticket
 
I've had bad times with Dell even on a business level. Ordered a new poweredge system and on day one it just shuts off and will not power back on. Knowing how Dell is, I replaced memory, cpus, power supply with those from another system and came to conclusion that the mobo was fried. Called support and got a guy who sounded somewhat knowledgeable but quickly got out of his comfort zone and no matter what I told him I'd done he asked me to do it again. So I replaced the procs, memory and power supply again (or at least pretended to). He tells me it sounds like the mobo is bad and he'll send out a tech the next day. The mobo, really? I never would have figured that out. Tech calls the next day asking if I received the parts so he could install. Dell never mentioned shipping me the parts for the tech and I never gave them my shipping address. Two hours later get a email from Dell asking for shipping address so they can overnight the mobo. Five days later I get the mobo and call the tech. Tech is a contract agent for Dell and asks me to help him disassemble the system cause he's never seen one of that model before. Get the board in the system and one of the DIMM slots is bad...on the new board!! Tech calls Dell and is troubleshooting the bad DIMM slot. Dell tells him to swap CPUs and when he does, tweaks pins on the socket and ends up frying the proc. Fast forward 4 more days and I got the cpu and 2nd mobo in. Ended up replacing them myself.
 
I'm one of the lucky few who have purchased a few Dell products in the past, but none of them have given out on me yet to merit a support call.
 
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