Damn Dell Dickheads

The BBQ Pit
1

Dear Dell,

Fuck You!

Sincerely,

akennett

No, seriously, Dell you should come over to my house and get the bitch-slap you deserve. I made the horrible, horrible mistake of ordering from this piece of shit company, and now I’m paying in frustration. It started out well enough:

Ten percent discount on the price + free next-day shipping + having roughly what I wanted = happy shopper.

Then the shit started. First, my apartment number got chopped off of the shipping address (but somehow they managed to keep it on the billing addy). So, seeing the welcoming “Click here for available on-line customer support chat” link, I click and get thrown into a chat screen with the first of many idiot Dell employees.

Her: How can I help you
Me: I need my shipping address changed to ------.
Her: Can you confirm the address?
Me: Billing or shipping?
Her: Both, please.
Me: Billing is <Billing>, Shipping is <Old Shipping> I need to add <Apt #> to the shipping.
Her: Oh, I see the Shipping as <Old Shipping>.
Me: Yes, I need to add <Apt #> to that
Her: you can call our customer support line at #.
Me: Then why are you here?
Her: You can call…

So, I call the customer support line, and get patched through to New Delhi or some such place. I understand that they are trying to cut costs, but they could at least get people who can speak understandable English. I could barely understand the woman rambling on. Finally, she says that she has changed the address and the order will be shipped tomorrow (which is now today).

Fast forward to this morning. I go online to check the status of my order, hoping that it has been shipped, but already knowing in my heart that something else would be wrong. I click on “order status” or some such, and see in big bold letters “CANCELLED”! What the ever-loving FUCK! So I call Customerr Support. I’m on hold for half an hour. I slam down the phone in disgust.

I go back to the Dell website and, skipping the online customer support chat line crap look for an email address. I find one and submit an email about my problem. I get back an automated reply telling me I should reply to my order confirmation email with my problem. Why the fuck don’t they just tell you to do that on the website? Fucking Dell fuckers! So, phone calls, emails, and one on-line chat experience later I still don’t know what the hell is up with my order.

Dell you fucking suck!

2

Dude, build your own! :smiley:

Seriously. It’s not that hard, and you can get exactly what you want, as opposed to more-or-less what you want in a pre-built system that likely has had no burn-in at all.

3

^^ What he said. (I’m assuming Astroboy is a he).

I got fucked by Gateway on a computer. Ordered it, went on a trip (Paris - woo-hoo!) and came back to find no computer. Order had been cancelled. I wrote a big fuck-off letter to the CEO and got an offer of $75 off. Another fuck-you, and I’m “building” my own.

I’m lucky enough to have a Fry’s near me, so I did the pick out the componenets and have Fry’s assemble it route. It worked out great, and I’ve been upgrading it ever since.

There are plenty of companies who are actually happy to have your business; Dell right now is not one of them. Find one that actually wants you as a customer.

(Not posting links because it would probably be frowned upon.)

4

I say fuck dell too! Bastards wouldn’t give me my promised $150 rebate. I did all the right things but they kept sending me shit that said my form was incorrect. So I call them and talk to l8 people over the course of 45 minutes. No one knows anything about rebates at all. They finally give me a website to get “the correct form”. The website was on ford.com why the fuck would dell be using something on ford.com!!! and why isn’t the correct form on the link on my confirmation letter that they fucking sent to me!!! I go to the site and there is a “The page cannot be found”. So I send the correct form that they told me to use in the confirmation again. I end up with jack shit. I like my computer but I will never buy another dell in my life. If you arn’t going to give a rebate don’t bother offering it.

5

One more idea for anyone buying a computer. Find a well-established indy outfit in your area. (This may be difficult in large cities, but try.) When I moved here 10 years ago I started checking out the local shops, and found a little one so independant, they not only don’t offer so much as licensed sales for cheap local ISP’s, but the two guys that own the place are the only one’s working there. So over a decade I buy upgrades and various software, with walk-in support for questions.

Fast-forward to Nov last year. After being donkey-punched by both Gateway and Dell over a few years, I figure I’ll buy one of the comps they make themselves. Problem was, the only system that had everything I was looking for was a new boxed Compaq. I voiced my concern over buying a name-brand. (Plus a little concerned I’d get ripped because of the commission I’d be indirectly paying them. Then I realized they’d make a much higher profit selling me one of theirs.) The trust kicked in, once again.

Shane pointed out that not only buying this one would give me full warranty protection from Compaq, but that if I ever had a problem I could just stop by to get some help without dealing with the bullshit you get from 800 numbers.

Sorry for rambling, but it will save you lots of time, money, and frustration in the future doing it this way if you don’t know how to build your own.

6

Another FUCK YOU DELL.

Do you know that those cunts solder the fucking processor to the mother-board so that you can’t fucking remove it to up-grade ???

WANKERS !!!

(I now build my own)

7

That would be completely unacceptable! How can they sell you an upgrade processor if you cant remove the processor? Stupid business move,- Even if you were to buy the new processor from somewhere else. You shouldnt have to whip out the soldiering gun to swap chips.

8

Then they can charge you for a new motherboard and assembly time.

I remember when Dell/Gateway had sterling reputations and everyone loved em. They seem to be fucking up royally.

9

Ah, well, it is not a computer that I was buying, but rather an mp3 player. I was willing to go with Dell simply becuase of the convenience factor.

It’s too bad for Dell, too. My father will need to buy both a new desktop and a new laptop for work soon (okay, so the company will technically buy them, but he’s the one doing the ordering). Traditionally he has bought Dells, but I will be the one telling what he “needs” so bye-bye Dell fuckers. (Before you build-your-owners jump back in, that’s what I would do for myself, but my dad won’t go that route.)

Anyway, I was looking at the correspondences I have exchanged with Dell recently.

First, I went to my order confirmation email and read:

So, I select the approriate link, submit an email through that and get the following:

This email goes to XXX@Dell.com. I get a reply from that email and (you guessed it) it said:

Can these fuckers be any more stupid?

10

:shrug:

Love Dell, super prices, super service, all in all it was a super experience(and for someone in the customer service industry, that says a lot). This was 2 years ago, I’m sure lots could have changed, but typically, there are people with bad experiences with large companies and there are those with good experiences with mega-corps and in the end they generally balance themselves out.

Sorry your experience licked donkey snatch.

Sam

11

I bought a Dell, and haven’t had any problems with it, so I’m pretty satisfied, except for one thing. I financed it through them, and what irritates me to the point of incoherence is, you can do every single thing online–pick out, customize and order your computer, arrange financing, all that–except PAY YOUR BILL. I can pay every single other bill except my rent online. Here’s this nice supposedly high-tech computer manufacturer, and I have to write and snailmail them a god damned CHECK every damn month. What the everlovin FUCK, you MORONS.

12

The reason I hate Dell is because they like to pretend that you can buy a PC from them that is customized to your individual needs, even though you can’t.

Oh, sure, you can get a RAM upgrade. Or a slightly bigger harddrive. You can even get extra worthless crappy software.

But just try and order a PC without an operating system installed on it. Or even without RealOne player pre-installed on it. My brother ordered a laptop from them (so he’d have something to keep him busy if he gets bored in Afghanistan; I hope he gets bored in Afghanistan …) He tried to order it without an operating system, since he already owned a copy of XP. They wouldn’t do it. Then he tried to order it with the operating system, just without RealOne player (since I’ve successfully convinced him that Real is software personally coded by Satan). They wouldn’t do it.

It’s like Burger King advertising “Your Way, Right Away” and then telling you that you still have to have the lettuce and pickles.

13

Why is this a surprise? You bought a cheap-ass computer, you get cheap-ass service.

Buying from Dell or Gateway is just begging for trouble. At the very least, get a Sony Vaio instead.

14

So you can buy an expensive-ass computer from a mega-corporation through a third party who will have at least as bad customer service as Dell?(A la Best Buy or Good Guys!)

Dell computers are far from “cheap-ass”. My desktop was about $1200. Not only is the hardware ten times what Gateway’s is, but the case on this thing is a beaut. I no longer have to deal with cheap, over-the-counter fucking Fry’s cases that don’t go together for shit(ooh, but they come with a fan with neon lights in it :dubious: ). This case opens in a second with the touch of a single button. A breeze to maintain.

On the other hand, I had a Sony Vaio laptop that had the monitor ribbon break on it with less than light usage. I literally put a couple hundred hours on it(in one stationary spot), and then set it aside for quite a long time as I didn’t need a laptop. When I loaned it out to a friend, the ribbon broke in a few weeks. My Dell? not a single problem.

As I said in my last post on the matter, most people will fall into one of two categories when dealing with a manufacturer/retailer: Those who are satisfied, and those who are not. Generally when you look at representative data on the field of people surveyed, it just about balances out on both ends of the spectrum.

Opinions on this topic is like an asshole-everyone has one.

Sam

P.S.- Hey Geobabe, how do you like that awful APR on the Dell Credit Card plan? We hated it. We literally spent the first year just paying the principal. After spinning our wheels on that bill, we finally started sending them hundreds of dollars every period, just to get out from under them.

15

Bought a Dell Inspiron, had problems, called, got the New Delhi crowd, got the run-around, said “you’ve got to be shittin’ me”, got chewed out for use of profanity, packed her up and sent her back. After 4 Dell laptops I’ve switched to Toshiba and couldn’t be happier.

16

Actually, this is good practice in electronics – a soldered-in chip is more reliable. It will not come loose during shipping or thermal expansion over it’s lifetime. Plus it saves the cost of the socket, which is part of the reason they can sell those systems so cheap.

True, it makes it harder to upgrade. But most such systems are never upgraded (not for processor – upgrades of memory, hard disk, etc. are more common). For cheap systems like this, it’s more likely that the whole processor/bus/motherboard will be outdated, and so it’s all replaced by newer ones.

17

I once had an ISP where you couldn’t even mail them a check. You had to physically walk into the store to pay them. (And they closed at 5PM).

They built my computer for me, complete with an installation of Windows. Imagine my horror the other night after reformatting the hard drive to discover that while they gave me a Windows disk, they never gave me the CD key.

18

If your company has a contract with Dell and you buy a PC through them, you’ll get the business support which is much better. I recently started doing tech support for Dell’s business unit. Apparently those customers raised such a stink about the crappy support they were getting from India that they moved the support back home, and the new philosophy is ‘fix the problem’…don’t worry about call time or whatever…make sure the customer is satisfied before you get off the phone.

I have a Dell at home too, and I had that same kind of bot-like support chat as in the OP. I even asked at one point ‘is this a bot or am I chatting with a live person?’

19

One thing about Dells–don’t plan on upgradeing the motherboard yourself! They use (of did use) a power supply with a different pinout on the connector. Plug that in a regular motherboard, and the magic smoke will escape…

20

So does almost every single major manufacturer.