[jaredklewis]

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.

[at612]

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.

[Terrorblade123]

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.

[toomuchtodo]

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?

[Terrorblade123]

I will never buy anything branded with Dell, be it a laptop, monitor or even a mouse.