Okay, Dell, if you care so much, could you show it?

Live posting of Dell support call

This is an update to this post, which you might want to read if you haven't already.

I had to call Dell again last night, since the last calls have been duds, in terms of services rendered. Last week I’d called and been told that at that time I couldn’t get things fixed until I called back later. The next call left me on hold for over two hours before my phone died. Later, I called again and was told that I already had an order being shipped, so I shouldn’t be concerned with things taking a while. These were all after I’d learned through @DellCares on twitter that my order had been closed out. Last night, lacking anything better to do, I banked on getting a shorter wait time by calling in the evening on a Sunday with less call volume. After listening to the scratchy message warning me that the conversation may be recorded, I realized that I might as well live post the events to Facebook as they occurred. Below are those posts.

Why do technolgy companies have the most inept, backward telephone support systems, with almost non-existent online support?

Argh, the warranty expired while Dell and FedEx were busy screwing up, so now they want me to pay for the part and to ship it as a new order!?!?!?!? WTF!?

Off hold! Now I won't have to pay for their mistake!*
*But I may still have to pay shipping costs for the part that never got here before I can place a new order.

Ooops, did I say something wrong? Back to hold.

Ooh goody, back to a human. And he's going to do me a huge favor. In the light of past mistakes, and considdering that I'm probably not going to be here past this Wednesday, I'm going to get basic ground shipping, but I won't have to pay for it.

Oh. shit. Ground shipping means five to eight days.

Okay, they understand my situation and they're going to work with me… by keeping my order with the slow shipping. The slow shipping that will get the part to me as much as a week after I'm not here. But I'm being reassured that they emphasize(!) with me.


Okay, back to hold [sigh]. He's going to talk with a supervisor again.

He came back again for a little while, this time he said was going away and that he'd try to work with the supervisor, explaining to the supervisor that I'm not going to be here.

And he's back. No deal on fast shipping, unless I buy the extended waranty. Except that this call would be happening before the extended warranty goes into effect, so I'd be going back to paying for Dell and FedEx's fuck up. Dammit people, please!

So I asked to speak to the supervisor to see if he'd have to ability to help me further, but I was told that he's not available at the moment. Is it just me or is that a little screwy?

So I checked now to see we could change the address to the place I'm going to be, but I'm told that it has to got to the address of the first call.

But that was the whole problem! They shipped the fisrt one to the wrong address! Let's see if I can "re-correct" my address to where I'll be…

Nope! no changing addresses again. Shit.

So the call just ended. I'm going to call it a draw, since I didn't in the end have to pay for the previous service call that they screwed up, I didn't have to pay for the current call that resulted from their screwup, and I didn't have to buy an extended warranty to fix the fact that the regular warranty expired while they were screwing up.

However, I still won't have the part for another week, and I'll only have it then if I break up all my holiday plans to go home to see my family. Dell, I don't think I'm going to willingly buy from you again, unless you can demonstrate that you've taken actions to not be full of so much suck.

I really wish I got paid for talking to Dell's support line, cause I would have made bank. I have spent six hours and twelve minutes with them during five different calls. At twenty dollars an hour that's one hundred twenty four bucks for my time.

So, yeah, that’s the story. I’m still frustrated and I still don’t have the replacement for the AC adapter that fell apart.