Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
Well, my refurb D420 from the Dell Outlet arrives yesterday afternoon. I get bad vibes: it looks more like someone had returned it, rather than the way a shipment from Dell looks. Take everything out. Cosmetically perfect on the outside -- WHEW!!!
Ok, not so fast ... I plug it it and try to power it up ... NADA. Remove the battery & try again ... still NADA. So, after an hour on the phone with tech support, who had me take out the battery, hard drive and memory (and boy, did it look like someone had worked on it with a hammer and chisel. The metal lips were roughly gouged through to the bare metal. He had me perform a few tests, and determined that it had a bad motherboard (how, pray tell, did a unit with a bad motherboard somehow get through the refurb process? Gee, could it be a lease return simply retdirected my way?).
Now, the real hell began. I was told I could return it and buy another from the outlet. Unfortunately, at that time there was nothing similar, and anything with comparable specs was several hundred dollars more than the one I had purchased. I told them that was unaccetable, as I paid for a functioning refurb., never got one, and now they want me to pay more for a D430? They then said they could do an exchange for a comparable system in the outlet, but again, there was nothing comparable there at the time. Finally, they said they would wait for a similar system to come in, add whatever parts were required to match the configuration I paid for, and that it should be ready to go by early next week. They then assigned me a case manager and sent me her name and phone number.
Lo and behold, later that evening, a nearly identical unit appeared on the Outlet, but at $1,259.00, as opposed to the $929.00 I had paid (do they even have a system for their refurb pricing???). So, I attempted to call the case manager to get an even exchange for that system, as I had been told by 2 individuals at Dell that such could be done. I call the number and get a voice mail message informing me that "Alicia" is on maternity leave. Lucky me. So, I call customer care, get some guy in India (why, when as a biz customer I am paying for North American service???), who didn't listen to a thing I said, assigned a new case number when I told him one wasn't needed, then told me he would put me on hold and return with the number and the phone number to customer care ... after 20 minutes of waiting on hold, it disconnected!
The next morning (today) I called customer care, who after reading all my notes and blah ... transfers me to sales; I go through it again with them, and they transfer me back to customer care, who after forvever now transfers me to technical support. They inform me that everything I was told was false. There is a D420 waiting in the depo for parts, and it would take at least 2 weeks for the parts to even arrive! I again informed her of what I was told, and she flat out stated that it was false! She suggested that I simply return the $929 unit and buy the identical $1,259 unit without a credit for me to get the same price! I demanded to speak to her manager.
The manager then told me that he had the rep chatting with Resolutions to try to get me the exchange I was told I could get, but in the mean time kept trying to talk me into returning it and paying $330 more for the same unit! He put me back on with the rep, and I waited while she continued chatting with Resolutions. After forever, she said that they would have a manager call me in 24-48 hours. This being a Thursday, that meant that the unit would be gone by then, and with the weekend, I would simply start this whole fiasco over again with someone else on Monday or Tuesday -- I said no. Finally, she said she could do nothing more than make me wait several weeks to get a used laptop with a parts swap, which I said was unacceptable. I demanded a return and to file a formal complaint. She said I would have to be transferred back to customer care for a third time, and made me wait forever while she entered her notes.
I then held while she transferred me to customer care. I held for about 10 minutes, and a person named Andrew picked up and said he was from the "Resolutions Dept."! He then kept trying to talk me into waiting several weeks for the used laptop with used parts thrown into it (which he admitted could have significant cosmetic defects). As we talked, he said a little too much. Here, as he related, is Dell's policy and rationale on refurb returns and exchanges:
In order to ensure that you are past your 21 day return period, there is a 2 week mandatory wait to even PROCESS your exhange! He said that is to ensure that they don't "lose our investment in 'building' your replacement machine." How despicable can you get???
I told him I wouldn't be stuck with some scratched up POS for a 3 year lease with no return option -- in essence, I would then be STUCK FOR 3 YEARS with whatever they decided to send me! He tried to get a manager to override this -- no go.
So, finally, a business customer who has purchased 4 Dell laptops in the past 6 months is sent a lease return as a "refurbished unit", ordered to dismantle it to ensure that it's dead on arrival and not actually refurbished, told he's stuck with it, had to take a day off to accept delivery at home of this POS (I have a secure office that UPS can't enter), spend hours on the phone with no less than 10 individuals all telling me different things (the misrepresentations given to me by the first 2 people I spoke to were mindboggling), and now I don't have my laptop and must trek this thing to the UPS depot several miles away to return it. I had to close a law office for 1 1/2 days over this (I've lost god knows how much), racked up hundreds of minutes in over charges on my cell phone (can't wait to get the bill), and I'm told they'll "try" to give me a $100 coupon for the "inconvenience."
I'll never buy anothe Dell. I was initially defrauded by getting an unchecked lease return rather than a refurbished unit, then given misrepresentations on the exchange policy, then they refused to honor those misrepresentations, then when I demanded a return they tried to talk me out of it forever, then finally gave me my darned return. Sorry for the rambling, but my God, I never in my wildest dreams would have expected something like this out of Dell. This is how you treat someone who has spent over $5,000 with them in 6 months so heinously??? Don't they care about retaining business customers???
I'll be filing fraud complaints with the appropriate authorities.
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You may also send an email to customer advocate. There are Dell technicians lurking around these forums and they also give out their email address. Just try to do a search in the forums.
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I don't have experiences with snailmail being given priority but still, I would prefer email, if properly addressed, still as the better option. I've heard of some issues that an email directed or addressed directly to a person gets taken care of immediately, probably the next day rather than the next week. This somewhat works the same way with a case being escalated. Once the issue is escalated to a case manager, it gets owned by this manager until resolved. Anyway, this is just my two cents as i've never read stories by customers using snail mail...
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Man, you don't know what DELL did with me.
But I won't post it here, because I am getting help now. Let's see how things work out.
Un-freaking-Real, Dell!
Discussion in 'Dell' started by offbase, Oct 4, 2007.
