I just had a customer service encounter with Dell that was terrible. Unfortunately, it was typical of my service experiences with Dell. Just so you know, I'm not just an average consumer. For the past three years I have been involved with training customer service to Fortune 100 companies and many other companies and organizations at that level. I know how to train good customer service, and I recognize when a company desperately needs to improve customer service. Dell's service is in desperate need of improvement.
Here are the specifics of my complaint.
Yesterday I contacted technical support about a non-functioning optical drive. The call resulted in a tech coming to my house today to replace the bad drive. That part of the experience was very good. The rest of it sucked.
1) When I called yesterday, the connection was terrible, as it has been every single time I've called Dell support since I got my computer. The agent who took the call was barely audible. The agent could barely speak any English and had to have me repeat myself many, many times, despite my speaking very slowly and enunciating very clearly, and the agent could barely speak English, so that I had to repeatedly ask them to repeat what they were saying. I'm not a fan of of-shoring jobs, but if you're going to do it, then at least get people who can speak and understand the language well. (So I don't have to repeat this portion, the bad connection and poor English skills is a complaint I've had with every single support call I've made to Dell).
2) The service agent's communications skills and etiquette are atrocious. Their culture may require them to make repeated, overly obsequious apologies every minute or two, but out culture doesn't. I comes across as irritating. When the agent needs me to hold, they don't need to say, "I need to investigate your problem further, please, would you hold for two or three minutes, please, while I seek to find and answer to your problem, please, and rest assured I will handle this problem for you okay." All they need to say is, "Would you please hold for a couple of minutes while I investigate your problem?" Simple and clean. When they return to the call they don't need to say, "Thank you very much for holding, I'm am sorry it took so long, sir, but I am still trying to find a solution to your problem would you please mind holding for another two or three minutes, please, while I continue to find a solution to your problem, and rest assured sir that I will be handling this problem for you completely." Very annoying. All they need to say is, "Thank you for holding. Would you mind holding a little longer while I continue to investigate?" If they're done investigating, and ready to solve the problem, all they need to say is, "Thank you for holding, I think I have a solution for you." Their constant overapologizing wastes my time an serves only to frustrate and anger me.
3) Now to the specifics of my complaint. When the support agent had me on the line yesterday he told me about a special on extending my computer's warranty Dell was running. He said it was a half-price special, but that I would have to buy a 4 year warranty. He quoted me a price of approximately $350 for the 4 year in-home service contract that included coverage for accidental damage, and approximately $200 for a service contract that included accidental damage but that required me to send it to Dell to have any work done.in both cases, if they could not repair the machine, they would replace it. He said it was a special for Christmas and New Year's and I told him I wanted to talk with my wife before making a decision.
I called today ready to purchase an extended warranty, but had a couple questions before deciding which one. After going through all the same crap I outlined in #1 and #2 above, I finally got to talk to a sales agent. Unfortunately, what she told me didn't jive at all with what the agent yesterday told me about the warranties. The agent today said the mail-in warranty was $228 plus another $90 if I wanted the accidental damage coverage, for a total of $318 — a lot more than the $200 I was quoted yesterday. For the in-home contract she quoted me a price of $417 dollars, again, a lot more than the agent told me yesterday. The disparity really irritated me so I decided not to buy the warranty.
A couple of minutes after I ended the call, I got a call back from Dell from a supervisor who said he wanted to clarify the previous call because he'd heard I was irritated with the previous agent. The supervisor told me that the price for the mail-in warranty was $317 plus $90 for the accidental damage coverage for a 4 year contract. That's $90 dollars higher than the agent just a few minutes before and more than double the price quoted me yesterday. He proceeded to quote me a price of $510 for the in-home warranty with accidental damage coverage. That's $93 higher than a few minutes earlier and $160 higher than I was quoted yesterday. I that supervisor was trying to smooth ruffled feathers, he did nothing except convince me that the next time I needed a computer it would likely be a brand other than Dell.
I didn't ask for an extended warranty to be offered to me, but if your sales people are going to make the offer, then they shouldn't try to jack the price up every time I talk to someone different!
4) Finally, this evening I decided to complain about the service experience to Dell. I figured that as long as I was willing to remain quiet about lousy service, then lousy service is probably all I would ever get. Low and behold, the experience got even worse as I tried to complain about it!
I went to your website looking for a feedback for or email address for customer service. Unfortunately, you do not allow general feedback or customer service department contact. Every single avenue I was able to find required that I note whether I had a comment about order status or tech support or financial services. No where on your site is there a way to make a general comment or send feedback to a complaint. The feeling I got after having spent 45 minutes trying to find someone to make this complaint was that Dell has no interest in providing customers a way to complain or comment. If that was your intention, good job. If that wasn't, then you really need to work on your website.
I finally resorted to Google to find some way of registering my dissatisfaction, that's where I found the email addresses I used above. I don't really expect any of them to be valid anymore, nor do I expect to ever hear from anyone at Dell. Up to this point it has been pretty obvious that Dell has little interest in developing customer satisfaction or loyalty. I will be more than a little shocked if anyone from Dell responds.
I'm done now, except to say that as soon as I send this email I am going to look for places online where I can post this experience. Maybe if enough complaints get out on the Internet Dell will finally decide it's time to improve its customer service experience.
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