:mad: :mad: :mad: Fuck You Dell!!! I hate Dell! I just spent over three hours on the phone with them and spoke to a live human being for less than 15 minutes total. I was disconected several times. Their “award wining customer service” is a fucking joke. That automated answering computer is complete absolute garbage. There are no words in the English language to describe it. Even worse than the press 1/2/etc part was the voice activated part. (Is it illegal to make terroristic threats against a computer? 
) Two of the 3 humans I spoke too were somewhat helpful. Apparntly I need a new LCD monitor for my notebook. That took 2 hours to figure out. I wasted another hour of my life trying to contact the department I need to place an order. I gave up. Nothing is worth the aggravation of dealing with that company. I will never again buy anything from that company.
Wah.
If you don’t like Dell’s service, you surely won’t like IBM, HPaQ, Alien, or any other large maker computer. It’s all the same. Once a company hits a critical mass, Customer service becomes large and cumbersome.
I, for one, have nothing but good things to say about Dell’s service and support. I’m guessing they just didn’t like you. d&r…
Sam
It wasn’t the actual technicians that were the problem, they were helpful. It was the automated helpline. And getting disconnected over and over again.
Dell screwed me over in 1992. I have been telling everyone about this ever since, but apparently I have a lot of people yet to reach…
(The story: Computer is under warranty and has problems. Dell sends repairman, but problem persists. Dell admits it hasn’t solved the problem, but refuses to send repairman again as required under warranty. Two weeks later, warranty expires. I say “the problem reported under the warranty wasn’t resolved.” I go through all the appropriate channels. Dell still says “not our problem.” I bite the bullet and replace the motherboard, thus fixing the problem. I then call Dell back, hoping they will reimburse (hah!). Then Dell says, “Oh, gee whillickers, yes that was our responsibility, and we **would have ** honored the warranty, but now that you’ve messed with it, you’ve invalidated the warranty.” “What should I have done, then?” Dell would never admit wrongdoing, or even changing their story midway through the process. Bastards.)
Case for: I love my Dell monitor. It rocks.
Case against: Dell’s internet sales drones are fucking morons and their customer service people make the drones look like Einstein clones.
So during the boxing week thang I decide to get their 2005FPW monitor. It was on sale for C$525 – too irresistable for me. Whip out the credit card – it’s a prepaid card and was loaded with cash so I was good to go. Pay for it. Order goes through. Card is pre-authorized for payment. All is good.
Fast forward one week. Monitor has arrived. Good. Set it up. Gorgeous. Go to bed. Get up next morning. Go to work. Stop in to pick up lunch and stuff at a grocery store near my work. Decide to pay with credit card. Denied. Eh? There was money left on it, damnit! Okay, maybe they extracted their fees. Fine. Work all day. Get home. Check balance of card online. Overdrawn. By $595.
Say fucking what?!
Oh! Seems the fucking morons at Dell charged my card for the price of the monitor. Note that I didn’t say settled the pre-authorized transaction. They charged it. A completely new, settled transaction. The pre-authorization was still there, tying up my money and my card. Call Dell. A very nice, polite, seemingly older woman at Dell Customer Care tried very hard to help me, but ultimately was unable to because despite her best efforts, it ended up being a problem the Online Sales department would have to fix. I thanked her and hung up.
The next day I called Dell customer sales, punched in the extension for Online Sales, and got to speak with an indian gentleman who quickly revealed – by his own admission – that he had no clue what was going on. I explained patiently what had happened, gave him dates and amounts and asked him to simply cancel the pre-authorisation. He repeatedly put me on hold to speak to a manager. In the end he said it would be taken care of, everything would be fine. His haste was such that it was unbearably obvious that he was really saying “I don’t want to talk to you anymore so I am going to just tell you it’s all cool so you will go away.”
This was obvious the next day when nothing was resolved. I called again. I spoke to another indian gentleman – a different but equally clueless indian gentleman and went through the exact same damn routine with exactly the same results, only this time he claimed they could find no such pending pre-authorization. I felt like asking him to stop looking in his ass, because clearly the only thing he was going to find there was the conversation we just had.
Well, a week passes, nothing gets done. I E-Mail customer care as a last resort about a week after trying to get something done. They inform me that they finally managed to confirm that there was indeed a pending pre-authorisation and that it was cancelled. Goodie. They found a few discarded brain cells in the round file and decided to try them out.
Fucking idiots.
But I still love my monitor.
Well, we are talking about a company who went from Steve the stoned Dell dude to the distressing DJ Ditty dork. 
Dell will never get another penny from me so long as I draw breath. That is all.
I have a good Dell repairman story:
I ran computer labs with slightly under 200 desktop PCs in them. One of the Dells in my lab had a failed hard disk drive. My contract included a guy coming out and fixing the broken machine.
Fast forward to the next morning. The lab monitor lets the technician in. He proceeds to replace the hard drive in the next machine over from the one with the bad hard drive.
IBM’s service is worlds than Dell’s, IME. I was a tech for a company that has very large corporate accounts with both companies, so I had to call them on a regular basis. When calling IBM, I could invariably get someone on the line within five minutes (often instantly). The shortest hold time I ever had for Dell was about fifteen minutes. Usually it was closer to thirty.
IBM support tended to respond to a statement like “I tried to format the drive, it failed, and I heard a loud grinding sound” with “Okay, let’s issue you an RMA.”
Dell always wanted to waste time and do pointless diagnostic tests on an obviously dead drive before handing out an RMA.
Dell lied to Mrs. Plant; she changed her mind about the model she wanted and was told she could still get a discount and they reneged. We argued about that for weeks, but they did come through.
Gateway has great on line help. Since they ran into money troubles and got rid of some of the brick stores, they don’t believe me and make me test it over the phone, but they come through. The one time I got a South Asian guy, we both spoke very slowly and we got through it. Ah know I done sounded rite funny to that feller, too.
I really object to Dell claiming Windows Update as their own. They make it look like something wonderful, helpful Dell is doing. Mrs. Plant thought it a virus the first time it fired off. 
I don’t know what to say. My company uses Dell servers, desktops and laptops exclusively and we have no toruble at all with the products or service.
Sam
My Dell is almost two years old and I’ve had no problems other than one semi-bad service call. The machine itself has been flawless.
The office I work for was a dedicated Dell shop when I arrived. One of the owners loved them. 3 out of 6 of the newer Dell computers have popped after just over a year of service (more to come on this). One LCD after a year had the back light go out. We’re on our second Colour laser from them in six months and it just started acting up last week.
Our two PowerEdge machines are still going after 8 months but DAMN do they make a lot of noise.
So lets talk about the machines that died. All three had the motherboards die in the same way. The owner of the company ordered these machines and added Dell’s extended service plan. When the first computer died he told me to use the Dell service. Quote “they’ll take care of it and you can do something else”.
These computers were supposed to have Dell’s highest level of coverage. Let’s go over how this high level of coverage works.
-
Call Dell.
-
Wade though their automated phone system.
-
End up reaching a person in India.
-
Person in India has me OPEN THE COMPUTER and start disconnecting parts! Now, I’m fine and dandy inside a workstation but they said they can’t issue a service call or replacement part without going through these steps. WTF? What if this was my father in law? He’s end up breaking more than he’d help troubleshoot.
Once I open the case I see 4 popped capacitors. Even with this information the tech guy STILL wants me to unplug floppy drive and try to power up the system,. then the hard drive and try and power up,. then pull the various cards one by one,. etc, etc, etc, etc.
I’m all for this process but I always went the reverse route. Unplug everything and plug things in one by one. But whatever, I’m not “Dell Support”.
-
Once the “tech support” guy decided I have a hardware problem, he issues a service call. I ask if he thinks it might have something to do with the popped capacitors. He says “It might”.
-
Service guy shows up 6 hours later. Decides there is in fact a problem with the system. He orders JUST a replacement board. At this point I interject and say because the board popped and we don’t have a way to test the CPU and memory, I would like those replaced as well. Nope. No dice.
-
The next day the motherboard arrives. Dell wants me to install this myself (again… WTF?). As I’m sure either the CPU or memory are going to have issues I don’t want to touch it. I ask them what is the service we got with the extended service plan? They say we’ll get a tech on-site within X amount of hours. I ask them what they’re waiting for? Send them out. I mean, we DID pay for this yeah?
-
Tech guy arrives near the end of the 2nd day. What? You’re getting a memory error on the new board? Fancy that. Tech installs the one stick that isn’t giving him errors, calls to order a replacement stick, runs a quick “test”, closes the case and leaves. He doesn’t even boot the system into Windows. Again I’m standing there going “what the fuck?” I boot the computer to windows. Make sure it starts ok. Seems fine. I’ll double check it in the morning. I head home.
-
When I arrive the morning of day three the “fixed” computer is not booting. Well, sometimes it boots. Other times, not so much.
-
Call Dell.
-
Wade though their automated phone system.
-
End up reaching a person in India.
-
Person in India has me OPEN THE COMPUTER and start disconnecting parts!
-
Once the “tech support” guy decided I have a hardware problem, he issues a service call.
-
Service guy shows up 6 hours later. Decides there is in fact a problem with the remaining memory. He orders another stick of memory to replace the single stick I have.
-
During the day our replacement stick arrived. He pulls the bad memory and puts the new one in saying “This will keep you going until tomorrow”. Once again I raise my concern with the CPU. Of course that couldn’t be a problem.
-
The tech starts to fire up the system with the new memory but is having problems. He gets on the phone and mucks around in the computer. Next thing I know he says he’ll be back the next working day to install the new power supply Dell is shipping us. He tells me it was the faulty power supply that took out the system to begin with. I question him because of the 4 popped capacitors on the board. He assures me it was the power supply. I question his reasoning and counter with the fact if it WAS in fact this power supply then we’ve just subjected the new parts to a faulty power supply and those would be getting fucked as well. He says that isn’t the case (huh?) and the power supply will fix the system.
-
Weekend intermission.
-
Bright and early monday. The power supply arrives. About mid day tech boy comes back. Guess the fuck what? The system is STILL not working correctly.
-
I beg him to just order a new CPU and get this over with. He does but only after the reverse diagnoses of unplugging things one by one and trying to power up in between.
-
Tuesday comes, new CPU arrives. A new tech guy shows up to put it in. The system starts and seems ok. He leaves. The system plugs along well enough so it goes back into service.
-
One month later the hard drive pukes.
-
Call Dell.
-
Wade though their automated phone system.
-
End up reaching a person in India.
-
Person in India has me OPEN THE COMPUTER and start disconnecting parts! This time I run a utility on the system.
-
“Tech support” guy decides the drive is dead (yeah, no shit) and he orders another and issues a service call.
-
The next day the drive arrives and service guy shows up later that day. He pulls the old drive, puts the new one in, makes sure the motherboard sees the drive correctly, starts to pack up his shit. I ask if he’s going to reinstall everything. He says they don’t do that. If I need help installing the OS and drives I can call their support line. Service guy leaves.
-
I ask the owner if I have to keep using the Dell support plan and if I can just take care of these machines on my own.
The amount of time I wasted with this system it would have been cheaper for the company to just have me build a new one. That would have only taken about 2 hours of my time. In all, with the extended service, I spent a good 8 or more hours messing with that machine.
When I called about the last machine that popped I didn’t even bother to have it with me. I called Dell and every time he asked me to unplug something I just set the phone down for a minute, did some other work, picked the phone back up and said “nope, nothing”.
When he asked about sending a tech guy I said don’t bother - we already have people in-house that don’t know anything about computers.
This is why I build my own computers now. If they are built fucked up, I have no one to blame but myself. I generally have zero problem getting a replacement for an entirely defective part as long as it’s under warranty.
As far as Seven’s story goes…from all I’m aware of, you opening a Dell, HP, Compaq, etc. box and tinkering with the parts therein would invalidate your warranty entirely in the first place. That was surely the wording in my previous Compaq computer…Compaq being one of the primary reasons I started building my own.
The guy obviously couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a map.
Which is really just another + on the side of building your own damn computers. At least when something goes bad in a comp I built, I don’t void the warranty by merely opening the box.
I thought it was really odd when they asked me to crack the case. I know far more people who have no business being inside electronics that do.
I guess it’s SOP for Dell though.
They’ve asked me to get in there every time I’ve called for replacement parts.
I have found that when I call for service regarding a corporate account I get better results from the big makers than I do if I have to call for an individual computer. It’s been the case with both Dell and previously with IBM (when they were still marketing direct to consumers).