Look at it this way. Dell customer service shall never suck as bad as Fry's Electronics. Oh, I could share with you the horror story of the whole situation, but I'll give you the condensed version.
Take laptop to store cause it's under extended warranty. Store says it'll take a week to fix. Store lies and gives us the run around. Store employee calls us liars in front of store manager. Store manager gives us the run around. Store continues to give us the run around. We call the state consumer affairs department. Store begins to start doing something, but gives run around and shaft to the state. Store suddenly is able to get our laptop fixed.
After 11 weeks, yes, 11 weeks, we get the laptop back with a bunch of "I'm So Sorry" comments about the service we had, state still got the shaft. Store now made one very powerful enemy with the state consumer affairs department, and agent with the consumer affairs department is now eagerly waiting just one more complaint to initiate a statewide investigation on the business practices of the store and all its locations.
And this was the lady that made Jiffy Lube bend over a barrel and take it up the rear end.
Try waiting on hold for over 4 hours to get a stinking power adapter replaced. Try giving them specific address instructions only to have the idiot customer service representative completely ignore it. Try being forced to go through an idiotic checklist when you know the problem is the power adapter and not the system IT HAS A GREEN LED THAT'S SUPPOSED TO GO ON WHEN ITS PLUGGED IN WHETHER THERE IS A COMPUTER ATTACHED TO IT OR NOT. That is what it means to own a Dell.
I think Dell customer care was trained by these guys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ-lJpL2oVg
That's somewhat the situation I had, only thing was it was the DVD burner that went bad. I had written down on paper, and also verbally explained to the person at the service counter, who could barely speak English mind you, all the troubleshooting I had done, the diagnostics I had ran, and that even the HP diagnostic tools said that the drive was not operating properly. She said she understood, would put the order in for a new part the next day, and that the laptop would be fixed within a week.
Following week, when we try to call about the repairs, no one answered for over half an hour. So we drove down there. Wanna know what we found out? The part was never ordered. The person we spoke with said they would put the order in immediately, and that next week for sure it would be fixed. Pissed off, we left. Oh, and that person did speak English.
Next week, we come in, we ask about the laptop. Guess what, the part had only been ordered that day. And, oddly enough, we're speaking with the same lady that we spoke with when we checked in the laptop for repairs. You know what she said? That it doesn't matter what tests we ran or what diagnostics we did, they have to submit the computer for a 3-5 day diagnostic cause they assume we didn't do the job right. When we asked, my mother and I, why then she had told us why it would take a week to fix the laptop and have it ready, she said that they never know how long it'll take, that they tell all customers it'll take a week, and that in the end, it doesn't really matter anyway. Not even a minute later, we're talking with the store manager, and when we, my mother and I, repeat, at the same time, what just happened with the service desk employee, not only did the employee call us liars saying she never said that to us, the store manager said that there was nothing she could do and that we must have misunderstood, even when we point out that the likelihood of 2 people hearing the same conversation at the same time and interpreting it the same way and repeating the conversation, word for word, at the same time, and still misunderstanding everything, is very low, the manager still insisted that we misunderstood, there was nothing she could do, and that the part would take 2-3 weeks to arrive, and that they would call us when it was ready.
So, we left, pissed off, and with a line of customers waiting to see a service repair agent that were now wondering if it was such a good idea to turn their machines into the store for service and repair. I even saw a couple of them leave during this whole ordeal. We called the corporate headquarters in San Jose, asking to file a complaint. The rep said that a complaint file was now open, and that they would get in touch with the general store manager for that location, and that person would give us a call. Never got a call.
My mom and I get real sick for a couple weeks, and since this was around Christmas and New Years, things went haywire around my household trying to get things in order, so we didn't didn't check up on the laptop until about the 7th week after we turned it in. And guess what. Half hour on the phone, no answer. Once we managed to get into their message service, to find out it was full and to call back again. We tried calling for several days. We called the same lady with their corporate office, just to find out that since she had heard nothing from us or the store, that the case has been considered successfully resolved, and closed, but that she would reopen it, which apparently she never did.
So, we went back to the store, and you know what they said? They hadn't received the part. They said they didn't know anything, and that the only person that would know what was going on was the technician that placed the order for the part, cause their database systems didn't have any other info other than part ordered on a certain date and part had yet to arrive. And the technician was the same woman that checked in our laptop and 2 weeks later called us liars in front of the store. This was approximately half way through the 8th week, going into the 9th.
We finally submit a complaint with the California Dept. of Consumer Affairs, and damn they're prompt. We submitted the claim, along with a timeline of events which occured, with dates. We did this during the middle of the night, and the first thing in the morning, we get a call from one of their agents asking for a copy of the receipt and the service slip, and to verify all the information we sent, so she could start an investigation, and that very same day, she did. She got in touch with their legal department. Their legal department gave her the run around for a few days, then finally called her up.
They tell her that it's standard policy to keep computers and other equipment for repairs for 8-10 weeks. Then, they call her back and tell her that the manufacturer was no longer making the part needed to repair our laptop, and all efforts to locate an available part had failed. So, the agent with the consumer affairs state calls the manufacturer, and you know what she found out? The part in question was still being made, but that in the beginning of December they had run out of inventory, but the part was available again around the second week of January. This was now the beginning of February. So, she calls back to the legal department of the store, but doesn't get much of an answer. All the while she's kept us apprised of the situation, and exactly what she's being told.
However, at the end of the 10th week, we start getting a bunch of calls from the store, from the new general store manager, saying how sorry he was that we had to go through this whole situation, and that the supervisors and managers involved had either been terminated or replaced, and that he had personally contacted the manufacturer and placed an order for the part personally, and had a rush placed on it. He also said that he had a copy of the entire complaint file from consumer affairs that the corporate office had sent him, and that he would inform consumer affairs of the progress being made. He didn't call them, but we did. The agent with consumer affairs was so pissed off. The legal department was no longer returning her calls, the corporate office was no longer returning her calls, the store wasn't returning her calls. The store was returning every single one of our calls.
So, come to the end of the 11th week, we get a call from the general store manager himself, again he said he was sorry that the whole mess happened, apologizes, and informs us that our laptop is fixed, working perfectly, and ready for pickup at anytime. We pick it up, sign for it, and get a xerox copy of the actual paperwork that I had filled out, with my own handwriting detailing what troubleshooting I had done before I brought the laptop in. The agent with consumer affairs finally did get a call from Fry's corporate offices saying that they were sorry for the delay in returning her calls, but some of the employees at the corporate office and most of the employees at the store were undergoing retraining due to our situation. Which was BS. But, since we had gotten our laptop back, and we had kept in touch with the agent practically every other day throughout the situation, telling her what was going on, and also that our laptop was repaired, she said that she was gonna close the case and labeled it resolved. She did however try to get us some compensation from the corporate offices, but they didn't budge on it.
However, she did tell us that now she's just waiting for one more complaint about them to launch a massive, statewide investigation into their businesses practices. Oh, we weren't the first case she handled against Fry's by the way.
That's pretty much about it.
Topic: Dell Customer Support (Read 7399 times)