Memorializing their intial response before their social media team is paged and freaks out...
We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. We will take this as a feedback and we will forward it to the relevant team. As per our records, we see that the Escalation team is handling this case and they are the highest point of contact. Please continue to work with them to avoid any confusion. Our team defers to the Escalation team.
-Senthil
As this case has been escalated to the highest authority, we will have limited options to work on it. Apologize as I cannot comment on this but I would still recommend you to contact them as they are the only team who can help you to resolve the issues on your system.
-Krishna
I told him if [returning the laptop again is] the best solution that he can provide (customer care is not an iterative process), I would have no option but to pursue this through my university's legal department.
So what was the best solution that the complainer wanted? It seems like a replacement would have been a pretty reasonable thing to ask for at this point.
This, on the other hand, from one of the complainant's Facebook replies: In that case, please give me all the details of Prawin K from Dells Bangalore office so that I can sue him in India and the US.
Pro tip from someone running a support team: threatening legal action is usually a surefire way to cause your support case to screech to a grinding halt, since this requires that lawyers get called in and support engineers have to stop work until they've done their due diligence. What's more, the result of that due diligence may be "we'd prefer not to have you as a customer anymore, kthxbai".
Then again, this buffoon on Dell's side clearly hasn't received that particular memo: He simply told me that Dell was a very big company and had ample resources to outlast me and my university in a legal battle. Facepalm.
For sure, I think the "complainer" here didn't handle things perfectly, but I am prepared to give him a lot of leeway considering what he has endured so far.
The fact that the issue persisted after the out-of-pocket repair, makes it obvious that the original product was defective. I know if I paid the price of laptop, was told it was my fault (when it wasn't), paid the price of a repair that didn't fix the issue, and was without the laptop for 60 days, I would be seeing red and probably prone to making belligerent statements.
After bungling so badly, Dell should be tripping over themselves to offer him a refund.
That's funny. I had a problem with my ADSL connection that lasted for over a month. I spent two hours and forty minutes on the phone, spread over, IIRC, 15-20 calls, with the cycle going 1. "What's the problem", 2. "Blah (upstream network problem on their side)", 3. "Have you reset your modem?", 4. "Yes, and I've also done blah, blah, blah, and blah", 5. OK, can we call you back? 6. "Yes". 7. Go back to 1.
After three weeks of this my patience was running thin and, before reporting the company to the telecommunications regulator, I thought I would give them one last chance and (very politely) emailed the CEO. When I checked my phone half an hour latter I had three calls and two emails from the guy in charge of quality (this is, btw, one of the five biggest telecoms in the world). From this point, it took them three days to fix the problem (a network systems upgrade gone wrong, not trivial), and finally got an email from this quality guy on a Saturday at 19:30. The current CEO did say he was going to make customer support a priority, and it seems he took that to heart. Can't fault him (the quality guy appears to have taken a massive chewing, by the way).
I have to say, I did stay polite and sympathetic throughout. It is not the agents' fault that they have a shit CMS, and it's just not cool to be rude anyway.
Besides, I've got that customer support T-shirt, albeit on a very specialised industry, and I've learned that the customer is most definitely not King. We had a "difficult" user once, who kept wasting our time and being rude to the other guys (not me for some reason), and this ended with my boss calling the customer's boss and telling him he would cancel their licence if this guy calls again. The recalcitrant user got let go that same day.
I know that I that I did not handle this properly.
But I desperately needed this laptop working since I had two computational projects that were up for review.
What Dell does not understand is that for each trip my laptop takes to the depot, I am left without a laptop (these 2 months, for example). They said that this was not their problem, and compensating me for these hassles is not their headache.
I ask this only because I'm generously curious, and not out of any malice: has this incident caused you to reconsider Dell products and perhaps look at other manufacturers who might have handled this better, like Lenovo or Apple?
This is in reference to the Better Business Bureau correspondence that reached our corporate office. We appreciate you taking the time to bring this issue to our attention. Thank you for taking time and discussing the issue with me today, I apologize for the delay in getting the system issue resolved, we will make sure this time the depot engineers work on the system technical issue, test the system functionality before shipping the system to you. We regret to inform you that we are unable to accommodate your request towards providing a new system replacement, a complete refund for the original system or only the out of warranty charge or extend hardware warranty for six months. Kindly understand that the option provide to you by us is the best option we can provide you. Request you to reply to my email if you are find with the option we have offered.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the issue discussed today, please do reply to this email or call me and I would be glad to assist you further.
When I owned a company anyone that threatened legal action like this was immediately fired as a customer.
A big company may be different though, as it's very easy for legitimate problems to be masked/enabled by the bureaucracy. When you're a small company you generally know all the details and we certainly erred on the side of the customer to an absurd degree.
Basically threatening legal action or abusing front-line support staff were the only ways to ensure you definitely did not get the outcome you wanted, and half the time the exact opposite.
The only appropriate time to discuss lawsuits is directly with opposing counsel (or executive management) prior to filing, or after you file.
Dell's focus on selling cheaper laptops has resulted in treating the consumer as fungible; and that's the reason for their absolutely appalling customer service.
You're starting to see this across industries where their products and services are commoditized. Quite surprisingly, when the service / product turns into a commodity (due to competition), so does the customer (due to budgetary constraints)
I understand why this school bought the laptops they did, but I have to point out: The support costs of the requested help for these laptops outweigh the actual laptops themselves value, and certainly Dell's profit in it. Cheap laptops include cheap support.
If the school had purchased business-line PCs which are more suited to large organization use, they'd likely A. have gotten much better laptops, and B. gotten drastically better, on-site next day repairs.
But that costs about five times what they paid. So while I acknowledge, this situation sucks for the school, I kinda feel like we need to point out that they got what they paid for.
They paid for the warranty assigned to whatever cheap laptop Dell sold them. It's now up to Dell to honor that warranty in a reasonable manner. It's not the customer's fault if Dell miscalculated the cost of providing the unit. That's Dell's calculation to make.
That would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that they got blamed for being the cause of the faulty equipment when in fact it had nothing to do with them!
Just wondering: would refurbished core-duo Thinkpads with something like neverware's ChromeOS on them be a better way forward for a cash strapped school?
Cheap to buy, the machines have survived N years so by a Darwinian process any clunkers have been removed from the pool and they are built to a decent standard to start with. ChromeOS would imply cloud storage so students don't lose work &c. Depends on the use cases I imagine.
Reading the separate petition about the same support rep that's linked from there[1], the corporate nonsense is worse even that what's described in the Facebook post.
Seems like these are different situations under the same support rep. I feel bad for the rep honestly, they're probably not allowed to do any more and I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up taking the fall for this.
Support reps are always allowed to do more. There's always a path of escalation that ends at the CEO. If a Dell-partnered senior exec (like from Fry's or Best Buy) was having a terrible customer support experience trying to RMA their Dell device, you can bet that if it didn't get resolved ASAP that there'd be a Dell exec personally flying out a new device and repairing their business ties in-person.
It just sucks for us little guys, because the only way to apply the same pressure is with publicity.
Just this week I went nuclear with a particularly bad customer service experience. I'd been messed around trying to buy a Razer Blade Stealth which claimed same day shipping. Three days later I had no shipping confirmation and no response from customer support.
The day after tracking down the founder's email address a laptop was shipped FedEx direct from the factory.
The rep may be limited in what s/he can personally do and/or authorize, but I'm guessing it's not Dell policy that they a.) tell the customer that they are the manager and there's no one else, higher up, that they can talk to or b.) respond to legal threats with the equivalent of "come at me, bro".
I had a rep tell me a), they were the final arbiter and nobody to escalate to, quite a few years back. Was before they reorganized Dell Outlet... scratch & ding was a separate choice from refurbished. I chose the former and received the latter, a 2 years used tower. After his declaration I ran data recovery and started sharing my findings and quoting the rep with random operators when I called back and they asked for my ticket number. First couple forwarded me back to my miserable operator, but through persistence the 'right' person was found and I had a brand new replacement overnighted the next day. If memory serves, there is no longer any designation to choose, if it's from Dell Outlet you may(probably) or may not(less probable) get a refurb.
I work for one of the largest PR companies in the world (we are in the EU, where customer protection laws are kinda okay, too) and as a rule of thumb they buy Dell when it comes to PCs, don't ask me why!). When I was employed, I chose to go with a Mac and my manager had his old HP replaced with an XPS 15 at the same time. We all got brand new machines, but his XPS bit the dust within 2 weeks, so he sent it back to IT. We have premium enterprise support from Dell. They took 3 weeks to send a deffective machine back, which got returned instantly. Not sure if they eventually replaced it or not because after another 3 weeks of waiting IT just told him to pick another Dell. He went with a Mac instead.
Thought I'd share this with you to underline how bad their support is on every level.
I'm not a huge fan of Dell, and I have no experience with Dell Enterprise support, but I have an '06 XPS12 that I use as a local dev server running debian. The power supply blew after 2 years and the screen has numerous dead pixels, but otherwise this machine just keeps on trucking.
I run both Dell and Mac systems in my office too and my Dells regularly outperform and outlast my Macs. Not only that, but Dell offers premium support and they actually come onsite. Apple would rather waste your time so they can make their store look busy, which is the same reason why they space their stores so far apart.
Furthermore, Apple engineers just about everything to polarize you against the vast, vast majority which run Windows and Android. They also have an severely anemic selection of hardware that they are always using to experiment on how to get most of your money without providing any value.
In short, I'm sharing this with you to underline how shitty Apple is to their customers in every area, including support.
While I agree getting support from Apple in-store can currently require multiple trips, hours waiting for an appointment and potentially $800 or more to replace a motherboard everything's stuck to, there are alternatives, including AppleCare, which allows for phone support from the US, a very easy escalation process to senior support and managers, and again with AppleCare, if urgent, you can get service from local authorised repair centres (not Apple Stores) where Apple foots the bill. Apple will even pay for an on-site visit if your computer is less portable, like an iMac. And AppleCare covers select accessories from Apple purchased for use with your Mac, but that's less relevant as Apple exits the networking and display business. Frankly that's my main concern about buying an LG display, will I get Apple-like support and repair?
I'm very sympathetic to the plight of this school, however I'm also very concerned as to the emerging trend of 'customer service only to those who have the ability to make a PR issue of it'.
My advice: Just buy a $5 usb wifi for each of these computers.
> I'm also very concerned as to the emerging trend of 'customer service only to those who have the ability to make a PR issue of it'.
Established companies are looking at these "new-fangled startups" and how the newer companies don't have expenses for cost centers like "inbound call queues" and "customer service" and managers at the older ones are thinking, "hey, how can we cut those costs, too?"
If customer service is made so difficult to obtain as to be nearly impossible to receive except under the most outlying of circumstances, surely the companies in question will go out of business...or become Google.
Haha, unless it's a USB issue which is equally likely. I find Dell laptops drop USB packets which most devices recover, for example flash drives or average devices. If it's a high speed WiFi card, problem. Had it on my laptop, sometimes it would miss the keyboard packet for "key up" events and just spit some value out continuously.
I thought it is generally known that Dell customer support has been rated appalling for the last dozen years or so. People keep buying products manufactured by this company at budget prices. By now they should know what they buy: a lottery ticket.
Back in 2008, I had an XPS M1330 with an Nvidia 8400M GS. Now, if you guys remember this, it was the infamous integrated GPU which it would fail after some heat/cool cycle because the BGA would crack or some such rubbish. I was covered under warranty when I first bought it, but as soon as I exited the period, they clammed up. It was comical - the thing came with a built-in expiry date! Eventually, of course, they caved and extended the warranty on the motherboard to 1 year longer for everyone who bought that. But before that, man, they denied everything.
In EU the warranty resets for the component that is replaced. Of course there are many times the seller/manufacturer will try to present it in a different way and you might have to contact the chamber of commerce or even a lawyer but the EU law is there for the consumer to use.
You might have a point here because there is the general direction for 2+ years of guarantee and then each country in its legislation can provide even more benefits like this one. For example if you check here
Per country you'll see that eg. Germany and Greece reset the warranty period after repair/part exchange but Czech Republic and UK don't. As I come from a country that does reset the warranty period I wrongly assumed it is part of the EU regulation.
Bottom line some countries respect the consumer more :)
I've had experience with Dell, but it was a nice one. I'm from the UK, so not sure if the service is better than the US counterpart of I just got lucky.
Like an idiot, I bought a cheap 3D printer called OneUp, built it, plugged it into the laptop and blew the laptop up. The 3D printer company both refused responsibility for printer replacement and laptop replacement despite somehow putting 240V onto the USB like due to bad circuit design.
Last port of call was to contact Dell for advice how to fix it, who then informed me it's still in warranty (bought the laptop from eBay so had no idea).
Sent it away, got it back and the parts sheet mentioned that they replaced everything in it. Everything. They gave me a brand new laptop inside it's slightly older chasis!
I had the same around 8 years ago. My girlfriend spilt Coke on her laptop, and half the keys stopped working. They sent a guy to repair it (for a £300 laptop with standard warranty) he said "looked like someone spilt Coke on it", and proceeded with the replacement. I didn't get any charges for the repair even though it was obviously accidental damage.
I've also had a great experience with Dell customer support (also in the UK). Half my screen was flickering (think it must have got knocked in my bag), posted on their support forum, they sent a guy out to my house to replace the screen, no charge. Much better experience than I ever had with Apple.
Dell's customer service is terrible. I had my harddrive die. My laptop was still under warranty, so I decided call Dell to get it fixed. After about 4 hours, I was able to get someone to start working on my case (I was transferred between departments 5 times, and only got someone to deal with the issue after I insisted that the previous person stay on the line until I did).
We than spent the next hour diagnosing the fact that it was, in fact, a broken harddrive. Although I told them this from the start, I can understand them wanting to verify this, but the we had found what seemed to be enough evidence that it was a broken HDD within the first 10 minutes, then just ran around in circles (I assume looking for a scripted error code that never showed up for some reason).
Once we were done, they agreed to send me a replacement drive, and I asked if it would be possible to upgrade the drive and pay for the difference. They then spent about half an hour looking up what HDD options were available. Once I decided which one I wanted, I was informed that I would be paying for the full price of the drive (but they could still send it instead of the free, non upgraded, one I was entitled to by warranty). I declined and asked for the free one.
Once that was done, as we were finalizing the shipping details, I was informed that I would need to send back my broken drive, which I was not willing to do. Eventually I agreed to just pay for a new drive (in retrospect, I should have hung up and bought the drive from another source). They sent me a drive and told me I would be receiving a bill.
The bill never came. Two weeks later, I called them again and spent another two hours trying to pay; before being told that I cannot pay because I have not been billed yet because I had not yet failed to return my broken drive in time. About a month after that, I get a voicemail from them about my failure to return my drive.
I try to call back, but due to ( I presume) time zone differences I never managed to reach them during office hours, so I just got to voice mail where I had to leave a message asking them to call me back. Despite this, I still had to wait through about half an hour of holding to get a line to the voicemail. After going through this dance a few times, I just asked them to email me the bill, after which point I payed them the $70 for the hard drive.
I have to be honest, quite a bit of this seems reasonable in Dell's part -- I would expect a like for like swap, and to have to give back the broken part, else the possibility for fraud is too high.
I've never returned a disk under warranty after hardware failure. At most, I've removed the top plate from the drive (rendering it unusable) and mailed that in, then destroyed the drive through the usual methods.
Well, logitech is very different in this case. Couple years ago my trackball got broken and i was a fan of trackballs, but they started to disappear from shops. Then i just emailed them that my device broken and they immediately send me a replacement, they even didn't ask about check or any warranty proof.
MSI sent me 5 out of warranty mobo's during the 'great capacitor plague'[0]. Never before or since have I had anything that close to painless doing warranty work.
Exactly. I've had this happen with Dell. Twice, same computer. They ask for the defective drives back, which is fair. I informed them that as they contained company confidential information they would be put beyond use and they were fine with that--though I'm not 100% sure the phone drone understood the implications.
Cue a pneumatic drill and a circular saw. Modern drives are surprisingly hard to drill, btw, what with being so dense.
After the second replacement failed too after a couple of weeks, I just went and bought a disc from the local shop down the road. It's probably still going, twelve years latter. We never bought Dell again.
> ... I was informed that I would be paying for the full price of the drive ...
This is pretty standard. Even at the corporate/enterprise level -- where the disk may contain sensitive data -- you have to send the drive back. You can pay extra (at the time of purchase) to have the option to not have to send your broken drive back.
I fully understand why they require the defective drive be returned, however. Their replacement policy would quickly be abused if they didn't require the customer to return the drive.
The first machine I bought from Dell (A Studio XPS 1640) I wound up breaking the charger on during a flight to the US (I lived in Australia at the time)
I called Dell's support at 4:55 PM (they closed at 5:00, I'd literally just gotten home)
The agent immediately booked me a tech for 8:00 AM the very next day! said tech arrived promptly at 8:00 and also "as per policy" as he stated, came with literally every single part to my laptop, he could've built an identical replacement right there on the dining room table!
This initial impression of Dell lead me to purchase a machine of theirs again, an Alienware M17xR2
Unfortunately upon even first booting the machine, it immediately began to display issues. Connecting or disconnecting the AC adapter would freeze the machine (even at the login prompt). Running it on battery it'd freeze after a few minutes, even idle on a desktop
Dell took the unit back, then returned it after about two days. Unit still defective!
I shipped the unit back AGAIN for repairs. After two weeks, the unit was returned!...with no hard drives or battery
AGAIN I sent the unit off, Dell then helpfully informed me it'd be 45 days(!) until I received the unit back, due to a "shortage of parts"
After about 60 days I received the unit back again. The unit did indeed have the hard drives and battery inserted this time however.
Though when I went to turn on the unit, there was no operating system installed. Upon calling Dell, one of their (seemingly endless) Indian support agents helpfully offered to send me an install CD...For $180 (AUD)
How is a company able to continually be simply this incompetent, without collapsing under its own weight?
This is absolutely horrendous. Dell is continuously denying the customer from escalating their case. Probably because this customer isn't a VIP partner like a BestBuy executive. Anecdotally, customer support escalations for individuals such as those can go all the way up to the CEO. There's definitely someone higher that could handle the case. But this level of strict-adherence-to-policy without escalating internally is an awful sight to see:
They are highest level of escalation team at Dell and we cannot supersede their decision.
As per our records, we see that the Escalation team is handling this case and they are the highest point of contact.
ARG and the executive escalation team that you are mentioning are the same and they are the highest level of contact at Dell.
As this case has been escalated to the highest authority, we will have limited options to work on it.
I think that the problem outlined in the Facebook post (laptop display does not work, Dell and customer disagree about whether customer damaged the unit) is unrelated to the problem mentioned at the very end of the Facebook post (change.org petition about a Canadian school which bought a lot of Dell devices, each of which had a problem, and was told to file 1 work order per device in order to get the units serviced).
I think the only connection between the two cases is that the escalated customer service complaint was handled by the same Dell employee working in their escalations department.
This confused me too -- after I read the story in the Facebook post I followed the link at the end and struggled to understand how the two were related. I think this customer is saying in their Facebook post that they think they are not the only customer who has had an unpleasant interaction with this CS agent.
This is pathetic. I cannot imagine how horrible it would be for that person. I was considering buying a dell next. Looks like I have to stick to a mac again!
I do admit in this case Dell has messed up a lot. But for heaven's sake, why does a school buy Inspiron? Here in Europe, we buy Dell latitude - thru Dell Education Portal. I got 2 harddrives for my group with 10 machines in the University - next business day. No waiting with my express code.
These days I recommend Latitude even for my friends and family (unless they want OSX).
Does Dell offer different customer support for Latitudes than it does for Inspirons? I collected on my warranty for a broken harddrive on my Latitude laptop and also had a terrible time with their support.
If you are just going through the common path of buying their product, it is not surprising that they offer a painless experience. The problem comes when something goes wrong and you need support.
Dell offers different warranties depending on the channel you use to buy. I always buy through the small business section and buy next business day service. It's far less of a hassle.
I've moved years ago from Dell to Lenovo. And specifically to professional models which come with onsite warranty.
The onsite warranty is of course very good thing on its own, but I also believe it puts pressure on the vendor to focus on quality and getting issues sorted out quickly (because doing onsite visits is not cheap). It also indicates the computer is built in a way I can also replace parts, because you can't field service a machine that has been glued together.
I am the OP of the Facebook post. I just wanted to clarify some points:
1. The dept that I have dealt with is called the Advanced Resolution Group (ARG). No one from basic customer care or tech support or out-of-warranty-repairs has heard of them. So far, I know of only one person in ARG, Prawin K. He first told me that he had no manager. When I spoke to a supervisor from tech support, she told me that she will speak to Prawin's manager. When I pointed this out, and told him that he had lied, he said "You are assuming too many things. I did not lie because my manager does not take calls and I AM the HIGHEST point of contact". Since I had complained to BBB, he told me that no matter who I complained to, it will all circle back and I will end up dealing with him each time. Repeated to pleas to get my case tranferred have fallen on deaf ears.
2. The tech support initially (read, October) ran diagnostics on my laptop using remote access. They said that it seemed to be a software issue. After the laptop reached the depot, I was told that it is possible that someone spilled something on my laptop when I was not around, and so the damage is customer induced. I was asked to pay 450$ for the repairs (motherboard, keyboard, mousepad). I could not pay such money upfront (I paid only 800$ for the laptop) since I felt that it was a lot for repairing a 1 year old laptop. They sent me my laptop unrepaired.
3. After reasoning with them I was asked to pay $350 for the repairs. The out-of-warranty dept was frank enough to tell me that the replacement parts will be refurbished ones, but the seal will be broken by the techician in the depot.
4. After paying for the repairs, I was told that I will receive the shipping box within 1-2 business days (email proof). It took them 11 days. First due to delays because of the weekend, and then for some reason they wanted to verify my address to mail me an empty box.
5. After getting the laptop back, it still has the existing issues in addition to the old one (screen becomes white along the edges). The only way to get rid of it is it keep tilting the laptop. The way I look at it there are three possilbilties : the replacement parts are faulty, the laptop itself has issues that they are unwilling to accept, the technician screwed up and did not check my system before shipping it back, all of are Dell's mistakes.
6. I finally got fed up and asked for a refund. I gave them 4 options:
Refund 1200$ so that I can take my business elsewhere
Refund the out of warranty repair charge so that I can recover at least some money and rest peacefully
Give me a replacement system of equivalent cost (i undestand the problem of depreciation of cost)
Give me an extension on warranty on the replaced parts (it only has 90 day warranty). Since the parts failed in less than 2 hours, I find it impossible to believe that the next set will last as long. I do not want to end up going through this cycle after 3 months, again.
7. I have been told that this beyond the ability of the onsite engineer and the only way is to send the laptop to their depot again.
I think we briefly thought the first post was pointing to that one, and then realized it wasn't. It happens!
Separate observation:
Customer rage anecdotes that inevitably tell only part of a story—or that at least cannot be reconstructed accurately from public info—are not a very high-quality genre on a site whose guiding value is intellectual curiosity. There's a standard downweight that we put on submissions like this.
Memorializing their intial response before their social media team is paged and freaks out...
We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. We will take this as a feedback and we will forward it to the relevant team. As per our records, we see that the Escalation team is handling this case and they are the highest point of contact. Please continue to work with them to avoid any confusion. Our team defers to the Escalation team.
-Senthil
As this case has been escalated to the highest authority, we will have limited options to work on it. Apologize as I cannot comment on this but I would still recommend you to contact them as they are the only team who can help you to resolve the issues on your system. -Krishna