I used to get fairly good service from Dell once upon a time. But since they've out sourced there "customer service," the very name has become an oxymoron. The last two days I've been dealing with them would make a good script for a survival show or a horror movie. I was going to buy a Precision Workstation 670. Order canceled.

Has anyone else had any experience with them lately?

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As you know, having spoken to you about it, I ordered an off-the-shelf printer. It was on offer so very cheap. For that reason I stayed with it despite problems early on. But after many, many telephone calls to various call centres around the world, and having had to use 2 of my floating days off (I only get 4 free days a year, the rest having to be 'booked' in advance as I am a postman) waiting for the damn thing, I would never use them again. It finally arrived after 7 failed deliveries, over 2 months after I ordered it.

I know most of the problems were with the courier they use rather than Dell itself. But try getting any help or sense, or even a return call/e-mail out of them!!!

Dell - Booooooooo

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I have nothing but bad things to say about Dell’s customer service, every problem I have had has taken numerous very long phone calls to sort out. One problem I had should have been a no brainer for any IT person but I was told that what I wanted to do was not possible with XP but after ten minutes on the Microsoft site I found that it was in fact very easy to do. I emailed a letter of complaint, which they say they try to reply to within 24hrs, I’m just glad I didn’t decide to hold my breath or I would have died a long time ago.

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Anthony

I choose option C. C is for crap.

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> I used to get fairly good service from Dell once upon a time. But since
> they've out sourced there "customer service," the very name has become an
> oxymoron. The last two days I've been dealing with them would make a good
> script for a survival show or a horror movie.
>
> Has anyone else had any experience with them lately?
>

They are in the process of dragging their (US) customer service back to America, but it will likely remain outsourced. (Someone I know is taking a job with them in the southeastern US and the contractor is ramping up for a large operation).

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Stewie: So, is there any tread left on the tires? Or at this point would it be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway?

Fox Sunday (US) at 9PM ET/PT

My recent experience with Dell started out fine. Pressing the power button gave no response, so I did some superficial troubleshooting but could not find the problem. Online troubleshooting tips did not help, so I used their chat room troubleshooting option and the technician who worked with me came to the conclusion that I had fried my power supply. He suggested that I bring my 16 month old computer (four months out of warranty) to a local repair shop to confirm the diagnosis. The local repair folks found that it was both the power supply and the motherboard that had gone bad. (I assume that a surge in the power supply output fried the motherboard, since I have excellent surge protection between the wall and the computer.)

Now the bad news. Most of Dell's products are packed with proprietary components. The new parts plus shipping from Dell came to $211, and there was a delay of six days before the parts would ship. Locally, in order to replace the motherboard and power supply I would actually have to buy a new power supply, a new motherboard, a new CPU (the old one would not fit in anything but Dell's motherboard), new memory (same reason), and for some reason a new case. Next time, I guess I'll have to get the three or four year extended warranty. I have never had to worry about a long-term warranty in the past as I am somewhat competent "under the hood", at least for fairly easy component replacement like this.

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http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/192820


look right and click on watch this.

> http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/192820
>
>
> look right and click on watch this.
>



Good one Tony

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<img src=\"http://boinc.mundayweb.com/seti2/stats.php?userID=1322\">

@ Tony Ehrler

That was great! If I only had it that easy with Dell. It would take you an hour to read the story about my current experience with them. As it was, I had to cancel a US$3,600 workstation order with them, because of their sales/service stupidity. I wasn't trying to fix a problem, I was trying to buy one.

Here's a "Click Link" for your posted URL.

Dell Customer Support

Click on "Watch This Movie." Then hit play.

It's priceless!

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thought some of you would of liked that.

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<img src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/seti2/stats.php?userID=1777">

Let's not let the thread go off in the wrong direction.

Anyway, I just sent in a bank draught to Apple for a G5 2.5G box. Their sales is in Ireland and their customer service and tech support are in the U.S.A. They're polite, knowledgable, and professional. Never again will I subject myself to Dell. I won't buy from HP as well; all their support is located in India just like Dell. As a matter of fact, I won't be doing any business with any company or institution that out sources their customer services to the third world. I'll be checking first before I buy. They're just not ready for it.

As a buyer and customer I vote with my money; the old fashion capitalist way.

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just build your own computer its not that hard and they are alot better then any thing you can get at the store. i run a dual amd with 1 gig of ddr, a 80 gig hd and a perty nice 256 meg vid card. never have any trouble with them and the only customer service to talk to is my self. i have built all of my computers 4 of them in all and all they do is work.

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<img src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/seti2/stats.php?userID=1777">

> just build your own computer its not that hard and they are alot better then
> any thing you can get at the store. i run a dual amd with 1 gig of ddr, a 80
> gig hd and a perty nice 256 meg vid card. never have any trouble with them and
> the only customer service to talk to is my self. i have built all of my
> computers 4 of them in all and all they do is work.
>

You are right, and it's not that hard to build your own, but then I get enticed by high-end components and wind up spending much more that I would have with a premade box from Dell/Gateway/HP that has similar speed/size.

I know, I know, the finished product will be much better and (probably) last longer, but what about a warranty?

P.S. Can one really build their own Mac from the case up?

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Well, Dell can go to hell now for all I care. I just ordered an Apple Power Mac 2.5, 250G HD, 2G mem G5 liquid cooled monster from hell. It'll beat the crap out of most PC's. Plus their service and support is in the USA, Canada, and Ireland. It would be pretty difficult to roll your own at home.

If anyone owns stock in either Dell or HP, I would get rid out it ASAP. It takes awhile, but eventually word will get around, and they'll be in for a big corporate surprise. Anyone remember AT&T, as an example.

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I used to purchase from 100 to 200 new Dell's every year, always with a 3 year service contract. I try to replace the computers just as the contract expires.

About two years ago one of our Dell Precision Workstations had a fan failure. There are 3 fans in the unit, 1 in the power supply, 1 for the CPUs and 1 for the memory. Dell wasn't sure if the problem was the CPU or memory fan, so they said they'd send me both.

One freakin year later, after complaining via e-mail and telephone, I finally got the memory fan. Turns out that wasn't the one that was bad. It has been 2 years now and I still don't have the CPU fan.

I placed another call regarding upgrading a PowerEdge server from Windows NT to Windows 2003. I was told that updating the RAID firmware was required, and they sent me detailed instructions. After following these instructions to the letter, my system would no longer see the existing containers. I called back to Dell and was told that there was one line in the instructions that should have been deleted before they sent it to me. This one line basically trashed my RAID containers and they then told me that starting from scratch and restoring from my backup was the only solution. Dell server support is still handled in the US, by the way. A $249 call to Microsoft brought a solution that saved me 24 to 36 hours.

I made 1 final call to our account manager, explaining 1 more time what was going on before I told him that I had just placed my first order with someone else for 100 systems.

In my case, the "customer service" being in India had nothing to do with it. My servers have gone HP, my laptops Toshiba, and my upcoming desktop order is still undecided (except they will NOT be Dell).

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HP's tech support is in India as well. It has the same smell as Dell. I hope for your sake that their server support is not there as well.

IMHO everyone should check with any supplier of goods or services to see what kind of market support they have. If they've out sourced their customer service to the third world, they don't care about their customers, just the bottom line. Third world out sourcing equals third world service.

Enjoy!

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