Dell support has exceeded my expectations of disappointment to literally become a farce

To preface this story, blah blah I've bought probably 7-8k of dell products over the past few years, though most recently this year I bought 2 XPS 15 9560's and upgraded to pro support. I review computers as a side job and I actually gave the 9560 an 8/10. All of the following has taken place over about 8-9 weeks:

The first 9560 I bought this year (1TB maxed out with the ****ty toshiba drive) had a bad battery, bad mainboard (broken headphone jack), and a bad screen (one side of the screen was more white while the other was more yellow).

After two weeks, they replaced my mainboard. After another week, they replaced my battery with one that worked; that was good. After another week, they replaced my screen with another screen which also had uneven colors. Two weeks after that, I got a third screen which finally had acceptable characteristics. Great.

My second XPS 9560 was ordered with a time constraint, so I paid for it to be expedited. They mailed it to the wrong address, then corrected it after a few days, then it got stuck in the blizzard. Can't blame for that, but it arrived about 3 days too late for my trip. When I got it a week later, I saw that it came with the worst backlight bleeding I thought I'd ever seen, plus lighting from the keyboard somehow coming out through the vents and shining on the display bezel. Never seen that defect before. The tech came and swapped the chassis, then gave me a new screen with *actually* the worst backlight bleeding I'd seen, plus the lower right half of the screen was completely yellow. He tells me they'll bring me a second display the next day or two.

A week later, they call me to say the part has been delayed due to "unforseen circumstances." They told me that they expected the new screen to arrive in about two weeks. So, I waited, and then they called me while I was working (a call I missed), then said they had sent the technician (unannounced) and I didn't pick up my phone so I'd have to wait more. Ok, so I'll wait another few days. They confirm that the 3rd screen and technician will arrive Monday. I told them I can be available after 4pm. They confirm. They asked when they could call me and I could answer; I told them between 12-1 and after 3pm. Sunday, I get an email that my repair has been cancelled due to "unforseen circumstances". Infuriated, I mail Dell's resolution team (I had been in contact with them for the past week or so) that if they delayed the repair again I would ask for a charge back.

So, today, I get a missed call at 10 am. I call Dell back during lunch to ask about the repair and that they don't **** up again, and they confirm that my repair will actually happen as scheduled, and the technician will be there at 4pm. I see around 3pm that I had a missed call at 2pm (you can't call Dell back, they block incoming numbers), so I called dell tech support again. They confirmed (again) that the tech would be there at 4pm and they'd call me.

So, I get home and I wait. I wait until 5pm. Around 5pm, I get a call from Dell.
"Did you get a call from our technician yet?"
"No. I've been waiting."
*phone holds*
"The technician went to your house at 2pm."
"What? Why on earth would he do that. Why?"
"Because... because he has been waiting since 2. He had no other jobs."
"Yes but WHY when I explicitly told you that I was available after 4pm would he go there?"
(phone holds)
"Sir the senior technician is downstairs again."
(I go downstairs and let him in)

He replaces my screen. Boots it up. Immediately I can see a horrible bleed in the lower left corner. I laugh and take it into a dark room to see the extent of the tragedy. Also notice a big stuck pixel in the middle of the screen. Hilarious. I show it to the tech and he calls Dell. They talk for a while and he gives the phone to me, I talk to Dell and tell them that this isn't good enough, I have about 3 days left before my 30 day return is up, etc. He takes the phone back, then goes silent. I sit on my couch and relax with some youtube while I wait for him to finish talking with Dell. About 15 minutes goes by with him sitting there silently. I look over, and he's just looking at the blank face of his phone, rubbing it. Ok, I keep watching youtube for another 5 minutes. I look back over and he's still there, and I notice he's holding the power button. Did his phone brick? Why did he not say anything? I ask him what he's doing, and he says, after about 20 minutes of silently sitting there "I am out of battery"
...
I wonder if I didn't ask him, exactly how long he'd have just sat there rubbing the ****ing phone?
I ask him if he needs an android charger or an iphone... he says android. I give him an android charger, and finds that it doesn't fit his iphone. ****ing christ. He doesn't know his iphone is an iphone.

So he plugs the phone in and calls dell again. Dell tells me that they can get a new part for me in a week, or I can give them my laptop and they can try to fix it. I told them I don't trust them because they seem to be using ****ty used parts in my laptop. She asks to talk to the tech again (who I assume confirms they're using ****ty used parts) then he hands me back the phone.
"Ok, we can offer you 3 options. We can get you a new screen, a real new one, but it will take a couple weeks. Or we can get you a new laptop, but that will take a month or more. Or you can get a refund, which will take a month also."
"I can't wait more than 4 days to get this fixed or I'll be out of the return period. Not good enough. I want an upgrade or I'm disputing the charge with my credit card company."
"Ok please wait until tomorrow and I will try to talk to other departments. But if you want an upgraded unit you may have to pay."

So I sigh and hang up. Tech takes his (now slightly charged iPhone) and leaves sheepishly after I sign my 7th pink doc (I'm starting a collection).

I'm not sure what Dell will have to offer me tomorrow, but unless it's a replacement + 1000 USD credit + a handjob, I'm not sure I'd accept it. I vote with my wallet, and its why I no longer buy razer products, should I really continue to give this company my money? At 50USD an hour of my time, the amount of time I've wasted on these ****ing laptops has surely cost me much more than if I had bought a MacBook Pro 15 and just run windows on it.

Anyway, I'm sure some of you will read this and say "who ****ing cares, stop whining" etc, well you can SMD because I'm writing this to vent.

 

Is it wrong I laughed, they really are just a bunch of ****ups in aftersales and support.
Why this crap about using defective recycled parts? I did accuse them of using a blind man wearing mittens to test the parts they class as refurbished.

Brings back the memories of why I demand new units if they arrive faulty as this is Dell's idea of a refurbished palmrest on a 9530 3 years ago.

The tech dropped off this palmrest as he was happy for me to do the swap as he lived 2 minutes away so could pop back for the returns. But this is what I got.

1st pic is part of the NFC tag reader.



Then we had the actual palmrest rubber that looked like a mechanic forgot to wash his hands when using it.



And the best part of it all... It came from a laptop that had been dropped onto something that was probably concrete.




Yes they really did class this as a refurbished part.

 

A blind man wearing mittens ahaha

any tips for getting something from resolution team? like a cross-shipped upgrade or faster refund?

 

Not really, I think I wore them down as I refused a refund quoting 3 defective laptops out the box do not count as a trigger point for a refund and I wanted my bloody laptop. It was pure luck when I got back to a defeated rep after resolutions passed me back to order #4 cross shipped that I gave him the code for the top end win10 pro 1tb 32gb ram 4k model and the dozy bugger placed the order without question.

 

How do you get the order code? Is that from the cart after something is customized?

 

Right above add to basket on the multi selection page is the E-Value Code

E-Value Code:
BNX95605 is the top of the range UK model.

 

Eason,

Really sorry to hear about this terrible experience.

You should reach out to Frank Azor VP and General Manager of XPS (and co-founder of Alienware).

You have published plenty of independent articles supporting the XPS and are a major contributor here so your voice carries some extra weight. Maybe the empty corridors at Dell will wake up...

 

Maybe one of the lessons learned here is "it is best to have a refund and re-buy instead of waiting for a funky repair..."


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

 

You reckon I should DM him on Twitter? I didn't want to have to pull rank and say blah blah I write for x and y because it's kind of lame...

 

I think you should try private communication as he is a pretty senior manager.

I wouldn't let him know about your professional and blogging tech roles at all. He might figure that out but I'm not sure what that would mean.

 

Really sorry to read about your truly awful experiences.

It's almost enough to put anyone off ever buying products direct from Dell. Either that or having to pray for the entire warranty duration that their product arrives working, without defects and stays that way!

 

Haha they offered me 50 USD credit, max. I laughed, thanked him, and hung up. Filed the claim with my bank right after.

 

I visualized this and now i cant stop laughing.

 

$50 credit to buy another Dell laptop?

 

Or to keep this junk...

I have slight light bleeding on left and right side of the screen but it is only visible in the real dark, which is a very unusual situation for me, so it doesn't bother me. I was thinking about repair/complain/exchange etc, but when I saw the many posts about how bad their screens were I decided to keep my 9550, bcecause else it did not seem to have any other problem. What ever they do or give could only be worse.

After reading this that was the right decision.

 

actually, he generously noted that it could be returned to my bank account! yay!

 

Dell support is a joke. I ran service calls for them through a 3rd party before. The parts used to replace are often ones that have been shipped back to them for various reasins. QC will "review" the parts and put them back into circulation. I switched out many motherboards that were DOA.

Sorry for your experience. The one thing I learned from working with them is that the customer should just keep saying I want to escalate the matter. This will get you to a higher tier of support and eventually you might get some better service.

Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk

 

purchase things from big coporations these are the things happen all the time. last time purchased alienware from dell took forever to solve too. gotta always put in that extra work and make sure its not gonna replace your primary machine and expect things to always go wrong, kinda sad really.

took me 5 tries, 4 tech dispatches and almost a month to get it resolved, just gotta work it out with them. sometimes have to yell sometimes be nice to them etc, w/e u can to get it going your way.

 

Holy ****... This is one of the reasons why I chose Aero 15 over Dell XPS 15. The dell customer service actually scared me away after I read a lot of horror stories regarding them.

 

Every time I decide on the XPS 15 I read something like this and decide I don't want to risk this kind of crap.

As for communicating with the Dell VP in charge of XPS, use your credentials. I used to be a freelance writer for several major magazines, and I had no problem mentioning this in a way that doesn't come across like "I'm a big wig, you need to pay attention to me." Along the lines of "I'm a writer for XXXXX magazine, and as a result I see a lot of hardware and laptops for review, as well as having the chance to deal with a lot of companies' customer service, and that's what this experience really sticks out as far below industry standards." I'd also mention that you're talking about this on Notebookreview forums to see if anyone else is having this type of experience.

My bet is you will be made happy. I won't bet my 401K but I'll bet a good beer.

 

Alas, I think that ship sailed. I did win my claim against Dell, though! I hope they get their **** together, because the rest of the PC industry is not standing still. You can only burn people for so long.

 

Eason - how is your Gigabyte Aero vs. the XPS 15?

 

I can write more later, but right now I enjoy it more and more every day. I have yet to run into anything. The biggest problem I have is the trackpad being annoying at times.