A friend of mines computer crashed. She can’t afford to get another one so I thought I’d try to help. I started a thread here to ask for advice. I was provided a link to Dell Financial Services for one of their refurbished computers. Great! I ordered it that day. I get a call today saying there were some “issues” that needed to be resolved before they could ship.
Ok, what do you need? My billing address, they say. I already gave them that when I filled out the fucking online form. But can they verify that, no. They ask for a previous billing address and I provide it even though it won’t help with this transaction. No go there. I give them my middle name - nothing. I give them my 3 previous billing address’.
They still couldn’t find it. I finally gave them the last 4 digits of my SS. Stupid fuckheads still couldn’t match my info.
Mother fuck! It’s 2000 fucking 9 and Dell, the computer people, can’t match my goddamn bank card billing address and my social? They are going to kick it up to a supervisor and get back to me in 24 hours. 24 fucking hours!
And here’s the kicker, they have already billed my card. Fuck you, Dell.
[sup]I’ve never had this problem before and before I would release any info I called them back to verify I was talking to a Dell rep[/sup]
We had an issue with Dell Financial Services, too. We ordered a computer for our business and put it on what we thought was our existing Dell account (NOT DFS). We never received an invoice but sent off the full pay off amount (we knew what the computer cost) to Dell, our account number on the check, all was well.
Except we started getting collection calls. Five to ten a day. When I would start to explain that we paid in full, they’d hang up on me. Mind you, they were calling our main business line, tying it up, then hanging up on me when I politely asked for clarification. We offered to fax over the bank statement showing they cleared the full payment, they’d hang up. They’d call back and any time I would start to try to figure out what was going on, they’d either hang up or yell at me that I needed to just pay the bill in full then they’d look into. . . then hang up.
I hate to be that person, but what made it worse is that the reps appear to be from India and while most of them speak pretty decent English, there are certain things they just didn’t understand. When one finally talked to me, I asked for a cumulative statement to be faxed to me, so I could see what they were talking about. She said “Cumu . . . what does this mean?” I tried to explain it, she got frustrated and hung up on me. I may have been frustrated too, but I never hung up on any of their rude reps.
Turns out, for whatever reason, they didn’t charge the computer to our existing account, but rather created a Dell Financial Services account for us, without our authorization. Our business charge account had a $2000 credit applied to it, but Dell was calling us about the Financial Services account we didn’t even know existed and had never been sent an invoice for.
Best part? I eventually found out how much the DFS account was past due. . . $18.12. They were calling TEN TIMES A DAY over $18.12.
If you don’t get any resolution in the next 24 hours, reverse the charge. They’ve billed your card, and are showing you no indication of delivering what you paid for.
My current opinion of Dell is very very low. It will be many years before I buy from them again. The last company I boycotted because they pissed me off was Circuit City - look where *they *are now!
I would think this is better then their previous method of confirming identity for purchases- they called me to verify that I purchased four Playstation 3’s to be shipped to Denver (I live in Portland, OR), and I told them I hadn’t. They said they would take care of it, but of course, the very next day the $2K charge showed up on my card, and they shipped the four units to the guy in Denver A WEEK LATER! The order fulfillment company they used would not cancel the order. So, they had to eat the $2K loss due to their own systems.
My brother has owned several Dell computers over the years which are used in his business. He recently bought a new one that started malfunctioning after just a couple of days. He called tech support and, after four hours of them making him try this and that to try to fix it, they said they’d send a replacement motherboard. The replacement arrived with a “Refurbished” sticker, which ticked him off since he was paying for a new computer, but rather than hassle with Dell over it he went ahead and installed it. The refurbished motherboard worked for all of three hours before the same problem occurred again. So he called and was forced to waste four more hours with tech support, who then decided they’d have to have a technician come and install another board. My brother asked the tech person if a new motherboard would be installed or another refurbished one, and the tech person said it would be refurbished. My brother then said he didn’t want a refurbished one, he wanted a new one, as he had paid for a new computer, not a refurbished one. The tech guy said the refurbished ones were just as good as new ones. My brother asked if that was the case, then why did they sell refurbished computers for less than new ones? The guy wouldn’t budge, but said he’d have a supervisor call. Two days later the supervisor called and he wouldn’t budge either. The company line is that refurbished ones are just as good as new and that any replacement parts my brother’s new computer needed would be refurbished parts.
Needless to say, this will be his last Dell computer.
I’m looking forward to Dell biting the dust just like Circuit City and other companies do when they start taking their customers for granted and begin arrogantly operating for their own benefit or convenience rather than that of the customer.
My dad currently has a top-of-the-line Dell laptop that they haven’t billed him for. It was delivered in December. It’s a complete lemon, of course, as well as not being what we were promised, but still. Dell are a fucking shower at the moment, in almost every conceivable way.
Ahh like “good job” referring to things that aren’t personal accomplishments at all.
My ex used to use that phrase in things like “good job it isn’t raining or I would have been soaked”. I used to tease her about a lot of stuff, but I never called her on that one. I thought it was cute. Anyway sorry for the anachronistic amor hijack, back to the Dell hate ya’ll.
Ouch. Not having purchased a dell system in several years, I simply had no clue that their customer service had gotten this bad.
In my personal experience - due to a design fault of the Dell 700m (and I would assume, the 710m) line, the tiny wire connecting the tiny speakers to the motherboard would break after awhile because it was right on the hinge of the monitor.
Dell provides spec sheets for all of their systems, but the 700m spec sheet does not include an entry for the speakers. A quick call to Dell, and they offered to service my computer outside of the warranty for $500, since they’d be replacing the entirely still working LCD for a new one.
Assholes.
I bought a replacement speaker set (with reinforced wires, to boot!) from ebay for a tenth of the cost.
