I'm an advanced computer user, having built and serviced my own for going on ten years now. My family situation went downhill in 06, so I was on the move a lot, and found that I had to get rid of my recently assembled $1000 gaming rig. A month later a friend had an Inspiron 6000 (basic system, 256MB RAM, 1.6 Celeron, DVD-ROM, 40GB HD, etc) that he sold me for $300. I loved the system, it had great battery life, has proven super durable, and not once have I had an issue with it.
As time went on, however, the tiny 15.4" Lappy-That-Could began to show it's age, and so I did some research, using the system's service tag number through Dell's website to see what would go in it. I even went a step further to confirm with not one, but two Dell sales employees over the phone that said parts would be compatible, not wanting to screw it up and buy the wrong stuff. After hearing their feedback on what would and would not work, I ordered the following:
1.73Ghz Pentium M
160GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Western Digital SATA hard drive
2gb ddr2 ram
A new keyboard to replace the old, fading keyboard
And an ATI x300 128MB Video Card
This all cost me around $400, with the videocard and keyboard being purchased from Dell, and the other parts being purchased from a lovely vendor I've been going to for years, NewEgg. Mind you, this was all after confirming that a) my hard drive was SATA and a SATA drive could replace it and b) the motherboard in my particular laptop did indeed have a PCI-E expansion slot, interally, for this videocard to fit. Again, this is confirming through my service tag number on the website, along with two employees over the phone, before ordering.
So I get the $400 in parts and they all install well and good. It's a huge improvement for the laptop. Then, the videocard arrives a few days later. To my chagrin, this part does not work. There is no PCI-Express slot on the laptop. After calling Dell, the same day I got the part, I was told that I was not able to return the part, because through the several weeks in ordering it, I had changed the type of checking account I had through my bank, and was thus issued a different check card. I figured alright, they can just mail me a check, right? It might be a few weeks longer in arriving, but they can at least do that. Wrong. Dell Corporation, a company who in 2007 had over $57 Billion in operating revenue, did not have the capability to mail me a check.
This was alright, surely they could at least give a gift card, store credit, something, right? Nope. Not that either. To make matters worse, I later found out that their main consumer call center was outsourced entirely to India for the first however many escalations of a call. This made things worse, as the dialect did not work out entirely for communication purposes. I don't mind people from India, but come on, when I ask for a superviser four times to get stuff figured out, and I still get call-backs from India, that's a tad ridiculous. I ended up escalating the issue to... Eight or nine people, including I want to say three or four call-backs. This was over the course of probably a month and a half, as they did not call back "within 24 hours" like stated, sometimes taking a week and a half or more to call me.
The problem with this is two-fold: it takes forever to accomplish anything (and probably costs Dell a ton in the process), and also becomes so frustrating. I've been calling in on and off for the better part of ten monthes (going on eleven) now. I ordered my parts from Dell in August of last year.
So I call in today, get a supervisor, and am told that Dell doesn't accept returns on items over 21 days old. Excuse me? I called in the day I received the part and was told I couldn't do it, and this guy has the audacity to tell me I'm SOL? On a $150 videocard? To make matters worse, he then tells me that he's the end of the line, and that I am not going to be allowed to speak to anybody higher up in the company regarding the issue. He also mentioned flagging my account (?) so that nobody else in the company will talk to me about it at all. What kind of customer service is that? That's aweful.
Now not only am I stuck with a $150 videocard that I can't use, but $250 in other parts I would never have purchased if I had known about it, as gaming is something done often on the laptop, not to mention the graphics card's assistance in other day-to-day activities. So that's $400 more I'd have in my pocket, to spend on a new laptop, had Dell not messed things up with my service tag number in the first place.
What's funny is I asked when I called today if I could get store credit or a gift card or something instead of cash, because I was actually planning to purchase a Dell Vostro laptop in about a month, because I do traveling sales and marketing, and this Inspiron is now 3 1/2 years old.
I have no idea what to do. I can't get a supervisor to escalate a call for me, to try and hope to get an American, I can't get a corporate office phone number, and I'm just stuck, shafted out of $400 in parts, $150 of which was directly from Dell.
I read a story about a gentleman who had a newsletter with a publication of over 100,000 people, and he had posted a horror story about Dell, and conveniently had two Dell executives read his blog daily, and so he was assisted. What do those of us who don't have that luxury do? You know the funny part in all this... I actually work for a competing computer manufacturer, and often times deal with customers at a retail level (along with retail employees) who will ask me about Dell. Not liking to be biased, I am often times the first line of communication these people have when it comes to Dell knowledge. You know what I do? I tell them the story I just typed out to you, about how I can never get an American, and am stuck with a bunch of stuff I don't need or want. That comes off horribly, and hopefully somebody can care enough to fix this, so I can change my story to these folks, and explain to them how I had an issue with Dell, but in the end they came through for me, and I could stand by them once again.
Please, somebody help me. Anybody.
M. Woller
Neenah, Wisconsin
U.S.A.
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