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Hey everyone,
I ordered a Dell XPS M1530 notebook last week and it's been a hellish nightmare since day one, and I wound up cancelling the order today. If you want something to read or have a story to share about Dell Canada, give 'er.
First off, I placed the order on the night of the 21st of May and used Dell Financial Services as the payment method, which I didn't have a problem with. The original configuration was too much according to chat agent "Srinivas" (I was only approved up to $2,500) so I told them to drop the warranty down to "1 Year Return to Depot, CompleteCare, and Technical Support" which does not include LoJack (I didn't want LoJack anyway). This would have lowered the price to $2,499.95 on the nose with taxes included.
So he changed the configuration and soon later I received the order confirmation e-mail. I checked over the specifications and they were incorrect and the order also included LoJack. I went back to Dell Chat and asked if there was any way that the order could be modified to the correct specifications, and was informed by Srinivas that the order could not be modified and that the specifications that he put in the order were what I had requested, which is incorrect. When I tried to explain to him that the order was not right, he told me that the order was In Production and ended the session.
I called Dell later in the evening when I returned from work and explained the situation, and they cancelled my order and told me to create a new order on the website with the correct specifications and that there would not be any issues.
After I got off the phone, I went to bed as it was getting late, and the next day I attempted to recreate the order and went through the process once again for Dell Financial Services only for it to come back with an unknown credit status error and that I could continue with the order (a Dell representative would contact me within 48 hours), so I did.
The next day, I got the order confirmation e-mail and another e-mail from Dell Financial Services with another account number set up... checked everything in the confirmation e-mail and it was correct, so I left it at that and was going to check the status later on. When I did, I discovered a THIRD order -- for the same price, and same specifications. So I once again went back to Dell Chat and asked why there was a duplicate order and they stated that the second order was cancelled and the latest order number was the correct one. From there, they got the sales representative who placed the order (Sridhar) to call me and he apologized for the confusion and offered to expedite the order and that it was in production as of the time of that call, so we decided to call it a night.
Monday, I receive an e-mail stating that my order was on hold, and was not given a reason. When I called Dell, the representative on the phone had absolutely no patience or manners whatsoever and acted like he didn't give a damn, and then passed me to Sridhar, the representative that placed the order. I asked why the order was on hold and he said that it would be in production within one hour and hung up on me. I kept an eye on the "My Account" page (which is notorious for updating a hell of a lot faster than the Order Status page on Dell.ca) and by the end of the day it was still sitting at "Order Processing".
Tuesday, I come home from work and there was a message from Dell on my phone, stating that my order was on hold and that I needed to call them back, so I did. I was once again sent to Sridhar, who told me very rudely that the order would be in production in one hour and that I was not to call back. This left me rather furious, but I left it at that, and kept an eye on the status and sure enough, within 2 hours it went into production. Huge relief there... or so I thought.
Dell later calls me during the remainder of the day to inform me that the laptop would ship at the end of June/first of August. My ESD was June 12th, so I thought there might have been a delay and called to see what the hold up would be and I managed to get a really nice rep here in Canada who informed me there were no delays and that the order should arrive by the 16th. They apologized for any inconvenience and also told me that Dell Canada cannot expedite orders and have no control over the priority unless it is a service call order (which contradicts what Sridhar informed me the day the order got re-placed), but I wasn't worried about it.
Today, I come home from work to find another message from Dell on my phone stating that the order was going to be delayed until the end of August. At this point I'm thinking "okay, what the hell, does the left hand talk to the right hand, do these guys know what they're doing?" and give Customer Service a call. The first representative I got to basically made stuff up, I asked to speak to a supervisor and he said he didn't have a supervisor, he pulled up the order information and basically said this:
"Hm OK I see your laptop is in boxing... ship date is 12th of June but I can expedite that I can have your laptop delivered on the 7th of June" (mind you, the 7th is a Saturday and the last time I checked, Purolator doesn't deliver on Saturdays...), when I asked again for a supervisor/manager he got very angry at me and hung up on me. This was the point where I was getting a bit angry myself and decided to see if I could get ahold of a friend of mine who worked in XPS Tech Support in Edmonton, so I tried to call his extension and lo-and-behold, it didn't exist.
Decided to do a Google search to see if I could find another number that I could use to perhaps get through to customer service that would actually care. During this search, I found out that Dell closed their contact center in Edmonton (and screwing the city out of the agreement it signed, along with laying off 900+ people), and that the contact center in Ottawa would be closed as well.
I called back one last time to see if I could get ahold of someone and sure enough I managed to get ahold of a rep in the Ottawa call center. I explained the situation and they apologized and informed me that there is a back-order on 9-cell batteries, and that my notebook wasn't even beginning to be assembled yet. I asked him to confirm if there was a way to expedite orders and he said that there was none that he was aware of, so he brought in his manager on a conference call and we discussed the situation, and his manager told me the same thing, that Dell has no way of expediting orders and that what the sales rep told me was false. I asked the representative if they were located in Canada and he said yes, so I asked if they were being closed by any chance.
He informed me of a few things:
- All of Dell's Canadian call centers are being closed as of Friday (there are two currently remaining until this date).
- Dell's Edmonton office has been closed.
- All technical support and customer care inquiries for Dell Canada would be sent to agents in India or the Phillipines.
After this, I decided to cancel my order. I already dealt with enough bull**** from Dell's customer care and sales team based out of India in the last week, I sure as hell wasn't going to spend $2,500 to wind up with what might as well be non-existant product support.
Dell seems to be taking a turn for the worse. I have a Dimension 3000 and a 3100 which work absolutely fine along with an older OptiPlex GX110 which is still kicking. My XPS machine from last year was replaced not once, not twice, but THREE times because of hardware failure within 4 months, at which point I wound up getting a refund. Apparently things aren't getting any better.
Customer service should be exactly that -- there to support the customer with their purchases, from the time you go to place the order and follow through even after the customer has received the computer. Dell used to have a direct sales model which worked great, but now they seem to be branching off and focusing more and more with pre-configured systems being sold in Staples, Future Shop, Best Buy, etc and less with the rest of their home consumers. Instead, at this point, Dell Canada seems to be giving most of their customers the run-around, not able to provide a straight answer and really don't know what the hell they are doing, and to top it off over 1,500 people in Canada are out of a job or seeking other employment because Dell decided to pull the plug and outsource everything.
If anyone from Dell Canada actually reads this, I've got a piece of advice for you: Get your act together before you crash and burn, Hewlett-Packard already took the #1 PC manufacturer spot in the market and at this rate Dell is going to fall off the chart or hit number #5 (which I believe is currently held by Sony...)
I've worked in technical support as a front-line agent, and I've worked other jobs where the customer is always first. No lying, no transferring off to other departments or hanging up just to get them off the phone, the customer should walk away happy, right now, Dell Canada can't seem to do that (and the staff that they do have on the front line that know what the hell they're doing will be gone at the end of Friday...)
The sad state of Dell Canada...
Discussion in 'Dell' started by iCeFuSiOn, May 28, 2008.
