I ordered a Dell XPS 400 desktop on 7/10/06. It shipped on 7/13/06, and after one failed delivery attempt (I wasn’t home to sign for it) I picked it up at the UPS depot in York on 7/18/06.

I brought it home, promptly hooked it up, and powered it on.

The first thing I noticed was that for a supposedly “silent” case, it sounded like a jet engine. The second thing I noticed was that it was dead on arrival.

Thus began my unpleasant experience with Dell Customer Care, and why I no longer recommend Dell products…

First call to Customer Care

That night (Tuesday), I called the Dell Customer Care number given on my packing slip, but after waiting for about five minutes on hold “Pamela” informed me that I had called the wrong number and that she would transfer me. Another five minutes or so on hold, and then I began the troubleshooting process with the Dell tech support person. After 75 minutes on the phone, I was given a case number, a dispatch number and was told that they would have one of their on-site techs call me “within 24-48 hours” to schedule an appointment.

Follow-up call

The 48 hour mark came and went without a call.

So I called Dell back to see why they hadn’t called me. The support person told me that they did indeed call, but that I wasn’t home. (Rather unlikely considering someone was home for the majority of the day and no phone numbers showed up on the Called ID log.) They assured me that there was no way I could schedule the appointment while I was already on the phone, and that they would call me back at promptly 5 PM the next day. I gave them my work number just in case they had to call before 5 PM.

On-site repairs

At approximately 10 AM the next day (Friday), Banctec (Dell’s on-site contractor) called my home number… and of course I wasn’t home. I got the message when I got home, called back, and scheduled an appointment for later that night. The Bantec employee arrived at approximately 7:30 PM and replaced the hard drive. Not with a new drive as I was told on the phone earlier, but rather a refurbished drive. That didn’t fix the problem, so she called Dell tech support to get more recommendations. After rebooting countless times and disabling various features including the dual-core, she gave up.

Returning the dead box

I said that at this point I no longer wanted the computer. It didn’t work. I had wasted hours on the phone and an entire Friday night with the tech. The box sounded like an airplane, and I was generally unhappy with the whole experience. I wanted to send it back for a full refund, as per Dell policy.

With the Banctec tech in the room, I called Dell Customer Service to get a return number. Eventually I was connected to a woman who, rather than work with me to return the defective product, argued with me and was extremely confrontational. Eventually she gave me the return number and we agreed that I would go to the local UPS Store to return it.

Wasting more time at the UPS Store

The UPS Store employees were familiar with Dell returns, but I needed more information beyond the number that I got from Dell. So they ended up calling Dell (and waiting on hold) and eventually getting everything they needed to return the computer. The whole process took over an hour.

Getting my money back

Eventually I did receive an email from Dell saying that my account had been credited the amount of the computer. I’ll need to check my credit card statement to confirm that, but for now I’ll assume that I did get my money back.

Conclusion

What amazes me is how unpleasant Dell made the whole experience for me. At every step I was put on hold, connected to unsympathetic and unhelpful personnel, made to sit through various repair attempts, and then culminating in an argument about returning a product well within the allotted timeframe. A miserable experience from one end to the other… and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I certainly can’t say that I know Dell behaves this way in all cases. I’ve ordered from them before and it wasn’t a problem. But after this experience I find it very hard to honestly recommend their products or services to anyone.

Maybe there’s a reason Dell keeps missing those quarterly earnings forecasts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Hardware, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.