Dell Customer ‘Service’
Did you know… That you can PAY Se7en download to talk to someone in North America, when calling for customer support (or sales, for that matter) rather than dealing with ESL-speaking agents at an outsourced call centre?
I kid you not.
It’s an option.
And, man, I almost took it, after being shuttled around to no less than 5 agents this morning. At one point I was almost yelling into the phone because the Indian guy couldn’t understand my fairly basic name. One rep even made me hold for a USA-(but still Indian-based) Dell rep. Uh, how many times do I have to say I’m Canadian? I called a Canadian Dell number. How do these things go so sideways, taking up almost 30 minutes of my time?
Only to have the fifth agent tell me that he needed someone to call me back, because he was only authorized to return product under $300. I’m sure he got my phone number wrong.
I swear, it’s a conspiracy.
YOUR TURN: Have you had the pleasure to deal with Dell customer service, lately? Did you have better luck than I did?
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You have to anticipate the garble… start talking in piglatin and maybe they’ll start understanding you. That or you can start learning other languages to better communicate with support people.
ritchie’s last blog post was… Weekly twitter updates (cause it’s a good excuse to get some content up)
When I was working as a sys admin I was the one that did the ordering and service of our computers, which were Dell.
I ordered them locally, but had to deal with their Toll Free ‘service’ lines a couple of times, and avowed to never deal with them again in my professional life.
My sympathies are with you.
That said, perhaps I can lend a hand?
I don’t bother with customer service. I either return the item, or try to sell it to a relative who owes me money.
C.B.Jones’s last blog post was… Some people cut themselves, others level up.
I totally feel for you. I’ve written blogs equal to short novels about Dell customer service. Even if you call Dell from Austin where Dell is located you get India. It’s like I could walk to their headquarters and yet, I am on the phone to India. Let me rephrase that, I could walk to their headquarters past all the unemployed, Engish-speaking people whose jobs were transferred to India….
As I ironically misspell “English”
OUCH!
I can’t say I have ever had that problem with Dell. The last time, about a year ago or so, I did call them with an issue of one of our computers at work and I was treated well and promptly. I don’t think think I spoke to anyone from India. I did try their online version first and then they asked me to call a toll free number.
I was totally impressed with their service then, but looks like them might have revereted back to “DELL HELL”
OUCH!
I can’t say I have ever had that problem with Dell. The last time, about a year ago or so, I did call them with an issue of one of our computers at work and I was treated well and promptly. I don’t think I spoke to anyone from India. I did try their online version first and then they asked me to call a toll free number.
I was totally impressed with their service then, but looks like they might have revereted back to “DELL HELL”
Dell’s early strategy for growth was to strip value out of the equation and win on price. Slash until competition joined or quit. And it worked – well. Dell grew by leaps and bounds throughout the late 90′s and then when the dot-boom hit it needed profits and cash. Guess what got cut? It already cut all tangible costs associated with the hardware and supply chain so the only thing left to cut was what was left of value – the after sales service.
You’ll notice their sales lines are staffed with English speaking North Americans able and eager to take your sale, and who answer the call in about 1 ring. Their AFTER sale support is almost all offshored. After a revolt a couple of years back they now offer a North American support team to it’s top corporate customers – not for the consumers (without charge).
Solution? Buy local. (Shameless plug here, move on if you like, I won’t mind.) London Drugs for example is local and the first line of support is in each of their retail locations. So maybe it’s not the absolute cheapest on purchase day, at least you have someone to turn to in times of need. To me, that’s value worth paying for. Case in point – T would have had a new notebook or her money back two weeks ago, and with far less aggravation.
Good luck, I hope it all works out for you T.
PS Dell is also now shuttering it’s US factories and sending the system building offshore too. Cheaper to airfrieght than to pay US wages. Sad.
I had a 3-year long saga of problems with a lemon laptop I bought from them many years ago. It was top of the line when I bought it for almost $4000, had many many hardware failures despite never leaving my desk.
Towards the end of my 3 year warranty (glad I got that) I had something like my 4th harddrive failure and 2nd motherboard failure and asked them what the plan was for once my warranty ran out. They said I was out of luck and would have to pay for continual repairs on my lemon laptop. They refused to replace the whole thing, just fix it piece by piece over and over. Lots of bad customer service and manager experiences later I decided to take a different approach.
A few quick google searches turned up executive e-mail addresses at Dell, I wrote an epic letter detailing every issue I’d had and all my negative experiences with them (it was about a 10 page rant). Within an hour a PR type person called to let me know they were shipping me a brand new laptop for free; the latest and greatest model (equivalent to what I bought 3 years ago). It has been functioning fine as my PVR for years
I see there are numerous sites with Dell exec email addresses published http://consumerist.com/consumer/executive-customer-service/email-addresses-for-19-dell-executives-321353.php
josh’s last blog post was… tortise
One word: APPLE
The last time I had the pleasure of dealing with Dell customer service was in January 2008 … I believe at that time I actually screamed into the phone that I would never be calling again because I would be throwing my laptop out the window when I hung up and never buying another Dell product again! I had a terrible experience with the one product I bought from them and will never buy another.
I almost wish I had the option to pay to speak to a native English speaker … not that it would have made up for their piece of crap laptop.
Sorry for all the bad vibes … I grew up an Apple user and will die an Apple user after that one foray into the world of PC.
TheQuack’s last blog post was… “This could be the best day of my life … “
Lol for Apple
We use Dells at work. And I think someone nearly died due to their customer support … No kidding … Fella with the duff terminal was not impressed, you could hear the ticking as the timebomb counted down. And then someone starts winding him up about it …
You could literally see the steam starting to bubble out of the ears. Good job there were no sharp & pointy implements around, although I was seriously considering hiding the cricket ball that’s by my desk.
Think we’ve been fairly lucky so far, the only big problems I’ve noticed people having are Operator-Induced (translation – dropped laptops). Although we heavily bitch about how slow and locked down the system is.
PS What made fella’s problem worse is that the desktop rebuild that had been unexpectedly triggered wasn’t even supposed to be for his machine … It was a muppet in another project who was having keyboard trouble.
Sleepypete’s last blog post was… A Fairer side to sport
no dell- not here no way no how.
I do speak to the Philippines or Bombay once in a while re my internet, with poor results
david, 7000 feet up’s last blog post was… I Dare you
Ugh I hate calling any computer companies for customer service. They’re horrible!
Tawcan’s last blog post was… Gear whoring
Have two Dells at home, both expensive models. I called a few times right after purchase about problems, and I knew more than the guys at the other end. Fortunately talking for a while they said a few magic words that lead me into the right sections.
My next machine will probably be Mac, but I write programs for customers and need what they have.
JoeInVegas’s last blog post was… Barbie’s birthday!
Apple: “No, you DON’T have a problem. Understand? Oh, and we deleted your forum post asking for help.” I’m not joking, Google it.
Don’t be a sheep and fall victim to Apple’s AMAZING marketing. You will not reach nirvana by buying Apple. I HAVE one, and the more I use it, the more I love my PC. I also have two friends that went Apple, neither of them are happy about it.
I just saw a survey done by one of our stores of all tech work done in the past 5 months: The highest by far was Apple with over 3 times the number of warranty claims of second place! WOW. Don’t forget that they also have less than a third of the market share (in that store’s market). That is alarming.
I’m not saying they are all crap, I’m saying they have the same issues as any other brand of computer, have a significant learning curve for any advanced PC user migrating to their platform, they are not far from Dell on the bastard scale when it comes to dealing with them, and that the best thing about Apple isn’t their product quality but rather their marketing. Be smart, do your homework, and remember that the learning curve is a little painful – at first at least. Do you have the patience for it? Are you willing to un-learn what you now know? If you are then great, enjoy.
I’m not sure if I can agree with the above comment… I’ve switched to mac as well after umm 18 years of PC (if you count commodore). Learning curve can be nonexistent if you choose, as any modern Mac can also run windows xp/vista/7 out of the box if you want. Have also worked in IT for a decade+ using all major vendor’s gear and I’d say their hardware is great quality in most cases.
Service wise?
dell = phone india, bang head on wall
apple = walk into apple store, talk to apple ‘genius’
This is so typical I hate calling for any kind of service it’s a nightmare…
Sorry you had such a hard time hope tomorrow is a better day.
Dorothy from grammology
grammology.com
Dorothy Stahlnecker’s last blog post was… Love
I gave up on calling for tech support a long time ago. It’s just plain useless.
Thomas’s last blog post was… The 1 Terabyte Disk & MyLifeBits Project
Tanya,
There was a Dell call center in Ottawa a couple years ago and they got a ton of money from the city and province in ways of waived property taxes and such and they pulled up stakes when things got a little tough economically so they closed, laying everyone off. They spent a lot of money training these people only to let them go. Want to know why you can’t talk to a Canadian? because it’s cheaper to off-shore than near-shore it and for that you get to pull your hair out while you try and explain your problem to the a ESL trained tech.
The Dell call center that was located in my city was supposed to be a Premiere support line where the tech would login and do their repairs remotely, this of course came at a cost to the end user so rather than raise the price of this service to it’s clients it moved the labour to where the labour is cheaper. Now I don’t know if Dell has since raised it’s support rates but just wait, one day it will be cheaper for Dell to open a call-center in a country where the neither English or the native language of our current Dell tech’s, they will feel the pain we feel now.
Good luck in getting your problem fixed
I had to call them about six weeks ago. Had no issues whatsoever. No accents or anything. The only issue was that I had to call a second time because the scheduled hardware replacement was a dud. The second call ended up in me having to send the machine back even though I have the nbd warranty. It took less time to ship it there, have the hardware replaced, and have it shipped back than it took for the original motherboard replacement to reach the company they contracted to do the swap.
Tip: If you’re going to buy a Dell, you might as well buy an XPS. You get the awesome tech support and everything.
I had a very similar experience back at New Year, even down to them misdirecting me to the US site also (where we comically wasted five minutes trying to look up records that weren’t in the system before realizing I had the line for the wrong country).
Once I’d managed to get past the barbed wire and trenches of their front-line customer service, I got a normal English-speaking tech guy who was very helpful and efficient, and we got my problem sorted pronto and with no more fuss.
…Hey all…
Thought I’d update you. Two MORE calls. Still no call back. I don’t need tech support, I want to RETURN the stupid thing. It’s a top of the line Dell XPS Studio 13 — I am sure they’re trying to run out the clock.
*so frustrated*
I would never buy a Dell computer because of their Indian outsourcing.
Jean-Luc Picard’s last blog post was… TWQ: Relaxing
Hey Tan,
I think any vendor can have an off moment or two. None are perfect, even Apple. I’ve had good luck in the past with Dell equipment, but also nightmares with them. Same thing with HP and Toshiba too.
I’ve even had good calls with Microsoft! Who knew that was possible.
I have no blinding brand loyalty when it comes to tech equipment, for me it’s the right tool for the right job. I have an Ipod for my music, but I certainly won’t be upgrading it now that Apple is introducing further DRM into the line(now they’re restricting headphones unless they have a drm chip installed), my gaming is powered by both an xbox360 and a wii, my pvr is a homebuilt linux box. I have three laptops, Acer, HP and Lenovo. Yup, no brand loyalty here. Vehicles on the otherhand, Mazda for cars and Triumph for motorcycles all the way.
I did find this address posted in a comment on the Consumerist, from Dell’s own customer service advocate. customer_advocate (at) dell.com Might be worthwhile shooting them a note and see what happens.
Just posting in to say “there is hope!” although my tech support call is with my internet provider after I did something to cause problems with my cable internet.
Internet Repairman Bloke was scratching his head almost to the point of bleeding before getting my modem talking again.
Crossing my fingers that you get some satisfaction out of the Dell people
PS @Al – this laptop is still running iTunes 7.6, because it looks like Apple introduced something in iTunes 8 (as well as the no-purpose-Genius) that can break the remote speakers link to the Airport Express. It works for now and I get excellent music out of the combination, so no need to change
Sleepypete’s last blog post was… A Fairer side to sport
Hey guys… Thanks for all your insight!
Thought I’d update you again! I finally got a call back today from another Indian rep who was able to FINALLY process the return. That said? It’ll be another week at least before they send FedEx to pick up the machine, and another week or more after that before the return gets processed back on my card.
I’d be screwed if I had a low limit! …Be advised. This is standard fare for returns with Dell, as a supervisor told me today in his broken English. ~30 days until return of funds. Holy.