I Hate Dell

Kyle with all the money you spend I hope you have a corporate account and a Dell rep specifically overseeing your account. If not you need one, and if you do then you need a different rep.
Corporate support is night and day different than home user support. My experience from a corporate level has been very good with Dell. Any hassles and I shoot it to my rep and it's taken care of. I know it's much different at the home level.
 
Mister Natural said:
Kyle with all the money you spend I hope you have a corporate account and a Dell rep specifically overseeing your account. If not you need one, and if you do then you need a different rep.
Corporate support is night and day different than home user support. My experience from a corporate level has been very good with Dell. Any hassles and I shoot it to my rep and it's taken care of. I know it's much different at the home level.
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I'd be curious to know what the brackets are for "corporate" support and what's needed to actually get a rep.
 
I bought an inspiron e1705 laptop about 2 years back and not long ago, my DVD drive stopped working. It couldn't read or write anything. Luckily it was still under the two year warranty that came with the laptop.

I called dell so that they would send someone out to replace it. I then spent the next 2 hours on the phone with 6 different support reps. Not a single one understood what, "the drive is physically broken" meant. Every single one decided that they had what it took to fix my dvd drive.....with software I already had. They wouldn't listen to a single word I said, they would download drivers, different media players, they made me put in like 30 different dvds because, "some dvds don't play properly in laptops."....right. They just couldn't understand that you can't fix a physical problem with software.

I finally got one of the guys to decide he was going to send someone out by making up something that I knew he wouldn't understand like, "the track pitch of the minimum pit length of all my dvds that have intraframe encoding are completely missed by the laser, so it can't possibly read them." Which we all know means pretty much nothing, but it sounded serious to him!:confused:

So the next day a guy comes out, gives me a new DVD drive, takes my old one, and goes on with his normal business! Problem solved.
 
Bought a Dell netbook from Best Buy. After a week, the netbook starting to blue screen when started up. I called Dell support and told them my service code. I was told that the service code had not yet been set up in their computer systems, and without an active service code, he could not help me. I was told to wait about a week and try again.

I returned the netbook to Best Buy and ordered an Asus Eee PC through NewEgg.
 
To clarify, the company I work for is considered small to medium business level and not enterprise. So you can get good support at the initial business level.
 
The last time I tried to RMA a system, I discovered that their parts, warranty support, and technical support departments all don't talk to each other. And that every time you call in, you're given a new case number despite already having one because they go incident by incident instead of the smart way of case by case and using the same case number until the issue is resolved. The whole company is backasswards if you ask me.
 
Logic Monster said:
I bought an inspiron e1705 laptop about 2 years back and not long ago, my DVD drive stopped working. It couldn't read or write anything. Luckily it was still under the two year warranty that came with the laptop.

I called dell so that they would send someone out to replace it. I then spent the next 2 hours on the phone with 6 different support reps. Not a single one understood what, "the drive is physically broken" meant. Every single one decided that they had what it took to fix my dvd drive.....with software I already had. They wouldn't listen to a single word I said, they would download drivers, different media players, they made me put in like 30 different dvds because, "some dvds don't play properly in laptops."....right. They just couldn't understand that you can't fix a physical problem with software.

I finally got one of the guys to decide he was going to send someone out by making up something that I knew he wouldn't understand like, "the track pitch of the minimum pit length of all my dvds that have intraframe encoding are completely missed by the laser, so it can't possibly read them." Which we all know means pretty much nothing, but it sounded serious to him!:confused:

So the next day a guy comes out, gives me a new DVD drive, takes my old one, and goes on with his normal business! Problem solved.
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Stuff like this shouldn't happen. There's a tree these guys follow (used to anyway). They ask you questions and you answer, steps are taken and eventually it leads to a conclusion. Sometimes it's resolved, sometimes it's hardware replacement, sometimes it's escalation.

There was also a case log and the obvious idea being the next tech wouldn't troubleshoot the same steps over and over and there was a history setup for that system.
 
Oldwolf said:
The last time I tried to RMA a system, I discovered that their parts, warranty support, and technical support departments all don't talk to each other. And that every time you call in, you're given a new case number despite already having one because they go incident by incident instead of the smart way of case by case and using the same case number until the issue is resolved. The whole company is backasswards if you ask me.
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When I was there it was Case -> Incident. Meaning there was the mother case number, and you could have mulitple incidents under one case. So say your dvd-rom isn't working. That's a case. Now lets say replacing it didn't fix it. You call back there should be a new incident started under that case. Now there was like a "too old at 7 days, close and open a new one" type deal.

Some depts didn't log everything under the cases for the Service Tag, because there's the same functionality for Order Numbers as well. Customer numbers too I think, can't remember.
 
I ordered a PS3 Slim from Dell Home because it was $269 plus free 2 day shipping with a Ebates coupon. I get a confirm it will ship in a day. Whoopie! (keep in mind I cannot check my order status through my website if I enter in my info but I can see it from the link in the email. A dell rep tells me this is "fine") Then next day I get an email with an adjustment of 2 weeks. Okay from 2 days to 2 weeks whatever. About two weeks in I get an email it's going to be another month! :rolleyes: I say screw this so I cancel the order (via phone) and order from newegg. Oddly after I cancel the order I get an email from Dell stating the PS3 Slim shipped:eek: They just suck. Imagine if it were a BTO system and not just a box they had to put a UPS sticker on....
 
Hmm I really like the monitors Kyle used with his Eyefinity demo. I was planing on getting 3 of those. Any of you guys go as far as avoiding dell completely or just complain about it like I do?
 
Dell enterprise and business support is above par. However, working with residential or standard technical support is such a chore it's not even worth the time.

But HP on the other hand... talk about a complete nightmare.
 
hity645 said:
Are you kidding me!??!??!! My 24" Acer backlight went out and trying to navigate their website is like trying to drive down a one way street the opposite direction with street signs in Chinese. After finding a phone number/email address to contact someone to say its broke and I would like to the start the RMA process the asshole on the other end asks me like Im a retard: "How do you know its broke?" I replied back, "Umm because it won't display a picture! Thats how I know." I had to jump through some email hoops to get it but eventually I did. To top it off, I had to pay to package it and ship it off. I asked what happens if its damaged in transit because they wanted me to wrap it in 2-3 inches of bubble wrap, and I know that doesn't protect shit. Their reply was its something I'd have to take up with the shipper.

Bought my Dell 30" and am happier than a bug in a rug.
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Acer has some of the worst build quality of any laptop I've seen. :mad:
 
We just had a situation unfold at the company I work for. Here is a quick background on what we have: 30 Dell Workstations, 20 m4400's at 4k each, 20 1950's, and we just bought a $70,000.00 blade center (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1458357).

So our CEO's personal laptop (an XPS M1730) died about TWO months ago. I placed the call to Dell to have the replacement video cards sent out so we could fix the laptop, they said ok. A week and a half went by with no response from Dell, so I called them back. Only to be told that the cards were on back order until October. I told my boss this, and he said we are paying thousands of dollars a year for next-day support, and to have them ship us a new laptop with the parts they did have on hand. I said ok, and called Dell, explained everything, and they said they would send a new laptop.


Fast forward: In mid October, we still had not response from Dell, so I called them back, and asked for a manager, the manager got smart mouthed with me and said that if we bought "enterprise level support" this would have been fixed a long time ago. I went off on him at that point because we DO have that support, and we have well over $100,000.00 of Dell equipment. My boss then contacted Micheal Dell about the issue at hand, and said that he could not believe the support we were getting, and that he was going to demand a total refund of our company's money via CSi's (our company) attorneys. He then got a response from the Dallas head quarters yesterday, and still no support. I expect we maybe going to court soon.

This has been an on going battle with Dell for almost 3 months now, and with a company that pay's hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Dell? That is flat out absurd. And this is the short version the Dell Hell we are going through.
 
Tried to buy a couple galaxy cards from dell when they went on sale. back ordered until feb 2010 I ordered them 3 months ago. F&(* dell.
 
StoneTZ said:
Hmm I really like the monitors Kyle used with his Eyefinity demo. I was planing on getting 3 of those. Any of you guys go as far as avoiding dell completely or just complain about it like I do?
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I went to higher end Samsung because of all this. I'm trying to fix a Gateway monitor just because of the Samsung LCD. Crappy inverters Gateway used.
 
Blazemore said:
I went to higher end Samsung because of all this. I'm trying to fix a Gateway monitor just because of the Samsung LCD. Crappy inverters Gateway used.
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I'll probably do something like that, not worth dealing with them. I can't believe they would do something like that to a 100k a year business account or somewhere like [H] that's just not good for business. Makes me wonder how they got where they are or stay there.
 
you dissatisfied customers are why they spend millions of dollars on advertising,they loose you, but there are more fish in the sea.
 
Proxy said:
We just had a situation unfold at the company I work for. Here is a quick background on what we have: 30 Dell Workstations, 20 m4400's at 4k each, 20 1950's, and we just bought a $70,000.00 blade center (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1458357).

So our CEO's personal laptop (an XPS M1730) died about TWO months ago. I placed the call to Dell to have the replacement video cards sent out so we could fix the laptop, they said ok. A week and a half went by with no response from Dell, so I called them back. Only to be told that the cards were on back order until October. I told my boss this, and he said we are paying thousands of dollars a year for next-day support, and to have them ship us a new laptop with the parts they did have on hand. I said ok, and called Dell, explained everything, and they said they would send a new laptop.


Fast forward: In mid October, we still had not response from Dell, so I called them back, and asked for a manager, the manager got smart mouthed with me and said that if we bought "enterprise level support" this would have been fixed a long time ago. I went off on him at that point because we DO have that support, and we have well over $100,000.00 of Dell equipment. My boss then contacted Micheal Dell about the issue at hand, and said that he could not believe the support we were getting, and that he was going to demand a total refund of our company's money via CSi's (our company) attorneys. He then got a response from the Dallas head quarters yesterday, and still no support. I expect we maybe going to court soon.

This has been an on going battle with Dell for almost 3 months now, and with a company that pay's hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Dell? That is flat out absurd. And this is the short version the Dell Hell we are going through.
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I notice no mention of a dell account rep.
 
Dallows said:
I notice no mention of a dell account rep.
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Why would the information even be important in that situation. The rep just sells them shit, he doesn't have any more pull then the guy on the other end of the line.
 
I have a both a small business and home account.


My xps 1530 stopped charging the bat and needed a new board, lol. Anyways, I fired up dell chat, posted the links to the info I had (forum posts of other people complaining), the dell rep, said ok and sent a tech out. Tech arrived next day, changed board. It was pretty painless.

I guess in my instance it was a known problem which made it a no brainer to send a tech out. Also, using the Dell chat, I didn't have to deal with an accent which made it a positive experience.
 
thesmokingman said:
I have a both a small business and home account.


My xps 1530 stopped charging the bat and needed a new board, lol. Anyways, I fired up dell chat, posted the links to the info I had (forum posts of other people complaining), the dell rep, said ok and sent a tech out. Tech arrived next day, changed board. It was pretty painless.

I guess in my instance it was a known problem which made it a no brainer to send a tech out. Also, using the Dell chat, I didn't have to deal with an accent which made it a positive experience.
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With small business and enterprise support, it's located in the states. That definitely wouldn't have happened with home support. Good to hear you had good luck with it.
 
Cmustang87 said:
Why would the information even be important in that situation. The rep just sells them shit, he doesn't have any more pull then the guy on the other end of the line.
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Our account rep is the contact. He makes sure we're taken care of. Any problems and he handles them.
 
dealing with Dell on a monitor that didn't come with a system is a nightmare.

I've bought from dell:
inspiron laptop
inspiron desktop with monitor
studio desktop with monitor
studio hybrid desktop with monitor
dell mini 9
canon digital elph
canon sub SLR
various camera accessories
Playstation 3
monitor without any system

The backlight on the last item failed and trying to get a replacement was a NIGHTMARE! They couldn't help me without a service tag. Well, the monitor doesn't have a service tag and it didn't come with a computer. None of the three techs that I talked to seemed to be able to understand how this works. They can do nothing with a serial number. Then they sent me to 'customer service' who took a service tag from another machine and attached the monitor to it by looking my order history which took some time.

FINALLY.

But...the 'techs' then said that my monitor was out of warranty because the machine's service tag that it was attached to was bought 14 months earlier. They didn't seem to understand that the monitor is advertised as having a three year advanced exchange warranty regardless of what system it was sold with.

Finally, there was a lot of screaming on my part and they transferred me to customer relations. The nice (texan sounding) lady there put me through to "US Business Ownership" support which got me fixed up right away with overnight replacement.

Moral of the story: Indian support sucks. North American support is awesome.


Also, my studio desktop came with an Hauppauge 1250 TV tuner, 8GB of RAM, and Vista 64 bit. The problem was that at the time, the tuner had 64bit drivers but they were incompatible with more than 4GB of ram. This was common knowledge and there was nothing they could do until hauppauge released a fix some 8 months later. How they can sell a configuration that is flatly incompatible with itself (this wasn't BTO or anything) and then not support it is beyond me.

The $7k Dell has got from me is the last, believe me.
 
Coincidentally enough, I just got off the line with Dell support. We had a bad memory module in one of our Optiplex 755's, one of them was good. But the tech insisted he replaced both chips rather then just the bad one. :D
 
Cmustang87 said:
Coincidentally enough, I just got off the line with Dell support. We had a bad memory module in one of our Optiplex 755's, one of them was good. But the tech insisted he replaced both chips rather then just the bad one. :D
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That's probably because for that system, that specific part, can only be ordered in pairs. Either that, or he's erring on the side of caution.

Keith
 
Cmustang87 said:
Coincidentally enough, I just got off the line with Dell support. We had a bad memory module in one of our Optiplex 755's, one of them was good. But the tech insisted he replaced both chips rather then just the bad one. :D
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probably a dual-channel kit. You need matching pairs for best results.
 
Cmustang87 said:
Coincidentally enough, I just got off the line with Dell support. We had a bad memory module in one of our Optiplex 755's, one of them was good. But the tech insisted he replaced both chips rather then just the bad one. :D
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Just in case. Easier to send a tech once than twice... well cheaper, lol.
 
Cmustang87 said:
Just sucks that all reps aren't that way :(
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QFT.


Our rep. sells us stuff, and "manages" our account with Dell. Any problems such as the current one we are seeing; he would just "transfer us to the correct department". Blah! I personally will not be giving my money to Dell/AlienWare anytime soon.:mad:
 
Not to be insensitive to Kyle's plight (I did post my own Dell horror story), but am I the only one who finds it ironic that a Wesbite that incessantly blasts Apple - the industry leader in customer satisfaction - is furious with Dell?

Don't get me wrong, Dell is an arrogant company with cheap shit products and horrible CS, and I laugh at calling them out in an 11+ page thread on a widely-read website.

But Apple does lead the industry in customer satisfaction. Perhaps they deserve a more fair shake here?

changewave.gif


And yes, I can see why HP is even worse than Dell, having dealt with my GF's notebook disasters.
 
uclajd said:
Not to be insensitive to Kyle's plight (I did post my own Dell horror story), but am I the only one who finds it ironic that a Wesbite that incessantly blasts Apple - the industry leader in customer satisfaction - is furious with Dell?

Don't get me wrong, Dell is an arrogant company with cheap shit products and horrible CS, and I laugh at calling them out in an 11+ page thread on a widely-read website.

But Apple does lead the industry in customer satisfaction. Perhaps they deserve a more fair shake here?

changewave.gif


And yes, I can see why HP is even worse than Dell, having dealt with my GF's notebook disasters.
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It's easier to service 10 people than 10,000 people. Any questions?
 
I am surprised that Lenovo is all the way down at the bottom in that chart.. :\
 
I didn't read the whole thread.. but if you don't.. be very thankful that you don't work for a company that does Dell warranty repair.

Never again.. EVER will I work for a company that does Dell warranty repair.

Not only have I had to go back to a customer's house 5 times because of 5 bad power supplies in a row, but I have also been sent motherboards that were physically missing parts.

Dell has also refused to replace motherboards with mutiple blown capacitors because "the system still worked".

And let's not forget the horrid plague of completely wrong parts sent out all the time as well as the massive amount of DOA parts.. especially RAM.

I also had a case on the army base where the customer had called in over 10 laptops at the same time... I orginally received the work ordfers and the parts, but was then called by my boss to take all the parts back because the order wasn't done correctly on Dell's end... This was after having set up an appointment with the customer to come out and fix the laptops....

So I took the parts back and then Dell "resent" the parts and some other randome person who should never have been hired received the parts and the work orders.... he went out there and found out that Dell had sent the wrong parts and basically just left from what I was told....

A couple days after that I got some mopre work orders to go to the same place (at that point in time, I did almost all of the work orders for that army base) and I went there and found this huge mess that had been left.

I had to call Dell and tell them what happened... figure out what each laptop needed replaced, etc... spent about 1.5 hours on the phone with them to get the correct parts shipped.

Then... when the parts finally came in, the company I worked for sent 3 of us to the same place on the same exact day to fix the laptops.

Now get this.. this army base was 90 miles away. Why they just couldn't have sent me out there in the first place to fix everything is still a huge mystery.... instead it took the customer about 3 weeks to get those systems fixed when it could have been done in 1-2 days.

I told them to not call in multiple systems at the same time so this kind of thing wouldn't happen again.
 
~May15: Ordered Studio 15, ETA June 1

~May 31: Email arrives: order delayed another week

~June 7: Email: order delayed another week. I cancelled the order because the price had dropped. I placed another order for the exact same config. ETA: Late June

Late June: Email arrives: order delayed another week

Early July: Email arrives, WHILE I'M VACATION. It says "You have 24 hours to contact us to confirm your order or else we're cancelling it under Federal Mail Law. I was on vacation and didn't see it until days later. Once I saw the email, I called Dell. Dell guy says, "you're SOL." somehow after 2+ hours on the phone trying to get some help, I got transferred to Team Raptor, some division of Dell in the US. A guy there placed my order, expeditied it, and it arrived in 8 days. Holy shit Dell, it wasn't that hard after all, was it?

Fast forward to late October. There was supposed to be a $100 gift card arriving 6-8 weeks after the laptop. It had been 3 months. So I call Dell... they tell me that, yeah, your first 2 orders had the gift card, but when we replicated your order in early July, we didn't add that part. You're SOL. I was pissed. I tried explaining it again, same answer. I asked for a manager, explained it to them, same answer. I started explaining my frustration yet again to the same manager. Mid-explanation, the call was disconnected. I was even more pissed. I called in again, to find out I would have to explain my way through the whole tree of service people again. I finally reached the managers level only to find out a note had been added to my account and if they decided to do anything, they would call me within 48 hours. ~36 hours later, I got an email with a $100 off code. I spent it a few days later and actually received the monitor I bought on time.

Two days ago I bought another Studio 15. ETA: Dec 4. Oh shit...
 
You guys aren't picking parts that say like "May delay your shipment..." are you? Just curious. I've heard stuff about delays and I've experienced them myself through my job, but for the most part it's pretty on the ball.
 
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