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I've always liked Dell products but their customer service is terrible!
Here's my story.......
1. I order 2 laptops. The fact that I didn't order within a predetermined period of time because I had to find out some information meant that I had to re-enter all the information a second time. Why not tell people there is a time limit? Go figure??????
2. I receive an email that says that the order is acknowledged but not confirmed. No problem.
3. My business partner said that I could get an additional discount with his autoclub member number.....sounded good to me so I called Dell customer service and this is where my disaster starts.
4. Customer service indicated that they couldn't apply the discount to their system and that I would have to talk to sales or cancel the order and re-enter all the information in again. Nothing like talking to a call centre in Malaysia where the people have no power or authority.....sigh....
5. I called Dell sales (routed again through to Malaysia) and they couldn't help either and said that the laptops were in the factory. I told them that the last communication that I received from Dell was verifying the order and NOT billing my credit card and organising the order. They said that I could cancel the order. So I did that and asked them to confirm that the order was cancelled three times!
6. Given that I had little faith in Dell customer service cancelling the order prior to me re-ordering the same two laptops with the discount code I decided to track down the Sydney office phone number. It's clear to me that this is a national secret because it's IMPOSSIBLE to get an Australian to speak to! This was very frustrating.
7. Being the creative person that I am I decided to try the random selection approach. Pressed option 4 for extension number, dialed 861 (Dell Sydney is now using 8 digit extensions) followed by 5687. I waited and pressed 0 a few times and ended up in Dell Canberra......yes...you read right. This person indicated that they were a serviced office and would try and get someone from Dell.....still waiting......
8. Then miracle of miracles I found the Dell head office phone number!!!!! Hooray!!!! So I dial (02) 8972 5000 and ended up at the standard Dell "support" line. OK - time for more creative thinking..... I now dialed (02) 8972 5011 and had no luck.....but then I thought that I struck Gold....I dialed 12 as the last two digits. I asked if this person was from Australia and they said "YES" at which point I nearlly burst into tears with relief and begged them not to transfer me anywhere. They said "No problem" in an Indian accent (btw, I love Indians and I have nothing against them).....I said, "You're from Malaysia aren't you?" They said, "Yes". I replied, "Not again...." and then hung up.
9. I then braved the customer service support number AGAIN and passed all my details on AGAIN to double check that the order had been cancelled. It hadn't!!!!!!!!!!! I think that I'm going to go completely INSANE!!!!!
10. Sometime during this insanity I managed to find a place where I could get my discount code for my autoclub membership. I entered it into the Dell site and instantly my order increased in price by $300.....now I'm really ticked off. Nowhere does it say that the discount cannot be applied to any other Dell offer.
10. Where am I at.....I'm about to go and call AMEX and deny the Dell transactions. I'll probably get a couple of laptops delivered that I actually want but not for the price. Who knows with Dell, they've got to be the most incompetent organisation in the world. I'm going to now make it a mission in life to track down that Sydney office phone number.
11. I know that I've forgotten a number of other steps in the process....such as the one where I actually got a Dell employees voice mail. They called back and were actually extremely helpful and noticed that my order actually hadn't been cancelled. In the end they said it was a good price and I should just take the laptops.
What's really frustrating about this entire experience is that I've always been a great fan of Dell and showed off my own XPS notebook to many colleagues and friends. I've had Dell's for years but this experience (which is still going on as of this writing) has showed me that Jeff Jarvis who wrote about his own Dell catastrophy a number of years ago was completely right. In the end they resolved things for him but the jury is out in my own experience.
In the meantime I'm posting this on my blog (http://www.whizzbangsblog.com) and sharing my excrutiating experience with as many people as possible. Also, since I'm the founder of ParkLogic.com and we run a company that manages over 500,000 domain names I'm considering placing a popunder under every one of those domains pointing to my blog article. It really depends on Dell's reaction. We currently receive over 10 million unique visitors per day so hopefully that will get your attention.
If you are a blogger, feel free to pick up this article.
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