Dell Hell

I haven't actually posted in well over a year but due to the simply appalling customer service, or total lack of service I have received over the last few days I have felt compelled to make a post.

Ordered a Dell inspiron from their UK website, a new build to replace my mum's old and rather 'retro' machine. The spec looked perfect for what she wanted and was within budget so we decided that it would be a good investment. As far as I knew Dell was a world famous company with machines in most offices, schools and homes so they must be pretty good, right? Wrong, so very, very wrong. The machine arrived as planned only upon opening the box the PC was heard to rattle. Not a good sound for any electrical device I think you'll agree, but there you go. I decided that it would be prudent to check the new rattling PC before connecting it to the mains and so I took a peek inside. Turns out whoever built the thing, probably some underpaid, under appreciated Dell minion, decided that enough was enough and rather than assemble the computer he/she was just going to arrange all the components in the bottom of the machine and send it out self-assembly style.
Well everyone at home agreed that this wasn't good enough so we packaged the comp back up and tried to call Dell, the huge, international company with products in most offices, schools etc...only it was a Saturday and of course Dell don't offer customer support during hours when people find it most convenient to sit down for a 2 hour love-in with call waiting. So I waited until Monday to try and call, and so began my own personal Dell odyssey. First off I had to neogatiate the usual maze of automated caller response messages only to reach a dead dial tone each time. Finally I found a line that worked and was connected to an enthusiastic but hopelessly incompetent fella somewhere in India. He took my Dell order number, which I will never be able to forget having repeated it several hundred times, no less than 6 times, only to tell me that no such number existed. We tried my Dell customer number and delivery number as well, all equally non-existent. So he connected me to what he described as the 'right department.' Another round of Dell order numbers and I'm shunted along to someone else, equally clueless only this time the line is so bad I have to shout down the line make myself heard. I'm reconnected and the line goes dead. And so it went on for an hour and a half. What made me truly sick was the thought that I had encouraged my mum to purchase additional customer care. How was, I wondered, was an elderly women with limited technological knowledge of anything more complicated than a carrot, supposed to be able pick her way through the morass of pointless questions and endless repetition only to be asked to describe the technical fault when I, a reasonably computer literate young adult was left gasping for breath after only an hour and a half?
So I left it for a day as I was pretty sick of Dell by now. Tried to E-mail, but no response despite a promise by Dell to respond within 24 hours. Bullshit. So called again on the Wednesday. After only 40 minutes I discoverd someone who actually sounded like they wanted to help. She apologised, asked for my Dell order number and then reconnected me. Finally, after another half an hour of life waste, I was offered a new computer, but of course, I'll have to wait a month for that.

The moral of the story is NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER purchase ANYTHING from Dell as should you ever require some customer 'support' you will have to fight to get it and will be left feeling abused. I have since checked the Net and was comforted to see that I am only one of thousands of disgruntled customers left stunned by Dell's total lack of conscience. It is a shame because I am sure that if the products delivered what they promised Dell would be a good choice. From now on I am going to locally source as much as I can as I would rather speak to Geoff at the local computer shop and pay that little bit extra than have to deal with Dell.