A Dell Customer Service Dispute
facebook.com
facebook.com
Memorializing their intial response before their social media team is paged and freaks out...
We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. We will take this as a feedback and we will forward it to the relevant team. As per our records, we see that the Escalation team is handling this case and they are the highest point of contact. Please continue to work with them to avoid any confusion. Our team defers to the Escalation team.
-Senthil
As this case has been escalated to the highest authority, we will have limited options to work on it. Apologize as I cannot comment on this but I would still recommend you to contact them as they are the only team who can help you to resolve the issues on your system. -Krishna
I told him if [returning the laptop again is] the best solution that he can provide (customer care is not an iterative process), I would have no option but to pursue this through my university's legal department.
So what was the best solution that the complainer wanted? It seems like a replacement would have been a pretty reasonable thing to ask for at this point.
This, on the other hand, from one of the complainant's Facebook replies: In that case, please give me all the details of Prawin K from Dells Bangalore office so that I can sue him in India and the US.
Pro tip from someone running a support team: threatening legal action is usually a surefire way to cause your support case to screech to a grinding halt, since this requires that lawyers get called in and support engineers have to stop work until they've done their due diligence. What's more, the result of that due diligence may be "we'd prefer not to have you as a customer anymore, kthxbai".
Then again, this buffoon on Dell's side clearly hasn't received that particular memo: He simply told me that Dell was a very big company and had ample resources to outlast me and my university in a legal battle. Facepalm.
The fact that the issue persisted after the out-of-pocket repair, makes it obvious that the original product was defective. I know if I paid the price of laptop, was told it was my fault (when it wasn't), paid the price of a repair that didn't fix the issue, and was without the laptop for 60 days, I would be seeing red and probably prone to making belligerent statements.
After bungling so badly, Dell should be tripping over themselves to offer him a refund.
But I desperately needed this laptop working since I had two computational projects that were up for review.
What Dell does not understand is that for each trip my laptop takes to the depot, I am left without a laptop (these 2 months, for example). They said that this was not their problem, and compensating me for these hassles is not their headache.
After three weeks of this my patience was running thin and, before reporting the company to the telecommunications regulator, I thought I would give them one last chance and (very politely) emailed the CEO. When I checked my phone half an hour latter I had three calls and two emails from the guy in charge of quality (this is, btw, one of the five biggest telecoms in the world). From this point, it took them three days to fix the problem (a network systems upgrade gone wrong, not trivial), and finally got an email from this quality guy on a Saturday at 19:30. The current CEO did say he was going to make customer support a priority, and it seems he took that to heart. Can't fault him (the quality guy appears to have taken a massive chewing, by the way).
I have to say, I did stay polite and sympathetic throughout. It is not the agents' fault that they have a shit CMS, and it's just not cool to be rude anyway.
Besides, I've got that customer support T-shirt, albeit on a very specialised industry, and I've learned that the customer is most definitely not King. We had a "difficult" user once, who kept wasting our time and being rude to the other guys (not me for some reason), and this ended with my boss calling the customer's boss and telling him he would cancel their licence if this guy calls again. The recalcitrant user got let go that same day.
This is in reference to the Better Business Bureau correspondence that reached our corporate office. We appreciate you taking the time to bring this issue to our attention. Thank you for taking time and discussing the issue with me today, I apologize for the delay in getting the system issue resolved, we will make sure this time the depot engineers work on the system technical issue, test the system functionality before shipping the system to you. We regret to inform you that we are unable to accommodate your request towards providing a new system replacement, a complete refund for the original system or only the out of warranty charge or extend hardware warranty for six months. Kindly understand that the option provide to you by us is the best option we can provide you. Request you to reply to my email if you are find with the option we have offered.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the issue discussed today, please do reply to this email or call me and I would be glad to assist you further.
A big company may be different though, as it's very easy for legitimate problems to be masked/enabled by the bureaucracy. When you're a small company you generally know all the details and we certainly erred on the side of the customer to an absurd degree.
Basically threatening legal action or abusing front-line support staff were the only ways to ensure you definitely did not get the outcome you wanted, and half the time the exact opposite.
The only appropriate time to discuss lawsuits is directly with opposing counsel (or executive management) prior to filing, or after you file.
You're starting to see this across industries where their products and services are commoditized. Quite surprisingly, when the service / product turns into a commodity (due to competition), so does the customer (due to budgetary constraints)
If the school had purchased business-line PCs which are more suited to large organization use, they'd likely A. have gotten much better laptops, and B. gotten drastically better, on-site next day repairs.
But that costs about five times what they paid. So while I acknowledge, this situation sucks for the school, I kinda feel like we need to point out that they got what they paid for.
Cheap to buy, the machines have survived N years so by a Darwinian process any clunkers have been removed from the pool and they are built to a decent standard to start with. ChromeOS would imply cloud storage so students don't lose work &c. Depends on the use cases I imagine.
This. And then the Dell brand means the same as some OEM Chinese brand
And this is why Apple can charge what they charge per MB (even with all the shenanigans)
[1] https://www.change.org/p/prawin-k-dell-com-dell-computers-fi...
It just sucks for us little guys, because the only way to apply the same pressure is with publicity.
The day after tracking down the founder's email address a laptop was shipped FedEx direct from the factory.
Thought I'd share this with you to underline how bad their support is on every level.
Furthermore, Apple engineers just about everything to polarize you against the vast, vast majority which run Windows and Android. They also have an severely anemic selection of hardware that they are always using to experiment on how to get most of your money without providing any value.
In short, I'm sharing this with you to underline how shitty Apple is to their customers in every area, including support.
My advice: Just buy a $5 usb wifi for each of these computers.
Established companies are looking at these "new-fangled startups" and how the newer companies don't have expenses for cost centers like "inbound call queues" and "customer service" and managers at the older ones are thinking, "hey, how can we cut those costs, too?"
If customer service is made so difficult to obtain as to be nearly impossible to receive except under the most outlying of circumstances, surely the companies in question will go out of business...or become Google.
Each time I had it replaced apparently it extended the warranty for 1 more year.
The laptop scorched a mark in my table.
The charger exploded and scorched my carpet. They wouldn't exchange it until I told them I would send my bill for the carpet as well....
I didn't buy a Dell again for 8 years...wonder what is going to happen with this one.
Do you happen to have a link stating this?
I only found http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar... but it doesn't say exactly what you say.
http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...
Per country you'll see that eg. Germany and Greece reset the warranty period after repair/part exchange but Czech Republic and UK don't. As I come from a country that does reset the warranty period I wrongly assumed it is part of the EU regulation.
Bottom line some countries respect the consumer more :)
Like an idiot, I bought a cheap 3D printer called OneUp, built it, plugged it into the laptop and blew the laptop up. The 3D printer company both refused responsibility for printer replacement and laptop replacement despite somehow putting 240V onto the USB like due to bad circuit design.
Last port of call was to contact Dell for advice how to fix it, who then informed me it's still in warranty (bought the laptop from eBay so had no idea).
Sent it away, got it back and the parts sheet mentioned that they replaced everything in it. Everything. They gave me a brand new laptop inside it's slightly older chasis!
We than spent the next hour diagnosing the fact that it was, in fact, a broken harddrive. Although I told them this from the start, I can understand them wanting to verify this, but the we had found what seemed to be enough evidence that it was a broken HDD within the first 10 minutes, then just ran around in circles (I assume looking for a scripted error code that never showed up for some reason).
Once we were done, they agreed to send me a replacement drive, and I asked if it would be possible to upgrade the drive and pay for the difference. They then spent about half an hour looking up what HDD options were available. Once I decided which one I wanted, I was informed that I would be paying for the full price of the drive (but they could still send it instead of the free, non upgraded, one I was entitled to by warranty). I declined and asked for the free one.
Once that was done, as we were finalizing the shipping details, I was informed that I would need to send back my broken drive, which I was not willing to do. Eventually I agreed to just pay for a new drive (in retrospect, I should have hung up and bought the drive from another source). They sent me a drive and told me I would be receiving a bill.
The bill never came. Two weeks later, I called them again and spent another two hours trying to pay; before being told that I cannot pay because I have not been billed yet because I had not yet failed to return my broken drive in time. About a month after that, I get a voicemail from them about my failure to return my drive.
I try to call back, but due to ( I presume) time zone differences I never managed to reach them during office hours, so I just got to voice mail where I had to leave a message asking them to call me back. Despite this, I still had to wait through about half an hour of holding to get a line to the voicemail. After going through this dance a few times, I just asked them to email me the bill, after which point I payed them the $70 for the hard drive.
The only other company to come close is Sandisk, who once sent me an upgraded version of my mp3 player when my head phone jack broke
[0]
Cue a pneumatic drill and a circular saw. Modern drives are surprisingly hard to drill, btw, what with being so dense.
After the second replacement failed too after a couple of weeks, I just went and bought a disc from the local shop down the road. It's probably still going, twelve years latter. We never bought Dell again.
This is pretty standard. Even at the corporate/enterprise level -- where the disk may contain sensitive data -- you have to send the drive back. You can pay extra (at the time of purchase) to have the option to not have to send your broken drive back.
I fully understand why they require the defective drive be returned, however. Their replacement policy would quickly be abused if they didn't require the customer to return the drive.
The first machine I bought from Dell (A Studio XPS 1640) I wound up breaking the charger on during a flight to the US (I lived in Australia at the time)
I called Dell's support at 4:55 PM (they closed at 5:00, I'd literally just gotten home)
The agent immediately booked me a tech for 8:00 AM the very next day! said tech arrived promptly at 8:00 and also "as per policy" as he stated, came with literally every single part to my laptop, he could've built an identical replacement right there on the dining room table!
This initial impression of Dell lead me to purchase a machine of theirs again, an Alienware M17xR2
Unfortunately upon even first booting the machine, it immediately began to display issues. Connecting or disconnecting the AC adapter would freeze the machine (even at the login prompt). Running it on battery it'd freeze after a few minutes, even idle on a desktop
Dell took the unit back, then returned it after about two days. Unit still defective!
I shipped the unit back AGAIN for repairs. After two weeks, the unit was returned!...with no hard drives or battery
AGAIN I sent the unit off, Dell then helpfully informed me it'd be 45 days(!) until I received the unit back, due to a "shortage of parts"
After about 60 days I received the unit back again. The unit did indeed have the hard drives and battery inserted this time however.
Though when I went to turn on the unit, there was no operating system installed. Upon calling Dell, one of their (seemingly endless) Indian support agents helpfully offered to send me an install CD...For $180 (AUD)
How is a company able to continually be simply this incompetent, without collapsing under its own weight?
They are highest level of escalation team at Dell and we cannot supersede their decision.
As per our records, we see that the Escalation team is handling this case and they are the highest point of contact.
ARG and the executive escalation team that you are mentioning are the same and they are the highest level of contact at Dell.
As this case has been escalated to the highest authority, we will have limited options to work on it.
I think the only connection between the two cases is that the escalated customer service complaint was handled by the same Dell employee working in their escalations department.
This confused me too -- after I read the story in the Facebook post I followed the link at the end and struggled to understand how the two were related. I think this customer is saying in their Facebook post that they think they are not the only customer who has had an unpleasant interaction with this CS agent.
I could think of nothing else. Reasoning with and threatening customer care (or customer harassment?) failed.
If you are just going through the common path of buying their product, it is not surprising that they offer a painless experience. The problem comes when something goes wrong and you need support.
The onsite warranty is of course very good thing on its own, but I also believe it puts pressure on the vendor to focus on quality and getting issues sorted out quickly (because doing onsite visits is not cheap). It also indicates the computer is built in a way I can also replace parts, because you can't field service a machine that has been glued together.
It really looks like there are no pro or business solution, just a more expensive variant of `pick your poison`.
https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/870761
Only way to escape the issues is to remove the bloated OEM OS that vendors provide and do a clean OS install (e.g. Linux)
I always thought that Dell was for "entreprisey-clients only". If you try to get one for yourself as an individual, you're on your own.
That seems confirmed.
1. The dept that I have dealt with is called the Advanced Resolution Group (ARG). No one from basic customer care or tech support or out-of-warranty-repairs has heard of them. So far, I know of only one person in ARG, Prawin K. He first told me that he had no manager. When I spoke to a supervisor from tech support, she told me that she will speak to Prawin's manager. When I pointed this out, and told him that he had lied, he said "You are assuming too many things. I did not lie because my manager does not take calls and I AM the HIGHEST point of contact". Since I had complained to BBB, he told me that no matter who I complained to, it will all circle back and I will end up dealing with him each time. Repeated to pleas to get my case tranferred have fallen on deaf ears.
2. The tech support initially (read, October) ran diagnostics on my laptop using remote access. They said that it seemed to be a software issue. After the laptop reached the depot, I was told that it is possible that someone spilled something on my laptop when I was not around, and so the damage is customer induced. I was asked to pay 450$ for the repairs (motherboard, keyboard, mousepad). I could not pay such money upfront (I paid only 800$ for the laptop) since I felt that it was a lot for repairing a 1 year old laptop. They sent me my laptop unrepaired.
3. After reasoning with them I was asked to pay $350 for the repairs. The out-of-warranty dept was frank enough to tell me that the replacement parts will be refurbished ones, but the seal will be broken by the techician in the depot.
4. After paying for the repairs, I was told that I will receive the shipping box within 1-2 business days (email proof). It took them 11 days. First due to delays because of the weekend, and then for some reason they wanted to verify my address to mail me an empty box.
5. After getting the laptop back, it still has the existing issues in addition to the old one (screen becomes white along the edges). The only way to get rid of it is it keep tilting the laptop. The way I look at it there are three possilbilties : the replacement parts are faulty, the laptop itself has issues that they are unwilling to accept, the technician screwed up and did not check my system before shipping it back, all of are Dell's mistakes.
6. I finally got fed up and asked for a refund. I gave them 4 options: Refund 1200$ so that I can take my business elsewhere Refund the out of warranty repair charge so that I can recover at least some money and rest peacefully Give me a replacement system of equivalent cost (i undestand the problem of depreciation of cost) Give me an extension on warranty on the replaced parts (it only has 90 day warranty). Since the parts failed in less than 2 hours, I find it impossible to believe that the next set will last as long. I do not want to end up going through this cycle after 3 months, again.
7. I have been told that this beyond the ability of the onsite engineer and the only way is to send the laptop to their depot again.
Separate observation:
Customer rage anecdotes that inevitably tell only part of a story—or that at least cannot be reconstructed accurately from public info—are not a very high-quality genre on a site whose guiding value is intellectual curiosity. There's a standard downweight that we put on submissions like this.
Apparently "support exec" is euphemism I hadn't heard for support tech, and not an executive position. And "rude" is more of "completely unhelpful".
So yes, this sucks, but I thought something surprising was happening; it's not.