Dell HellFollow

I decided to upgrade my computer a little by upgrading my video card and adding an external hard drive. I went onto Dell's site to see what was compatable with my Dimension 8250. Since I was there anyways, I just decided to order them through them. The site said the products I picked would ship within 24 hours, but the e-mail I got when I ordered them listed March 13th as the shipping date. Annoying, but no problem, I thought. I will just cancel my order and get them somewhere else.

Welcome to Dell Hell. I called customer service and got a lady obviously in India. She was polite enough, but slow. I gave her my order number and other information and after about 10 minutes of fooling around on the computer and getting all types of information from me she said yes indeed they could cancel my order... but not through her. She would need to transfer me to another department. Wonderful.

So on to the next person. I know that English is the primary language in India, but for this person, it was obviously secondary. For 20 minutes I tried to explain to her what I wanted, spelling and respelling my name, order number, e-mail address, etc. over and over. Finally she said she could indeed cancel my order... but not through her. She would transfer me to the person who could do that. Arrgh.

Then I got that sound everyone dreads when dealing with a company like this. A long silence followed by a click and then a dial tone. Yes indeed I had been cut off. 30 minutes on the phone trying to do what should take someone about a minute to do and I was back to square one. I'm beginning to thing Pakistan getting the bomb is definitely a good thing.

But wait there is more. So I dial back customer service and find out that my 30 minutes on the phone had taken me past 10:00 and that was when their phone banks close. So, 30 minutes of customer service hell and I still haven't gotten my order cancelled and now I have to go through it all again tomorrow! Where do you think I will buy by next computer? You can bet it won't be from Dell!

Edited, Fri Feb 24 23:01:49 2006 by Allakhazam

On the other end of the spectrum, I called Direct TV for a friend the other day, because she's kind of shy. I was connected to a polite man named Lashmi who did nothing with the questions I was asking him, but is now apparently sending me a portable DVD player. I'm now disappointed that the reps at my cable company are apparently english speaking folks in the US of A.

Well, you could just call your credit card company and issue a charge back for the purchase. Then, if they ***** up and send the order anyways you get some free Dell stuff.

I have a Dell.

There was a problem with shipping it originally but that was the shipping companies fault. I called them up they directed me the right way and everything was fine. Person I spoke with was in United States. I f'ucked up my computer somewhere along the line and had to call customer support. I got a guy straight out of India with a light accent. He walked me through it no problem.

All I can say is that it sucks to be you.

AGP is a standard, IDE/SATA are standards -- unless you've got a really funky case that locks you in to oddly-sized components, you should be able to use pretty much anything you like.

I cannot advise ordering parts from a manufacturer like Dell. One of my guildmates recently used their website to track down and order some RAM for his (old) desktop system. The price of 1G of RAM came out to just about $540.

I couldn't believe how badly he was being gouged.

You can buy a new case, motherboard, cpu, power supply, and a gig of RAM to sit on it for less than that.

In the UK, some firms actually making a point of making national TV adds showing that "we have UK call centres with english speakers, not indian ones". And it is winning them customers away from those firms that outsource to India.

The populace in general is sick of what you just experienced Alla. I feel for you, having suffered it myself once. It is just annoying to have to wait so long to have such a simple task completed.

I sympathize as the same thing has happened to me. Trying to cancel anything from Dell is an excruciatingly difficult process. While you will never receive any kind of notice that cancellation has taken effect, the best you can do is check your credit card statements like one of the previous posters mentioned. Sorry you had to go through this Dell hell.

Even though they are incredibly difficult to cancel things, I have yet to find better deals on computers and decent customization (we own the following: Dell Dimension 4100 desktop, Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, Dell Dimension XPS Gen 4 desktop, Dell Dimension XPS 600 desktop).



Edited, Sat Feb 25 13:02:16 2006 by Smoggy

No they don't you dozy *****.

They do say "We have british call centres" which is implied racism, as opposed to your quote which is explicit racism.

My ISP moved its call centre to Mumbai since when I've never been put on hold, and always had my query or problem resolved very quickly.


Crap call centres are crap call centres.
Indian call centres are Indian call centres.

And get a bloody grip. In the UK you have to pay about 15 to 20K for a call handler who can barely string a sentence together and 9 times out of ten is hung over from last night's alco-pops frenzy.

In India a University Graduate is paid 6-9K to do the same job. Their absentee rate is a fraction of hours and the savings passed on to customers (& profits to shareholders) are huge.

I've experienced heaps of shi[i][/i]tty call handlers. One was clearly in India, all the rest were in the UK.


ESAD

I hate dealing with dell these days. We buy enough computers (laptops) from them at the DOT that they gave us the "gold support India bypass number of doom" and it's STILL like pulling teath just to get things done. They managed to lose an overnight shipping order that I had ordered 2 months prior ot last christmas for an additional month after it had already been backoredered. That really pissed me off.

Of course the most important question of the day is, what video card are you getting??

Yeah, because the only way to get a computer is through large companies =P

When I worked as a tech for a company that bought machines almost daily (wasn't an IT company, so thats kind of a lot), we had a local supplier that built the computers on demand from parts, and supported them themselves. We had instant service from the people who actualy -built- the computers and actualy remembered what they did and how they did it when we had a problem, and next day replacements. Not only that, but it was actualy cheaper than I could find the parts online and build the computer myself, or really close. All around, itw as awesome.

Now thats a supplier, not a store for home user... but its just to say there are alternatives. And for Alienware... even if they end with their call center across the world... when you have a problem you end up dealing with a tech that comes at your place, so the tech is obviously a local one =P

Speaking of out of country calls, those damn Canadians keep calling. Now this doesn't sound like a problem until I have to go through the "Old" system which really means the "POS" system, and it takes 20 minutes just to look up there damn information... God I hate Emachines...

No, it's all fabricated so I can have a good mental jerk off...