Reasons not to buy from DELL

[loki]

I've had an experience on the otherside of the spectrum from dell.

I had to ge the casing on a laptop replaced after a screw sheared. They accidentally took the WinXP pro serial key away with the casing. Phoned them up a couple of weeks later after i noticed and the guy arranged to get me one sent out without much hassle (ups on delivery were another matter).

[McMav]

seems to be who you get on the phone.

[aeonf242]

Dell have always been OK, but they're cheap.
Their CS is very annoying to use and very annoying and very annoying (you have to repeat things).
You can always e-mail the UK to see if they can help..

[McMav]

Yeah is TS dont get anywhere I got a number for a guy in the uk for them to try. Failing that I'll go through works business contact and see if they can help them.

[beaNN]

Shocking! Thought dell were one of the better companies

[McMav]

Same. Wont be recommending them to anyone else. Cheap and heres the reason.

[hardflipman]

with regards to the original post they should have immediately sent out the correct item. ut as for the monitors, 1. they're barely cheaper than the apple ones at normal price.
2. sendinf out refurbs is common practice for monitor manufacturers
3. i'm pretty sure that overclockers sell refurbs anyway...

[tential]

I'm no big fan of a intel only using company but in this case I will sa that dell is not that bad. They have great bargain prices and infact im using a laptop INSPIRON 700m from them right now. This is the first dell product i have bought and it came in 3 days instead of hte expected 12-14. It was supposed tocome after my birthday but came before. My dad recently ordered a 19 inch screen from dell that will cometoday. Another 3 day delivery. What happenedto you was just one mistake but thats no reason to not buy from dell.

[McMav]

Heres the upshot of it.

When quoted the e-value code from the newpaper they went and customised the machine. by

DOWNGRADING the CPU and removing the FREE double memory upgrade. and installing a cd/rw drive and a set of speakers.

Now awaiting a call from a manager (awaits hell to freeze over first) Do not order from them shoddy company just do a search for dell customer complaints. They even admit they have problems themselves.

[McMav]

oof double post looks like I'm doing a free upgrade

[obvious]

I buy quite a few systems from Dell and it's fair to say that their customer support can often be a bit flakey to say the least.

This is a good thing :O

Whenever they get 'it' horribly wrong it's always worth calling/emailing and letting them know just how much trouble it's causing you. There's no need to lie about it or anything, just be upfront with them. The rewards can be astounding.

Examples:

If your system arrives with a small scratch or dent then that's normally good for 10-20% off and/or a free warranty upgrade.

If they mess up on the specification then you can ask them for a free video card upgrade. Some people have managed to get free 7800s for a problem with an order.

If first line support dont really want to know and in all fairness you deserve better then a quick email to michael@dell.com does wonders. Of course it wont go to the man himself but does get picked up by the complaint department and they usually bend over backwards to help in any way possible.

In short, for me when a Dell system arrives damaged/late/not to spec then I always get a slight grin on my face and pick the phone up.

[Apex]

Dells bad, Netgear is worse.....

[McMav]

Final update and this does not change my mind on them.

Got email from india this morning again saying as a goodwill gesture they would give us the 256 MB of ram that was already paid for. Neighbour had had enough so told them to cancel it.

However I had forwarded all the emails I had been recieving from the CS rep to Dells mail press office yesterday afternoon.

today at 3pm I got an email from a lady from dells irish office working as a consultant in their executive customer relations team. Asking me to contact her to discuss the issues that my neighbour had been having. Upshot is she was very nice and offered highers spec'd machine with tft as compensation.

Still say dont touch their home service as it should not have come to this. But at least I now have a contact on the home front who is actually based in UK&Ireland.

So 2 weeks after the problems started we have a result.

So if you have CS problems with dell email their press office its advertised on their website

[obvious]

Nice result and well played
In my experience they get it right about 9 times out of 10.