Oh, Dell. I thought since Jeff kicked you around the block way-back-when, you had learned your lesson. I thought you had changed. But here you go, breaking my heart again.
I won’t bore our readers with the full saga. But the sketch, for those joining our drama late: after our long talks about my lemon of a XPS 1330, you finally agreed to send me a “refurbished” XPS 15 just a few months ago. It had trouble from day one, which your phone support suggested was likely faulty memory. Weirdly, with 15 month old boys and a business to run, I was a little busy and didn’t have time to lose with another round of let’s-try-to-fix-it, so I lived with it. Until this weekend: when the XPS 15’s hard drive hard crashed, and took some of my data with it.
So yesterday, I had a nice talk with one of your folks, which took about an hour, at the end of which I was promised a response in 24-48 hrs about receiving another replacement system, and an email documenting the call.
Didn’t get the email: first bad sign.
Today, I call, and tech number 1 can’t find any record of yesterday’s call. Fast forward fifty minutes of my life I won’t get back, and at long last I get to His Manager. I explain my frustration with the lost call, and then the fundamental root issue I was calling about. To which he says “I don’t buy it.”
That’s a direct quote. Sorta-kinda journalist, you know, I pay attention to such things.
Excuse me, I said? Did you just say you don’t buy my explanation? As in, like, um, you’re saying I’m lying?
Stammering.
“I’d like to speak with your supervisor, please” I said. And then… the line went dead.
Yup: His Manager-ness decided to hang up on the (justifiably) irate (but polite) customer rather than have his boss hear about how he called said customer a liar.
As the wise fellow said in that Indiana Jones movie: “He choose… poorly.”
So the good news for me is I’ve got a backup computer, and I’ve got Twitter, a blog, Facebook, and now… motivation. But Dell: none of this, I’m afraid, is good news for you, sweetie.
As a social media guy, I of course know Dell’s history with Mr. Jarvis and I hear tell they’re a bit more on the ball about such things these days. This won’t exactly be a hard test, but let’s give it a go, shall we? When someone from Dell who can be civil and won’t hang up on me would like to talk about the Dead Parrot system above (service tag 8L0B6P1), drop me a line at rob – at – neppell – dot – org.
Clock starts now. Ready, set: go.
Update 6:45pm: Manager called back, claimed telecom difficulties. I almost believe him, but that’s got to be the most coincidental phone outage I’ve ever encountered (happening, as it did, right after I challenged him for not believing me and immediately after I spoke the words “I’d like to speak to your supervisor”.) I emphasized my desire to have a resolution (i.e. commitment for replacement / refund, particularly given that’s what I was told was being worked yesterday morning) this evening, but he indicated that such an escalation simply couldn’t happen at this time; end of shift and all that. This means one of two things: he was BS’ing (which is not good for Dell), or he was telling the truth (which is not good for Dell — seriously? No Way At All to get a decision made right now for a single measly laptop? Heckofa way to run a railroad). Tune in tomorrow for our continuing saga…
Update 7:13 pm: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Now, Dell, hon: Glenn has gone and made this game hardly much of a challenge at all (thanks, Glenn!). This would be the social media equivalent of tossing aside the flare gun as an inadequate signal for help and lighting the entire forest on fire instead. You should more or less be able to see this particular pebble rippling across social media from orbit at this point. So my now-best-buddy manager that I spoke to a few minutes ago is on the case, and indicated he’s attempting to get the “highest escalation authority” involved. Anybody want to give him a hand and move this ball along a little faster so we can all move on with our lives ?
Update 9:00 pm: So this has become, obviously, about more than a laptop. It’s about how companies interact with their customers in a social media world, and that happens to actually be my business. So the intriguing thing about this incident to me is that in five years or so as a social media “professional” and a bunch before that as an enthusiastic amateur, this is really the first real world example that’s smacked me in the face personally that I could observe and comment on directly.
So, then: this is no longer just a customer support issue. It’s a tutorial! Class is in session, folks, so let’s talk about what should be happening around Dell right about now.
First, let’s be clear that in terms of social media monitoring and response, Dell’s resources are effectively infinite. By which I mean, the sum of money it costs to get absolutely top-flight social media monitoring is more or less a rounding error to Willy the Mail Boy’s expense account budget for a company the size of Dell. This is most certainly not the case for smaller businesses, nonprofits, and the like, but Dell is a Big Boy and as such they should be playing with the pros when it comes to social media.
So: I first started Tweeting my displeasure with Dell over three hours ago, and posted three Tweets total. I even used the #dell hashtag, making it utterly trivial for Dell’s social media team to pick up on my comments (and utterly inexcusable if they missed them). I then followed up with the blog post you’re reading now, which was soon linked by Glenn, who is of course a gentleman, scholar, and damned snappy dresser, aside from being a good friend who knows a fun story when he sees one.
At any rate, we’re a good three to four hours in here. By now, if Dell’s social media team is serious, they should have noticed my Tweets and my blog post. They should be looking into two things: first, is my complaint valid, or am I some jerk/nutcase who doesn’t have a legitimate beef but is just making noise? And second, who am I, and how much attention can Dell realistically expect to receive because of my issue? (short answers, admittedly biased: on the first, yup, it’s valid, and on the second, well, quite a lot, I’d expect.)
That second part — who am I and how much attention can I draw — may seem a bit, well, anti-democratic or something. But the reality is, from Dell’s perspective, they should be assessing whether I’m someone with a voice that will be heard, or… not. Ideally, you give all of your customers top-notch service, but back here in reality, you ultimately have to prioritize resources. These days, if you’ve got two equally deserving customers, one with a major social media presence and one with none, you’d be foolish not to address the former before the latter.
For myself, I do feel a slight twinge having taken a whack at Dell like this: have I used my social media powers for evil and not good, finally? But the answer is no, I don’t think so. I’m fortunate to have reached a point where, when I need to, I can draw serious social media attention to an issue — if that issue is real and legitimate. In terms of doing so for personal reasons, I think I can actually say this is the first time I’ve ever done so.
But the thing to recognize about whatever “power” I may have in social media is this: the fact that out of all their customers, every now and then one of them will turn out to be somebody like me is what keeps Dell — or any business — honest. If I make a big deal about the shoddy treatment they’ve provided me and light up the social media world for a brief moment with the dim glow of their stupidity, then that will make them institutionally more cautious the next time a customer has a beef. It’s just good business: when you don’t know which customer might have that nice big social media megaphone, you have to assume that every customer might.
So here we are, four hours in. The key question is what will happen on the overnight: it’s entirely possible that Dell’s social media folks are all over this and even ahead of my recommendations, but I don’t know because they (sensibly) aren’t going to try to call me at 9:30pm local time. By tomorrow morning, though, we’ll have the answer to the key question: did Dell really learn the lesson Jeff Jarvis taught them many moons ago? Are they paying attention? Or do they need to be taught it once again?
Day Three, 7:48 am, : Aha, so the social media team is on the case. @dellcares followed/Tweeted me at 1:30 am PT. Sadly, they requested my service tag, which means they didn’t actually read my Tweets/this blog post, as you can see it’s noted above. So we’re still at canned response level, I’d guess: they saw a negative Tweet and send a “can we help?” without actually reading all the info — as seems to be the process — , which is better than nothing but still minor leagues at best. And about an hour ago, @dell itself Tweeted me, noting “@rneppell Just saw your tweet… sounds like a horrible experience. Yikes, sorry to hear that. I see my buddies over @DellCares tweeted you.” Which I guess is kind of nice, if I was looking for emotional support. But I’m not really sure what it was meant to accomplish — other than invite me to reply and re-link to this blog post, thereby keeping my issue fresh in the Twittersphere (i.e., not an obviously helpful move from Dell’s issue management perspective).
What will the morning bring next? Stay tuned…
(In case you’re wondering how we’re counting, I’m calling this Day Three as my first extensive conversation with Dell was Monday morning — that’s the one that mysteriously vanished down the memory hole. If I was being really bitter, I’d call this Day Five, as the system crashed Saturday).
Day Three, 8:36 am: Exchanging a few tweets with @dellcares, who indicated they’ll have a tech call me and also asked me “For your protection, please remove post containing personal information”. By which they clarified to mean my service tag above. I do not think it has fully sunk in yet that even if I was paranoid enough to worry about my service tag as “personal information”, I do not intend to be in possession of that laptop for very much longer.
Day Three, 9:26 am: Oh dear. This is worse than I thought. So after @dellcares said they’d have a tech call, I emphasized I didn’t need a tech, I needed someone with authority to approve a replacement. @dellcares said “Understood, the Tech has authority to fully assist.” So I just spent fifteen minutes on the phone with Dell tech who called, and she made quite clear that she could only approve a replacement hard drive, and in fact did not have the authority to approve a system replacement (or refund). She did, however, very helpfully offer to send me a an email link to the Dell policy explaining why that’s all I deserve, so golly, that was nice. I’ll have to block out some time later today to curl up with that; I really needed some good reading material.
@dellcares: I really think (and hope) you know better than this. Do. Not. Mislead. Your. Customers. (Most especially the ones who are already irked at you.) If you say you’re going to send someone with full authority, you’d best make darned sure you do so. (And if you are even thinking about trying to weasel by saying “well, full authority was the authority to follow our brilliant policy as she stated”, hey, your call, but I think by now we’ve got quite the audience that will laugh rather hard at that answer.)
Day Three, 10:04 am: Good news, as even I found the last update depressing — the tech I spoke to was NOT the one dispatched by @dellcares, so my comments above should be disregarded with respect to them misleading me. (Not really my fault, though, as I told that tech @dellcares said they’d send someone with full authority and she didn’t correct me. We ended the call with her assuring me this was it and I’d get no further calls / different answers, and me assuring her that she really didn’t get it).
But good, means at least part of Dell hasn’t entirely lost its mind. @dellcares indicates their tech called me a few minutes ago and got voicemail (true, just missed grabbing the phone) and so waiting to connect with them now.
Day Three, 10:17 am: THIS JUST IN: Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead — and so is my laptop! .
Day Three, 11:22am: Just got off the phone with one of the special @dellcares social media team reps, and we appear to be making progress (slowly). Dell is now committing to providing a new (not refurbished) replacement system. (Yay!) But, the rep indicated that it would ship in about a calendar week (Boooo!). I explained that to me, this meant they clearly still weren’t taking this issue seriously — after all this, they expect I’ll be happy to stare into the cold dead screen of my defunct system for a week or more patiently waiting?
The process, he said, usually it takes even longer but we’re expediting to get down to that week, blah blah blah. I pointed out that if Michael Dell walked into his office and said “Send someone to the production line, grab a new system that meets or exceeds his specs, and put it out FedEx Priority Overnight today” then that would happen — and it wouldn’t even be that hard. Shipping computers is, after all, kinda what they do.
He was polite and sensible enough not to argue much, and agreed to go talk with logistics to see what could be done to speed things up, committing to call me back shortly today. And so we abide…
Day Three, 12:22 pm: Given that it may take a week or so to receive a working system (although I’m hopeful my latest friend will convince folks to see the wisdom in Fedex Overnight) I thought I should share the waiting process with Dell and the world. I humbly give you the Live Dead Dell Webcam: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-dead-dell-cam . Tune in frequently, or just leave it on as a soothing screensaver. I will occasionally poke it with a stick and otherwise see if I can rouse it from its grim slumber, but don’t get your hopes up…
Day Three, 6:38 pm: Progress. Dell — and in particular, the superspecial @dellcares team — has committed to shipping me a new (not refurbished this time) system to replace the dead one. They unfortunately still insist that it could take 8-10 business days, which is maddening and I remain baffled by. But they did (eventually, after I reminded them of my time wasted and the history of this situation) agree to one particular upgrade that I specifically requested (and the overall system they’ll ship is an upgrade from the current one). I should in theory have an order number / real confirmation in the morning. So as I pretty much knew all along, the ultimate outcome of this issue looks like it will be a reasonable one.
But the process — oh, the process. But we’ll wait and see, and a full debrief / after-action report will be forthcoming. But as a preview, let us ponder for a moment how many times things I was assured by Dell reps Could Not Be Done are now, in fact, being done. Life’s full of possibilities when you open yourself to ’em. And let us also ponder the time wasted in trying to avoid an outcome (a non-refurbished new system being provided to me) that was fairly obviously inevitable from the start. I know I’ve spent at least four hours on the phone. At this point I’d guess there have been at least ten Dell employees directly involved in this case. As I say, we’ll do a full debrief when we’re Done, but do begin the pondering of the cost of those employees time, plus the cost to Dell’s reputation given the visibility I’ve shown on this issue, and begin to weigh it against the cost of a new laptop (and remember to weigh it against Dell’s cost, not the price they sell it for).
In the meantime, the Live Dead Dell Webcam abides. Might not bother shining a light on the poor thing overnight, so forgive it if it goes dark, but I think we’ll leave it running, for now at least…
Day Four, 10:30am: Pleased to report that Dell has provided me an order number for the new system and it looks fine. While they are saying they’ll try to expedite, 8-10 business days remains the official estimate, which remains baffling and frustrating. But progress…
Day Nine: Could today be The Day? Dell says Order Status: Shipped. FedEx says “On FedEx Vehicle for Delivery.” Well knock me over with a feather…
Wrapup: Much belated, but the epilogue to our story is a satisfying one. I did indeed receive the promised system, and it has served me well. So props to the @dellcares team for making things that were alleged to be impossible possible, and for following through on their promises. Someday, perhaps I’ll write the full debrief / what-the-heck-went-wrong-here-and-what-should-have-happened, but for now, we abide…
Dell is really crashing downhill fast. But they’re selling commodities. It’s not 1999 anymore. Set your expectations to “low”.
Your story reminds of a cartoon I once saw.
A guy is slaving away in Hell, plagued by demons, fire and eternal pain. He turns to the guy next to him and says, “These guys are geniuses. The computers are made by Dell.”
At this point, I don’t blame Dell, I blame you. You trusted them. And you are willing to do it again.
I’d ditch Dell first chance you get.
I tried to upgrade my laptop, found out the keyboard had to come off to get at the second piece of RAM.
When my desktop died (due to the infamous MB issues Dell knew about, but didn’t tell customers), I just went out and built a new one. I wasn’t able to even reuse the case, because they super clued the MB in.
When I broke the screen on my laptop, Dell quoted me $550 to fix it. I bought the part for $200 (new), and it took a non-tech guy like me 30 minutes to fix. An IT Tech could probably do it in 15, maybe 10. So… $350 for 10 minutes of work. Nice gig if you can get it.
Dell sucks.
My suggestion is to write Michael Dell. Include the same observations that you wrote here and keep a nice, polite tone. Share what you think are reasonable resolutions to the problem. I don’t like shooting to the top, but sometimes it’s the only choice.
My last three laptops have been Dell’s and I’ve been happy with them. I’ve never had to deal with tech/service. But your experience and writing about it is exactly why these people need to realize “there’s a new Sheriff in town”. My next laptop purchase is now MUCH less likely to be a Dell.
(I’ve been toying with going to the Apple store for some time now!)
Buy a Mac.
I should have continued; you are like an abused woman that keeps coming back expecting that things will be different. “He’ll change” this time you say…. as Art said: Set your expectations to “low”
Dell has been giving me the runaround for years now. I sincerely hope they go out of business and the entire staff pursue a career path of begging with a tin cup soon.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. I went through a period of difficulty with my Dell and EVERY time I asked to speak to a supervisor I was cut off.
Rob–there’s a reason why so many people purchase hardware from Apple Computer.
I work in IT for a living, and we’re a Dell shop. Dell has a MUCH different attitude when you’re a big Enterprise Customer and you can threaten to take your business elsewhere when the support falls down.
A couple pieces of advice:
If you’re going to run a business, use business level hardware. For Dell that means OptiPlex desktops and Latitude laptops. Everything else they sell is “consumer level” and is no better than the crap you can buy at WalMart or Best Buy.
If it’s at all possible, use Windows XP. I just bought my wife a new desktop and I made sure that it was WinXP compatible. Despite anything that Microsoft says, nothing runs as fast as WinXP.
Finally, if you can afford it, buy Apple hardware. Nobody, repeat, NOBODY designs their hardware like Apple. All their laptops can run both OS/X and Windows–either through VMware or Parallels, or you can simply install Windows directly on the Mac laptop itself. Every engineer-level person in the IT industry that I encounter uses Apple hardware if they have a say.
Cheers,
Ray Ciscon
This is way bad customer service. Not to sound to parochial on this but, er, did these folks sound like they were natural born Americans?
Thats why i bought an Apple. 😉
I stopped buying Dells many moons ago I think if you’re not a business ordering dozens of machines you really aren’t very valuable to them. So they’re not really a consumer brand I don’t think. They’re way way way more like IBM than Apple or Nintendo or even Sony.
Why not just send an email directly to michael_dell@dell.com ?
Complaints there go to a special escalation team. Seriously, try it – and direct them to this article.
You should buy a Lenovo. They build quality machines and when they have problems, they actually take care of their customers.
Dell in all likelyhood outsources it’s telephone tech support. Because of the stress there is high turnover, and a shortage of people who can do the job. Training is a bare minimum and that doesn’t help. Also it is probable that the tech support is split between a consumer account and a corporate account. 80% of the profit comes from the corporate customers and 80% of the tech support hassles come from the consumers. Guess who gets the best people and the best service. Of course this backfires every once in a while when a corporate purchaser buys a consumer product and gets the shaft.
I bought a top of the line Dell desktop about 9 years ago. Worked for a couple months, then massive problems. Probably logged in about 15 Tech support hours: 20-40 minutes waiting to get to tech support, 15 minutes with TS, then, after 15 minutes, as 1 tech admitted, ‘we have to get off the phone’ with helpful suggestions to call back if the problem persisted. Gave the desktop to my husband’s work: the tech guy there spent 15 minutes & replaced the video card & it worked fine for awhile. Talked to 3 other people at the time that had similar problems with Dell products & lack of anything resembling tech support. Went back to Gateway & had to occasionally pay for support that actually worked. I bought from unitedmicro.com while they were in business, courtesy of my son via his computer repair class (since discontinued: probably the most popular class in his high school).
I hate Dell. Seems they haven’t changed much.
I don’t buy it either. Your story that is. I’ve had plenty of experience with Dell support over the course of about six years of Dell ownership of towers, laptops, TV’s and printers. Never had an experience like yours. Ever think that the problem might be actually be you?
I support 250 computers (mostly Dells) and 600 users at my job and I have to tell you that hard drives don’t “crash” in the way you’ve described.
You seem like a noobie and so I would be very nice while I told you that I’ll replace your computer, but what I wouldn’t let you know is that I can’t fix stupid.
You are going to continue to have the same bad experience until you learn how to use a computer properly, I’m very sorry to say.
Let me say here that I’m not all that gung-ho about Dell or any other computer manufacturer, but I know how hard drives fail and they don’t just “crash” all of a sudden anymore. Here I ought to say that I’m a big fan of Western Digital and Maxtor hard drives.
Even if you think your hard drive is “crashed” (probably not what happened) I would expect to get data from it after I ran a few diskchecks on it.
Full disclosure, I own some Dell stock, and some WD stock as well as a few other tech stocks, but only because I believe that they are good companies in which to invest.
While I’m not calling you a liar (of course you can’t lie about things you don’t know) I still thihk your a noob and need delicate treatment.
Heh. We believe in serious interactivity here at Neppell.org (motto: At least one post every two years, guaranteed!) so a few responses to various folks:
Jack: I find your logic extremely hard to argue with.
SomeOtherSteve: Good suggestion on emailing Michael Dell! I did so; again this feels like making it a bit too easy for ’em but I have to balance my intellectual and professional curiosity on how Dell’s social media response works with my genuine need to Just Have My Damned Laptop Work.
Chief: Yup, way bad is a good way of putting it. To answer your question directly, everyone I spoke to seemed to be from India. Having worked with both excellent and abysmal folks from the subcontinent, I’m perfectly confident in saying that the problem is definitely not the nationality of the reps.
James: I VERY frequently think the problem is, in fact, me. Sadly though, in this particular case: it ain’t me. Other than the foolishness Jack has pointed out, that is.
Anga2010: Well shoot. Here I thought my degree in CS from an Ivy and twenty years as a professional in systems development / tech might give me the background and experience necessary to realize that if a hard drive becomes totally unreadable after making loud clicking noises for an hour that it might be appropriate to diagnose it as “crashed”. I appreciate you enlightening me on this point, and look forward to whenever you’ll have time to drop by my place & show me how the drive that’s unreadable via all means available is actually Just Fine, Only Resting, Thanks For Asking.
PS: Anga2010, let the record show that sadly, I can’t fix stupid either. I can, however, laugh at it.
There is only one reason to buy a Dell – they still make a couple of laptops with a “real” serial port, and if you need console connections to a Cisco router, then they are your only option without getting fancy dongles.
Other than that, buy a MacBook.
Anga2010 – are you joking? Please enlighten us as to what it is that he did that was so STUPID that caused him to have “trouble from day one, which your phone support suggested was likely faulty memory”.
Maybe you can explain how “a few months ago” means his hard drive could not have “crashed suddenly”. What exactly was it that he did that made it so they couldn’t “fix stupid”.
You don’t seem to clue into the fact that customers don’t like having 50 minute conversations drop down a memory hole only to be hung up on when they ask for a supervisor.
Your cluck-clucking that he is a “noobie” is so picture perfect of the New Dell-i mindset. It’s almost as if they think that they are doing their stupid noobie customers a favor just to answer the phone and jack them around for an average of about 10 hours, in the hope that they will eventually get discouraged, hang up buy a Mac.
Your mileage may vary, but it’s always ALWAYS been my experience when I’m transferred directly overseas (usually to India) with an issue, I never quite believe they actually understand what I am telling them. Everything is “no problem”, and then the games begin. The last time I had a problem, I was on the phone for an hour and a half to two hours with a nice chirpy little female person who refused to give up on me — she managed to fix the problem I was calling about but in the process created another different problem that I’m still living with. If you had been transferred to a supervisor, I wonder if that person would have been American.
Surely, your hard drive gave you some notice of it’s imment failure, you know, when it started not booting alltogether, and then you took that hard drive out of the computer and gave it to someone like me whou could retrieve the data, knowing the hd is about to crash. Then you get your info back (laptop harddrives can be purchased form 50-100$ and ghosting your faling hard disk to a new one can at lt least retreive some data until you get a new computer.
Here, I wonder what it is you are actually seeking? My guess would be a new hd with the old data on it. That’s not too difficult and I would do that for you but for the diestance between you and Lubbock, Texas. I would even hold your hand whil I explained to you that your hd was giving you signals that it was going to crash for over a week and explain to you what all those signals were.
Really, it’s not such a problem to get you a new computer and I’m sure that Dell is onit now, your chief issue is with the data that you never backed up. They sell 1 terrabyte external HD’s for less thn 100$ nowadays.
That data can still be recovered, even at this late date.
I offer my help, because I know these things.
MP
Always good to know folks who “know these things” Anga2010 — thanks !
Macs work. End of story.
Nancy: Appreciate your non-hysterical thoughts, but honestly gotta go with “meh” when it comes to the relevance of overseas support vs. US based support. Quick quiz: how many idiots / incompetents have you run into in person here in the States lately? Yeah, I thought so.
I have no patience with political correctness for its own sake: cultural differences *can* matter (although all evidence shows that “ethnic” differences are utterly irrelevant). But near as I can tell, the professional “culture” of folks overseas who do tech support for US companies is close enough to our own as to be indistinguishable. What matters is the *corporate* culture: some companies have a culture that fosters strong customer service (via either US based or overseas reps) and some don’t (via either US based or overseas reps).
It’s the company / corporate culture that’s the real factor here, not the nationality and certainly not the ethnicity of the fellow (or lady) on the other end of the phone…
Anga2010: I would be far more impressed with your superior intellect if your comments were not riddled with spelling, grammar, punctuation, and word-choice errors. Apparently you don’t “know these things.”
Hi Rob, Please accept my sincere apologies for any difficulties you may have encountered during your interactions with Dell. We have reached out to you via @DellCares . Please do give us a chance to look into it. Thanks,Shylaja
Here’s a link to an article on how @DelCares is supposed to work (via Social Media): http://ht.ly/4DZnx
My experiences with Dell hardware have been mixed: I love my now 5-year old 24″ LCD monitor and had a refurbished desktop bought in 2001 that worked just fine until it was retired. But, bought two laptops for my daughters for college that were lemons and barely got them through.
The various support calls on the laptops were a horror show and, back in 2004 included Indians who couldn’t speak intelligible English and the hanging up when one tried to reach a supervisor that you described.
Overall, I would not recommend Dell hardware – other than the monitors which were reasonable and excellent.
I have been happiest with IBM/Lenovo laptops, and the support has been American (it’s still contracted through IBM with real American technicians who know something!) and outstanding. Next day people actually arrive within 24 hours of the call with the parts they need having arrived by FedEx, and a cheerful attitude and real desire to get you up and running again. Perhaps a small premium, but overall, as a small business owner dependent on my computers, it’s worth it.
Rob,
I gave up on Dell years ago, exactly because of experiences like you described. The hardware isn’t bad, but the service sucks like a Shop-Vac.
Both Toshiba and Asus, OTOH, have always provided excellent support, whether personal or business. Highly recommended.
C:
I work for one of the top 5 software companies, and they have Lenovo as a laptop option. Just over 18 months ago, I made the mistake of taking one. My previous Toshiba worked great for 4 years (with memory upgrade). In the 18 months I’ve had this thing, the keyboard has had to be replaced, one of the USB ports physically broke (requiring a motherboard replacement), and the case has cracked around the fan slots. One of my fellow consultants has had to have 2 hard drives replaced when they stopped functioning with no warning. It is a flimsy piece of Chinese papier-mache, and I’ll never own another one.
Anga2020: Please use the Dell contacts to send Dell a resume; you sound like you’d be a perfect fit for the kind of support department Rob describes. This is NOT a compliment.
“You are going to continue to have the same bad experience until you learn how to use a computer properly…”
Excellent observation Anga2010. I’m hanging on the edge of my seat. What was he doing improperly, striking the keys too hard, turning the on/off button too quickly? Who knew Dell computers were rigged to blow up if you didn’t use them properly.
Dell’s consumer sector price points are kept low in order to get market share. The price point is not sufficient to support great customer service after the sale. Buy an inexpensive computer from Dell, and your chances of a trouble-free experience are fairly good. But if you do have trouble, be aware that an unpleasant experience is ahead of you.
Macs work? Are you kidding me? A mandatory add on is there extended warranty, which you are guaranteed to take advantage of. (types the man on his four year old dell, no repairs needed)
Dell support has been fantastic for me over the ten years and six laptops I’ve owned from them (and three I’ve recommended to others, all of whom have had decent support experiences), which just goes to show that individual experiences vary quite a bit.
I certainly have had trouble with Dell hardware, but no more so than most other hardware I’ve owned (IBM, Gateway, ASUS, etc). Dell’s service has been better than all. Certainly better than Apple (who never actually solved my problem, despite the warranty, then refused to talk to me).
I think most of these support problems come down to chance: who you happen to get, and how their day has gone so far. It’s difficult to make judgments about a company based on the initial support contact. If the company makes good on it, then make a judgment.
I still recommend Dell hardware. It still makes the least expensive, most customizable laptops on the market. Others offer better support, but I’m particular about my components and configuration. For that, there are trade-offs, and one of those is complexity of support.
Patience and even-temperedness go a long way in support calls, and it is very difficult for people to maintain that when going through a support call. People are not always aware of how angry they sound during these calls. They think they sound polite … but they don’t. I don’t know in your case, but given your comment about “making it too easy for them” and the (sorry to say it) conceited notion of them trolling the internet looking for your complaint makes me wonder how you sounded on your call. That doesn’t excuse Dell from making this right, but you might want to reflect a bit on your attitude. I have no doubt the support guy hung up on you, and I suspect that your previous support call was mishandled. You seem, however, to have taken it personally. That doesn’t generally help things.
Don’t mean to pile on Anga2010, but over too many years I have dealt with many hard drives, and they can fail in many ways. Your elitist comment to Rob about how “hard drives don’t ‘crash’ in the way you described” was just dumb, and I don’t care how many machines you support. Yeah, they sometimes DO crash all of a sudden, and if they didn’t, then I know a lot of IT shops that are wasting money on RAID disk packs.
But Rob’s post wasn’t even centered around his hard drive – it was about his glitchy system and Dell’s poor handling of the situation. So I don’t know why you get fixated on the hard drive. We don’t know what the Dell rep “didn’t buy,” the explanation of the bad system, or whether Rob had even called Dell the previous day. So here’s to Rob getting a quick resolution, especially now that the focus of the blogosphere is now upon them.
Dell treats their enterprise customers shabbily, too. We needed a top of the line desktop — fastest possible processor, 8 GB RAM, 2 TB hard drive — and after pricing various options I discovered the markup on the RAM and HD was in excess of 400%, and that’s supposedly a preferred enterprise customer price quote. So I ordered the super processor but with the minimum RAM and HD configuration, and bought the RAM and HD on line and replaced them myself.
@Arga2010, your mindset is a real problem. Imagine buying a car that occasionally failed to start, and after several visits to the dealership the technicians are unable to diagnose and correct the problem. Then when it catches fire, the mechanic explains that obviously the starter motor was at fault, and the fault was caused by improper driving technique. Not acceptable at all.
A computer user should not be held responsible for failing to know the inner workings of the machine any more than a driver should be blamed for not being able to change a timing belt. Stuff should just work, and while there will always be enthusiasts who want to change their own oil or hard drives, the device has to work properly and be supported properly for the vast majority of users who are not gadgetheads and just want to get things done.
And how the hell do you use a computer “wrong” to cause a physical hard drive failure?
I’ll concede one point — if Rob had a laptop that he knew to be wonky, he should have been backing up frequently, so a substantial data loss (if the case, which is not clear) is on him. But even then, this is a problem with how the computer industry conceives of itself. Cars just work, and no one expects a car owner to have a spare car in the garage in case the main one suddenly blows up. (And by “no one expects”, I mean that while many people do in fact own more than one car, you’ll never read a comment on an autoblog chiding someone whose Volt just spontaneously combusted for not owning a second car because, after all, cars fail all the time and responsible owners keep multiple back-ups.)
My Dell laptop (XPS M1530) politely told me my hard drive was beginning to fail (too many bad sectors) via some Dell utility. I was able to ‘ghost’ to a newer, bigger drive that cost me $75.
So there may be something to what anga says.
OTOH, I have just returned from a customer who has a dead dell. Seems the USB on the motherboard failed. Googling the model number brought many. many tales of the same failure (too bad I don’t remember it).
Too bad for Dell it’s cheaper to buy a new machine than for them to repair it. Don’t think the next one will be Dell.
On the bigger tech support issue, seems Dell is no longer small enough for values to make it from the top down to the front lines. Michael should read ‘Customer for Life’ – it explains why you don’t ever do things like this. And it’s easily expressed in one and two syllable words – well, maybe except for ‘customer’…
It appears that @Dellcares has reached out to Rob. Let’s see how this works out.
I am married to Dell just because DFS (off-lease used Dells) treats me so well. I could find things to complain about, but as in any relationship, my computers and I just get used to each other.
Folks: As you can see from my update above, we had a little movement over the night, but no real progress yet. A few more answers:
Tom: You’re absolutely right, and the good news is I do have backups of the most critical data, and also, as a tip to readers, have been working with Dropbox extensively so all my work folders in Dropbox were protected even beyond my normal backups. I didn’t, however, have the space available over the past weeks to backup my finally-organized music collection, though, so it will suck to have to rebuild that. Believe it or not, the needed extra HD’s to get all the backups done right arrived on Monday. Such is life.
Opinionator: Yup, @dellcares reached out, but sadly they asked for my service tag, which means they didn’t bother to read this post. And as noted in my last update, @dell also Tweeted. Which is all great, but of course, thus far has not made my old system spring back to life or a new system arrive at my doorstep. Empathy is a good thing, but not what I need right now: I need a working product…
Dell has been getting ALL kinds of bad press online about their customer service recently, a la this Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/fcmy5/dear_dell_dont_try_to_charge_me_for_a_problem_on/
buy an Asus.
Next Up: A YouTube video in the style of “United Breaks Guitars”?
Rodney: Actually, I was thinking maybe I should set up a webcam with a live stream of the dead system above. This Just In! System Still Dead !
@Rob, You have to dig through the entire post to find the Dell Service tag. If your motivation is to get your system back up and running or replaced, sending them the service tag is the best way to expedite this issue.
I see you riffed on that theme in an update. Then again, how many of the Dell types are old enough to remember SNL’s Nightly Update?
Good luck, I’ll keep checking for updates.
Re; “I pointed out that if Michael Dell walked into his office and said “Send someone to the production line, grab a new system that meets or exceeds his specs, and put it out FedEx Priority Overnight today” You assume that notebook computers are made in the USA.
A good point Opinonator, and you’re right, I was assuming they are made in the USA, which is indeed a fairly dumb assumption. However, while you’re almost certainly right that they are made elsewhere, I’m pretty sure they’re at least *staged* for shipping somewhere in the US. When you get a Dell, the shipping address isn’t Bangalore, after all. So I think my point remains valid, if a bit sloppy: Mr. Dell could indeed say “call the staging warehouse and have ’em ship this annoying SOB a laptop overnight so he’ll just go away.”