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A Dell Customer Service Dispute

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Re: A Dell Customer Service Dispute

#81

Post by chei0iaV »

johnchristopher wrote: post #66
jpalomaki wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And what about the backslash from Lenovo SSL hijack from some months ago ? It really looks like there are no pro or business solution, just a more expensive variant of `pick your poison`.

What about Dell's SSL cert debacle? It's not much better.

https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/870761

Only way to escape the issues is to remove the bloated OEM OS that vendors provide and do a clean OS install (e.g. Linux)

Re: A Dell Customer Service Dispute

#82

Post by at612 »

jaredklewis wrote: post #54
jpatokal wrote: post #42

There's one missing piece in the story here: 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…

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…

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.

Re: A Dell Customer Service Dispute

#83

Post by at612 »

CJefferson wrote: post #44
gizmo686 wrote: post #14

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…

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.

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.

Re: A Dell Customer Service Dispute

#84

Post by ocdtrekkie »

keithpeter wrote: post #40
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dr…

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…

Plausibly. An aged Dell Latitude or Thinkpad today still works great, and has as much power as the sort of cheap hardware they bought.

Re: A Dell Customer Service Dispute

#85

Post by johnchristopher »

chei0iaV wrote: post #81
johnchristopher wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about the backslash from Lenovo SSL hijack from some months ago ? It really looks like there are no pro or business solution, just a more expensive variant of `pick your poison`.

What about Dell's SSL cert debacle? It's not much better. https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/870761 Only way to escape the issues is to remove the bloated OEM OS that vendors provide and do a clean OS install (e.g. Linux)

Pfff. I missed that one.

Re: A Dell Customer Service Dispute

#86

Post by beilabs »

gbil wrote: post #53
beilabs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had that Nvidia card replaced 3 times. Each time an 'expert' came to my home and replaced the motherboard in front of me. Each time I had it replaced apparently it extended the warranty for 1 more year. The laptop scorched a mark in my table. The charger exploded and scorched my carpet. They wouldn't exchange it until I told them I would send my bill for the carpet as well.... I didn't buy a Dell again for 8 years.…

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.

Oddly enough; I had purchased in Ireland. That year I moved to Australia and found that they pretty much honoured the original warranty.

Re: A Dell Customer Service Dispute

#87

Post by narrowrail »

beezischillin wrote: post #64

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…

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.
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