Monday, June 9, 2008

Dell Hell Part Deux


Well two days ago I logged onto Dell's web page only to find that the video card order that I spent untold amounts of time placing had been cancelled. Well since I couldn't get anyone on the phone to tell me why I sent an email to them to determine what the problem is. Well yesterday afternoon I got this ridiculous response from Dell.


"Dear Mr. Pennington,
Thank you for contacting Dell Online Customer Care.
I understand from your e-mail that your order has been cancelled without any notification. I really apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. I will be glad to assist you.
I have checked the account details and it shows that the order has been cancelled as you had requested it.
To place a new order I would request you to contact our Sales Department at the toll free number 1-800-915-3355 between 08:00 AM – 9:00PM (CST), Monday to Sunday. They will be more than happy to assist you."


So since I was pretty sure it wasn't 9:00 PM (CST) I started calling. The first person I got, I am assuming he was at a call center in India, didn't know why my order was cancelled. He gave me different toll free number than the one I was given by Dell. That person, of course after several minutes of voice recognition software prompts telling you that you will receive faster service online, produced a woman with an accent I couldn't make out tells me that they don't ship to the Virgin Islands. I ask to speak to a supervisor and I am promptly hung up on. Well this just gives me the warm fuzzies, so I call back. They inform me that I have to call the original number as I have a sales question not a customer service question. They try to transfer me I am lost in switchboard hell and click it goes. So I call back the original number, ask to speak to a customer service supervisor only to be told the supervisor is in a meeting. I promptly call BS on that one as it is now almost 10:oo pm Atlantic Time. She promptly tells me it is 10:00am were they are located. Now real alarm bells are going off, I politely ask what country are you in? Why Manila of course. So I have a woman from Manila telling me that Dell only ships to the United States. I am thinking maybe we should give the whole damn country back to the Japanese. She repeatedly tried to convince me to have the card shipped to someone that lives in the United States then they can ship it to me. I of course can not understand why they can't put it in a priority mail package to my address and ship it. "In her endless continuing idiot loop voice she calmly states "we don't ship outside the United States."

Since I first orderd the card I also received via email a price quote from Dell Latin American/Puerto Rico. So apparantly now I will have to call Dell Latin America to order the card. So two weeks later the screen still looks like a checker board when it's not locked up and Dell still has their collective head up their arse. We actually considered buying a new computer from them when this all started. You couldn't give me another Dell after this insane run around.

Jay

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You might try "computers in paradise" for your part.


Tippi

Anonymous said...

http://www.maylin.net/joke.html

Dell Customer Advocate said...

Deb & Jay,

I am a customer advocate here at Dell headquarters in Texas. I found your post about the problems you are having getting your video card replaced and wanted to offer my help.

If the computer is a desktop and out of warranty, it may be best to take advantage of any local computer store to purchase a replacement video card. As long as you get a card with the correct connector for your system it should work fine. At worst, you would have to be sure to get a half-height card (if the desktop chassis is the small form factor version). While not as common as 'normal' cards, they are readily available.

From what you posted it sounds like this is the case, however, if the system is still in warranty I should be able to get the correct part shipped out to you via our Latin America support group. If you can let me know what model of Dell you have, and whether or not it is still in warranty, I can figure out the best way for getting things fixed. If you are not sure about the warranty I can easily find that out. If you had any questions for me, feel free to email me at customer_advocate@dell.com (with 'ATTN: Larry (USVI)' in the subject to ensure it gets to me).

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate

Deb and Jay said...

Wow, are you serious? I'm sending you an email right now! Thank you.
Deb

Anonymous said...

Deb - I would say Larry is going to get a lot of Email from the Virgin Islands so keep us all posted. I have always just had the stuff shipped to my sister and forwarded from her.

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