I just had to share: my Dell replacement computer crashed twice today — while I was filling out a customer service satisfaction survey for them. Does it get any better than that?
I can but laugh. By all means, share your latest poetic moment!
Tentative good news on the computer front, I’m happy to say. Dell has supposedly shipped a refurbished replacement system that will supposedly arrive tomorrow and will supposedly be functional. They will supposedly also be shipping the disc for Microsoft Office separately, so someday I will again be able to word process on a keyboard larger than three square inches.
Lest I disappoint, however, my interactions with Dell have gotten no less ridiculous since my last post. Now that there’s some reasonable prospect of my getting some kind of functional system back prior to retirement, the total confusion at Dell customer service has passed beyond frustrating to fascinating. Despite the fact that I wrote a letter to Dell’s president for consumer products and the customer service folks are clearly taking me seriously, they cannot get their s*** together to save their lives. It is like watching the fall of the Roman Empire. I really think this is how it happened. One side of the empire doesn’t know what the other side is doing, communication lines fall, a few key shipments are lost, and the next thing you know, the barbarians are sweeping down from the north waving bankruptcy papers.
I’m now dealing only with the escalation department. That’s nice, since they speak better English and seem to have slightly more ability to take actual action than the regular customer service people. Even they, however, cannot get themselves straight. I have been receiving multiple daily phone calls from different people, who, as always, have conflicting stories to tell me every time they call. Your computer will ship Friday! Your computer will ship tomorrow! You will be able to access your old hard drive! You will not be able to access your old hard drive! How do they not know when they call that someone in their department called ten minutes earlier with a different story? Being as they are a computer company, surely they have a computer system recording this stuff. (The opinion of a friend of the family at IBM? Dell’s lost my system and doesn’t want to admit it. Did I mention I’m glad I didn’t send my hard drive?)
The latest? A replacement system will be shipped to me. And Escalation Guy #1 will have my old system shipped back to me SO THAT I CAN SHIP IT BACK TO DELL. Seriously? Dear God, people, what kind of ship are you running? I have to admit that despite earlier posts I had been sort of hoping Dell would wow me (with say, a new system) in such a way that I could go back to being a Dell customer in good conscience. But this? This is the path to bankruptcy, folks. Don’t count on buying a new Dell and being able to rely on your warranty, because if they keep running things like this, they won’t be around long enough to back it up for you.
Dell has finally broken my spirits. I’m not sure I have the strength to go into the ridiculousness that has occurred since my last post. Suffice it to say that it involved representations that my computer would be overnighted to me by tomorrow (not gonna happen) and a circus of different people telling me conflicting information about what was wrong with the computer, sometimes several times a day. Finally, Dell has achieved an indefinite delay to replace a part that was in perfectly good condition when I sent it to them and that the service depot apparently broke. Is it just me, or should I not have an additional month’s delay because DELL broke something?
They now claim I’ll have a refurbished system in two weeks, but I’m not holding my breath. It seems like it’s just about time for me to start looking for a new computer, and I sure as hell won’t be buying another Dell. Of course, I can’t shop for it online, but I guess there are always computer magazines. Anyone have recommendations?
It is like the Keystone Kops over there, folks. After posting Wednesday, I got an email telling me that the computer (which I’d been told Monday had been fixed, remember) had been shipped out. I replied to the email asking again if a tracking number was available. Well, yesterday I got a call telling me that there had been an update that morning saying that not only had it not been shipped, it had not been fixed, and was waiting for a part on backorder so that it could be fixed. ”I am going to ask you to wait another five to seven business days.” Right. When asked, he had no idea why I’d been told it had been fixed, what was wrong with it, what part was missing, or why I’d been told it had shipped, despite the fact that he’d been the one who sent the email saying it had shipped.
Come on, people. I realize that repairs can take time, but what kind of part could my computer need that could possibly take the manufacturer over three weeks to get? I would be okay being patient if I was getting the impression that they knew what they are doing over there, but after the it’s fixed-it’s shipped-it’s not shipped OR fixed debacle, I am starting to get the impression that my computer is caught in a vortex of incompetence that may not even be aware that there’s a computer in there. And for more than a month. Good God. I was originally happy my computer was still on warranty, but I’m starting to wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off buying a new computer from someone else. This level of confusion from a company the size of Dell is pretty impressive…
With luck, the long saga of my dry spell should be over soon. Supposedly my computer is now fixed, some two weeks after the Dell service depot received it and a week and a half after they obtained the part they needed for it. About time, too. I think I have watched the entire TV oeuvre of David Bromstad, and I suspect I’m going to start running out of Divine Design soon too. That said, I am going to share with you my latest call from Dell’s customer service folks because, well, people who make calls this dumb deserve to have it posted about on the internet.
The genius responsible for my last call from Dell (“Have you received your computer yet? Oh, no, we haven’t fixed it yet. And I have no update for you.”) said during that call that she’d call me in a few days with an update. That didn’t happen. Fine, no big. I finally emailed Dell again on Saturday afternoon asking for an update on whether it had been shipped or whether it was going to ship soon, in the hopes they’d send me a tracking number. In response to this email, someone called me on Labor Day. He opened by asking if I had my computer yet. Uh, no, I just emailed to ask if it had been shipped. Oh, he knew that, that’s why he was calling. And it hadn’t shipped yet. So WHY was he asking if I’d received it? Who knows. (Clearly not because he thought it had been delivered Labor Day weekend.) He then told me it’d been fixed but not shipped. Since it took their carrier over a week to bring the prepacked box they sent me from me to them, I asked him if they could send it overnight or two-day air to avoid a repeat of that lag, being as my original warranty call to Dell was over a month ago. He responded that it shouldn’t take that long. I repeated my question about expediting it. He repeated his nonanswer several times. Dude, I realize that. I am so with you on how it should not take more than a week for a computer to get from here to Houston. What you are not saying is that you will take steps to prevent it from taking that long again.
I left this call unclear on whether he was going to do anything but rely on usual procedures to assume that my laptop would get shipped. That’s okay. I have email on my cell phone and leftover instincts from being a lawyer. They have had my damn computer for three full weeks now. If I don’t get a tracking number by the end of the day…
Oh, Dell customer service, how I love thee. After giving me a requested update on Thursday, my customer service called from Mumbai or wherever it is that she’s located yesterday to give me an “update.” I put that in quotes because she started the call by asking me if I had received the computer yet. Uh, no. And shouldn’t that be in your system? Why, yes, she did have that information. She hadn’t actually checked the system yet. On checking, she told me that there was no update. Frankly, I hadn’t expected there to be one on a Sunday only one and a half business days after my last check. That said, why did Dell call to tell me they had nothing to say?
I had been hopeful that I’d get my computer back shortly after Labor Day, but if that’s representative of Dell’s labor force, I am starting to wonder. Oy.