Welcome to the realities of low cost customer service. It is always one of the easiest things to cut corners on, or even ship over seas for even more savings. I cannot fathom that it is worth it for them the long run, but they believe it is.

Regardless shop around you should be able to find a deal out there. Vote with your feet and let their wallet make your case for you.

It's a shame, as investing in Dell covered the down payment on my house, but I too have lost patience with them. For me, the final straw was my buying two systems for my kids, then sending in the forms for the rebate, not getting a rebate, then calling up only to be informed by who-knows-where that I was ineligible to receive a rebate since my systems had been returned. Seeing as they were both being used at the time by my kids, I disputed that assertion, only to be told that I needed to talk to some other department in order to prove that I still had the systems I had allegedly returned. An hour later (nothing better to do than waste time looking for $100), I finally got someone to reinstate my rebate... which, when it finally came, was for only one rebate, not two, as they had only reinstated one of the two rebates... at which point I gave up. Maybe I should have instead pushed Dell to credit back my credit cards for the two systems I had returned.

on the other hand, my IT people still like buying from Dell. Maybe we buy enough stuff ($150,000+ a year) that we are kept off the 'let's screw them over' list...

I'm sure that management thinks it is getting a great deal when they can hire 3 people for the price of one but when it take five of them to do the job of one and frustrate the customer to the point of never buying their product again. They are just shooting themselves in the foot.

Even though I have stopped reading his blog because his topics have become boring, Jeff Jarvis blogged about his horror stories with Dell. I think his stories evn have their own category.

I must say that I have a Dell computer and when the computer crashed because of a virus, my wife and I called and after going through a couple of people we got someone who was very helpful and solved our problem. I have since heard a number of stories of frustrated customers and would think twice about getting another computer from them.

I can't speak to Dell on a personal level, but on a corporate level they are amazing. The laptop story is especially foreign to me. The last thing we had break was a flat screen in the reception area and they shipped us a new one before we shipped them the old one.

I too have had some horrible experiences with Dell. My favorite example is the time when I called India because my computer would not turn on (after about 3 weeks post-purchase). In the process of "troubleshooting" the man on the phone asked if I "had an older brother at home that he could talk to." I calmly told him that I was 25 and I could handle it. I handled it by getting a refund - at an overall 30% depreciation of course (oh and no refund for my 1 year warranty). That's Dell for you!

Yeah, I'll have to second Bill K.

On the corporate side, Dell has been very good.

I've never bought from them on the consumer side, because I prefer to 'roll my own'.

Welcome to the death of customer service. I no longer argue with the clerks, if I don't get an answer in the first few minutes I politely ask to speak to a supervisor. Who said never argue with the secretaries (help desk, clerks, other bottom of the rung in-duh-viduals)? It only P*sses them off and gets you nowhere. I could go on all day about the T-W-O M-O-N-T-H-S it took Verizon to install an ISDN line (Ok, 5 points to those who know what ISDN is), or how I badgered a builder to TAKE MY MONEY AND BUILD ME A#$!$#^#$% SHED. And he was the third one I talked to and finally convinced I was serious.

My opinion? The suppliers are not hungry enough. The economy is so hot in areas right now, they don't need your money. They have enough business, so go somewhere else.

Bought five computers before this year, including two Dells. I too received the Dell experience. Decided to build my own; it isn't too difficult. Bought most of the parts off Ebay, some new, most used. The machine works well works well; fastest one I've owned to date and is trouble free. I'm delighted and would recommend this approach to anyone.

DELL RIPPED ME OFF ON THEIR CROOKED FINANCING PROGRAM -- URGING ME TO TO THEIR PLAN BECAUSE IF I PAID WITHIN 60 DAYS OF RECEIVING THE INVOICE (AS I WOULD IF I PUT IT ON A CARD) I WOULD PAY NO INTEREST. THEN THEY DIDN'T SEND ME THE INVOICE FOR 90 DAYS, THEN CLAIMED THAT SINCE I DIDN'T PAY WITHIN 90 DAYS, THERE WAS A "PREPAYMENT PENALTY" FOR PAYING OFF THE ENTIRE DEBT.

I'D STILL LIKE TO INITIATE A CLASS ACTION AGAINST THEM. ANYONE ELSE "SIMILARLY SITUATED?"

>(Ok, 5 points to those who know what ISDN is)

Joe that was easy....

If you ask anyone at Bellsouth what ISDN means they'll tell you....

I Still Don't No. [know]

I guess neither does Verizon.

BTW my first ISDN line (64k) took almost 4 months and I basically had to figure out how to install it and do it myself. (no joke)

NewEgg rules. Build your own and forget Dell. I wrote them off several years ago. I had a $1,000 Dell-manufactured LCD monitor that went on the blink just out of warranty. Dell would not even talk about servicing it. They tried to sell me a new one. I could go on and on about the two Dell systems I bought.

Paul, Joe-

ISDN stands for "It Still Does Nothing".

I too have my own Dell horror story, but my experience has been that the worst of it lies with the "home consumer" group, rather than the business or education purchasing centers. We had FAR less trouble with the education purchasing center (and fewer customer service reps in India)....

Pac Bell hooked up my 128k ISDN in 1995--only a week after I ordered it. But neither Pac Bell or Motorola could tell me how to configure the Bitsurfer Pro for my Mac. After three hours of trial and err with a generic terminal program, it worked great!

I actually thought that was amazingly fast! --at least it blew away my 56k modem, which usually ran around 33k.

I work in the convention business, so there are weeks when I handle upwards of a hundred different machines, from every brand you can think of.

I will never buy a Dell, whether desktop or laptop.

They're unreliable, the basic software loadout they shovel onto them is buggy and annoying, and (as noted above) their customer service is terrible.

The corporate folks who like them tend to erase the hard drives and put in a plain install without all of the extra crap.

If you want a decent, no-nonsense machine, try Toshiba. I see a lot of them, and seldom have issues.

Well I have never purchased a Del and now I'll be sure to stay clear of them. I had an AOL account for a few weeks and experienced some of the same "India" problems before canceling it. I purchase an NEC computer maybe 9 years ago, which needed some warranty work, but when I call NEC I was informed that my computer was built by Packard Bell and that NEC wouldn't service it. I never found a Packard Bell location that would service my NEC computer either. I don't blame Packard Bell, because the only name on the machine was NEC. To this day I have not purchase another thing for NEC nor will I.

I've had a Mac every year since 1984, and never had a problem. I had my share of PC's at home and work during those years, too--but I can't say they were problem free.

The new Macs will boot Mac Os and Windows, so the masochists can torture themselves with Windoze, while still getting the job done on Mac Os.

Yay!

OK, for all the smart-asses:
Integrated Services Digital Network

and no, I didn't Google it. I work at a radio station and we use ISDN voice equipment...a ton of it.

As for Dell hell, I have a Dell laptop that had a hard drive die after a year and a half. I just replaced it with a new one and reinstalled the OS and drivers but not the annoying crap. My dad insists on buying Dell desktop computers but he has not had any problems...yet. He is having software issues with his last Dell Media Center PC he bought this last Christmas. TV tuner card doesn't always initialize. I pointed him to Ed Bott's Media Center blog and said, "Good luck."

Have to say my Dell experience has been the opposite. My daughter is going to school out of state when her laptop went belly up. A phone call to Dell and a service rep was at her apartement the next day and fully repaired on site. The extended warranty amounted to less than $10/month and is worth the piece of mind.

Home machine (the one I'm typing on) is also Dell. When the motherboard started acting flaky they sent a replacement overnight and even upgraded the processor free of charge.

Wife also has a Dell laptop that she dropped down a flight of stairs and shattered the LCD screen. We weren't able to meet them at the house but the technician was happy to meet me at my office and he repaired the laptop the next day with a new screen.

No, don't work for them. Not a fanatic about them just never had any trouble with them. I've also built two machines out myself with custom parts and actually spend more time fixing those than the Dell machines.

Not all experiences are universal. People just tend to be more outspoken about the bad experiences.

This sort of thing is why I had my new PC built by a local company. That way, if anything goes wrong, I can take it right to the shop and talk face to face with somebody instead of playing the ol' "For English, press one. Para Espanol..."

I got a Dell in 1999. The hard drive was wonky, but I didn't notice until around the end of 2000. Called Dell. Talked to a guy who knew what he was doing. He had me run a program that told me the hard drive was actually physically damaged.Since it was going to take an hour to run, I would call back.

I ended up talking to a moron. He told me to restart, etc, all the basic Bad Techie advice. I had to call back after formatting. I called back and got someone who wasn't a moron. Next day, Dell sent a tech they contract with locally and my HD was replaced, and upgraded, free of charge.

Few years later, lightning got it, and I needed a copy of the receipt for insurance purposes. Let's play the India game. I did not talk to a single person who was not Indian/Pakistani as all hell.

Got the receipt like a month later, after about six calls. So since 1999-2000, they've went to shit.

I'm sorry to say I agree that Dell is dying. At least as far as I am concerned. I've bougght five (5!) Dell desktops and/or laptops. The last a little over a year ago. That was when I noticed it was a mere shadow of the company I had been buying from for 8 years.

Call it coincidence; call it karma: to me the sign Dell gave up their commitment to a quality product and outstanding service when they outsourced about 97% of the company to Delhi or Madras or wherever it is they find people to represent them who speak English as a 6th language. And then only on weelkends.

The REALLY sad thing is that Dell recently bought AlienWare, who made the best systems for gaming. The super customer service and quality parts are going to be a thing of the past.

Time to throw out the Dell junk and buy an Intel Mac, They have the Windoze machines beat three ways to Sunday. I have an old beater iMac 350 g3 that I still occaisionallly use along with my PPC Mac mini.

I was thinking about getting a Dell LCD monitor, but after the horror strories that I have read here, I think that I will get another brand. It won't be a Gateway either.

I was a Dell-certified technician back about 10 years ago. It sucked trying to get parts from them at our level, and their systems weren't anything special. The worst thing was the constant delays - one laptop that was brought in had been bought from the original owner, and Dell waited 6 weeks to 'verify' the new ownership before they'd send us the part for repair.

At that point, I swore I wasn't going to ever get a Dell. So, naturally, someone gave me a Dell laptop about three, four years back. And I found that the keyboard connection to the motherboard was about the worst possible design you could come up with - instead of a ribbon cable the system board had a socket that a plug on the keyboard inserted into, and fine wires would make a friction-fit contact. After a while of normal use, the wires bent and you started getting intermittent failures on the keyboard. Finally I just gave up and put it on the bench and stuck a keyboard to it. It works well enough to play MP3s...

But BUY a Dell? Nope. No way.

I have a non-Dell desktop that I built myself from cheap parts and have been using without any problems for several years.

Over the same several years our four high-end Dell servers at work (RAID, SMP, the whole nine yards, about ten times the cost of mine) have required constant attention. We're always re-syncing the RAID, replacing drives, and having servers hang. The hanging problem went away after a fuse blew and the machine was without power overnight. Apparently the Dell-approved solution to that hanging problem for that particular model is to unplug the system for 10 minutes. Our IT people found that on their website. What kind of voodoo is that?

I bought a Dell desktop (Dimension 9100) last August and it worked fine until right before Christmas, when my USB ports stopped working. I called India, and about 8 hours later, they decided to send technician to put in a new USB-port thingy (that's the technical word for it).

The tech came the next day and serviced the computer with the new part, but that didn't solve the problem. He decided I needed a new motherboard, and he called India himself and got one sent out. Another techie came out the next day and put a new motherboard and another new USB thingy. Problem solved, and nothing wrong since.

So, while the computer did fail, and while I did have to spend around 8 hours on the phone with India, they did come out and fix my computer as the warranty called for and it works as it should. I call it 50-50.

We'll see how it holds up.

I've owned various Dells from 1995 onwards. None have been bought from their consumer side, and I don't ever plan to. However, I have had zero problem with their corporate side including corporate tech support side. I brought a system out of country (thus out of warranty area) and the local Dell guys helped out free of charge (didn't hurt that I had one of the, if not the only - pentium pro system in that country at that time) back in the mid 90s to present. Almost all customer service horror stories I've heard about them have been from the consumer side of the house.

I bought my most recent one about a month ago. Other than the case being slightly taller than the area I was going to put it, and the lack of PS/2 ports (!!!) no complaints at all.

A few years ago, you literally could not beat Dell for service. My first desktop from Dell was an XPS from the early days. It was a beast...you couldn't break it. It was even stable with Win95! The hours and hours I spent playing Quake 1 on that thing with a 3DFX 12MB add-on card...

My first laptop that wasn't used was a Dell Latitude in 1996. sweet little machine, and the three times it broke, a short phone call had a man at my house the next business day. Bought the wife a laptop in 1998. Never had a repair issue with that one. A perfect machine it was...

My last laptop, the one I am still milking for everything it is worth, is an Inspiron 7500. I bought it 5 years ago. Long out of warranty, but when it was in, the hinge and hinge assembly, as well as the ribbon cable for the monitor were replaced four different times. The last time, which BTW was one month before the warranty expired, was hours on the phone. Days of waiting for the on-site tech. (I never EVER buy a "ship it to them" warranty...I'd rather pay the extra cash to make them come to me.)

My wife bought herself an Inspiron 8600 about 18 months ago. 3 year warranty. She wants the keyboard replaced just on principle, the key labels are wearing off. Also, the built-in wireless cuts out every 90 seconds or so for a minute or two at a time. We called once. We went through three techs before we found one we could actually understand. They could not understand us, and a supervisor was no better. She hung up in frustration and I hooked her up with an ethernet cable and a PCMCIA wireless card.

I may have purchased my LAST Dell. I would still consider buying a PocketPC from them, I do love the Axims. Much easier to support those though. I'll never buy a computer from them until they return home user tech support to the U.S.

Oh yeah...like Steve Sturm, I too profited greatly from Dell's meteoric rise to the top of the computer-maker heap. Dell alone paid for my insanely elaborate wedding at Oheka Castle in 1999. Part of my staying with them so long was a wierd sense of loyalty for that.

Yeah...I'm done with that now. :) I just put an order in for a custom system from Monarch Computers a week or so ago. So far they've answered 4 emails and diagnosed a hardware conflict I never even thought of, AND refunded 26 bucks to me because we changed a part in the order. THAT is service. :)

Delhi= Dell:"Hi!!!"

We buy dells for our department. For some reason our tech head adores dell.

Thing is, they charge colleges 2 or 3 times as much per machine as they do private consumers. When I learned this I was astounded. A machine that would cost me 400 dollars for my home would cost the university 1100 dollars. This is so contrary to any other university purchase, particulary when we buy them 10 at a time.

The tech head thinks that's fine as you get a year warrenty as opposed to a 90 day warrenty. So far, I don't think we've ever had call to use any warrenty.

L

BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU. File a complaint. It really works. I had a problem with a Chase credit card that I couldn't get them to resolve after 6 months. A few weeks after I contacted the BBB, Chase sent me double the rewards certificates they owed me and a nice (empty) apology letter from a CSR.

I'm done with Dell, too. It took me almost 2 years to get the rebate that they promised me on my laptop.

"For some reason our tech head adores dell."

Gee, I wonder why someone in charge of a department that fixes computers would want machines that need more fixing, and therefore a bigger staff, and therefore higher pay and better job security for the guy who runs the department...