Is Dell's service becoming the worst in the business?

December of '06 I ordered a machine from Dell as a present.

In the mix I ordered 2x of the 2407FPW displays (24" LCD.)

I've been having a problem with one of them where it gets horizontal lines racing across the screen. On a white background they appear yellow, on a blue/black (dark) background it's extremely obvious.

I have tried making sure the cables are fully seated.
I have tried replacing the cable.
I have hooked it up to another computer.

The only thing that makes it stop is to power off the display and power it back up.

It's happened 3 times now. The last of which was the worst (getting progressively worse.)

So on Thursday of last week I called Dell about getting it repaired.

OMG what a miserable experience. First an idiot barely speaks English, I have to repeat everything 5 times, then idiot repeats it back to me "did I get this right" (No, you didn't for the 5th time)
Finally two idiots later I get Ishmel who speaks passable english. But Ishmel can't look up the original order.
Finally after an hour and a half of this he finds the original order, gets it into the system and says he'll send me an new display.

What gets here today looks like it's been dragged down the street by it's cord. It's dirty, scratched, has very poor color tone and is in no way a new display.

So again I call Dell. More morons who don't speak English. I have to repeat everything 5 times, and they keep regurgitating the same nonsense over and over. After an hour and a half of this the bottom line is that they refuse to do anything about a new display, they'll only send me another used one.

And this guy just doesn't care.
I didn't get angry, kept my tone as level as possible and didn't curse or call him nasty names - even if I was thinking them.

I'm left with calling my CC co and the BBB on this.

WTF? Dell's service used to be great. What happend? This is horrible. I mean I know everyone is outsourcing to save money but why throw your reputation away for a couple bucks? Crazy.

Anyone else have bad experiences with Dell support or is it only me?

 

Judging from your common use of the terms moron and idiot, sounds like you are getting the service you deserve.

 

The service I've received from base line CSRs has been a bit lacking, but if the discussion doesn't get anywhere, just escalate.

On the other hand, the higher ups I've been corresponding with have been an absolute pleasure to work with. Unlike many other companies, Dell is trying very hard to create dialog with customers. You just need to know who to talk to.

 

Amen to that brother!!!!!!

 

Ocellaris is right MonsterIdiot....I mean MonsterMaXX...... You need to calm down and just know the right person to talk to

 

So what would you call someone who you have to give a simple 5 letter email address to 10 times and they still get it wrong?

Or someone who you explain the situation to for the 5th time, they repeat it back WRONG 5 times in a row?

Someone who....

oh nevermind

wackoff-bird-ee (gee, I can make fun of your screen name too)


I need to know who to talk to? Hmm, like Dell Support? Whom else would I call with a DELL support issue? Perhaps you can give me Michael's number since it's not listed.

 

yea it can be quite frustrating sometimes but you need to keep your cool which you hopefully did.

 

Disagree. I spent over 2 hours repeating myself to a 'moron' earlier this summer to get vista to install on a 1520 without BSODing (which i waited a few days, then found out myself on these forums after remembering i had an account here).

5 different people I talked with, some claiming that my 'version' of vista (retail) wouldn't work on the Dell computer and I had to buy their 'version', others saying its hardware, but the original Basic worked fine, and finally, the last thought it was a virus.... yeah a virus on the vista installer when booting from the DVD. So yeah. End of that.

Also, last winter, my dad's video card crapped out in his desktop. At that time, I didn't have a PCIe system, and I knew a PCI video card worked fine. Even though I KNEW what the problem was, it took well over an hour for them to 'dispatch' a new video card, which they sent the wrong one (sent an AGP card) claimed it would work, then had to argue my way back to getting the right one.

 

For all we know, you have a deep accent yourself, or you could sound like a backwoods redneck that people in the US have trouble understanding.

 

Yep you deserve everything you got from dell and then some. Learn to give out some respect and maybe you will get some back. LOL

 

Chill out dudes, reminds me of my dad when he comes off the phone to Virgin Media cos his broadband is down. He rings me and has a blast to blow off steam about the appaling customer service (I wont go into the more detailed descriptions he gives!). The scene in the recent Transformers movie where the marines are trying to contact the Pentagon via mobile had me in stitches because it reminded me of my dad on the phone to the Virgin Media call centre.

 

My English is just fine.

For all we know you fanboys are a bunch of Dell's foreign moron employees trying to make light of the horrible service Dell has since they outsourced it to some third world cesspool where labor is $1/day.

 

About $1.7 an hour I think is the actual going rate in those places. And they probably work about 10 hours a day avg
Take it easy mate, no Dell fanboy here but lets keep it cool

 

I'm in Canada, and I always get local/oversea french speaking reps whenever I call. Maybe they mark *******s like you and send your call to india?

 

I do believe that when you purchased your system, you had the option of paying a premium price for North American based support. Possibly that would have been a good idea for you.

 

REALLY???? and just where would you find such a thing? Because I just checked Dell's site, no such thing is shown.

Is this like your 'knowing who to call', another undocumented suggestion?

 

I was sympathising on your side until you mentioned a "third world cesspool". Looks like being an elistist bigot comes with its disadvantages doesnt it?

I'm not saying I don't disagree finding Dells customer service a bit lacking, but at least keep your rants civil. If you think you can do a better job at providing customer care I implore you to jump on the next plane to some third world cesspool where labor is $1/day, and see how much you'd like it.

 

Why on earth would I want to go to a third world cesspool? It's not bigotry, it's: been there, done that, know exactly what it's like. Ick, you couldn't drag me back and I was getting paid a whole lot more than a buck a day.
$1/day was the going rate for local labor when I was there.

But you think you are so smart, why don't you go and teach them how to provide decent service. Go with my blessing. I think you'll find the same thing I did, they couldn't care less about providing quality for westerners and are more than happy to frustrate and obstruct whenever possible.

 

I just thought I'd chip in my $0.02 since I have had a Dell laptop for 3 years.

First off: Dell Inspiron 5150. For those of you who aren't familiar, there was a class action lawsuit against Dell for this model due to excessive failure rates arising from...heat I presume? I blame the desktop Pentium IV processor it uses. Anyway, I got a one year warranty, and then as a result of the lawsuit got another year that extends from a year ago until September of this year.

Okay, the good (sort of):
I've had many parts replaced. Let me count the ways...
2 x Power supply ($70)
1 x DVD-RW ($40)
2 x Motherboard ($400 -- yes, they're spendy)
1 x Display apparatus (...$400? not sure)
Total: $1380 (not including Next Day shipping both ways)
Total price paid for initial laptop (refurbished): $1250

Email: Usually part is on its way within 48 hours. If you give enough information, usually you get the response you want within 1 or 2 replies.
Chat: This is probably the best solution. No hearing issues! See below Anyway, issues are resolved within half an hour for me. Additionally, one of the first things they ask for is your phone number, and if your chat is disconnected they call you right away.
Phone: Well...not so much luck here. Terrible idea giving them my address over my phone. They ask "Northeast 8th avenue or 8th avenue northeast?" and I reply "the second one, 8th avenue northeast" and on my package they end up putting "north east avenue" -- wtf? What happened to the "8th"?

Anyway, my experience is probably a little biased because most of the times things have simply been "broken" -- not trying to get it fixed, I'm just trying to get it replaced.

The bad:
The phone thing from above falls in this category. They were sending me a box to put my laptop in -- ended up getting delayed by a week. I send my laptop back to them, they send it back to me -- using the wrong address again (I thought I contacted them asking them to update their DB, but apparently not...?). That was annoying. Couple weeks later my power brick fails -- and...they send my box to the wrong address. Delayed by a couple days. Anyway, I think it was all cleared up, but still a few more days than necessary without my laptop.

My only other beef with Dell (other than this laptop failing so much) is as follows. My DVD-RW drive goes out of action -- pesky, because I was reformatting my computer and trying to boot off of some disk or other. So they're happy to replace my drive, and I specifically ask for a non-NEC replacement drive because I had had bad experiences it even when it was mostly working, and the dvd-rws they make seem fairly universally hated. They said they'd be happy to send me a non-NEC drive, and....they sent me an NEC drive. It's been working fine so far, but it still annoys me that they said they'd do one thing, don't do it, and don't give me any notification or explanation.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, I'm lukewarm on the Dell topic, but for the simple fact that I had 6 different hardware failures I'm switching to a different brand. I've heard that HP has cleaned up their hardware act in the last year or so...

 

I think an important subject that has been touched upon in this thread is the issue of training - I deal with call centres all the time, and can vouch that there are many locally based call centres that provide equally horrible service. The difference in my eyes appears to be in the work environment and training.

With contact centres that pay their staff adequately, give them freedom to bend the rules and fix problems, and (most importantly) train them well and re-train at regular intervals, issues like the ones mentioned above are a non-issue.

Unfortunately, too many contact centre employees (local and overseas) are forced to work in unstimulating conditions and to follow a 'script' for each and every call; They're treated like an expendable commodity, which is not conducive to proactivity and ownership of customer problems.

Dell and their contractors in India need to work on their training scheme. I agree the service wasn't very good at all. Conversely, the Dell business call centre in (Singapore? Malaysia?) was excellent. I spoke to a knowledgable sales rep, who obviously wasn't 'under the pump', and could spend the time to address my enquiry; She provided me with a direct contact email address, and personally made changes to an order I had after I emailed her with a request.

 

Dell's service is okay. They get the job done, even if it takes a bit longer to get the message through.