Two years ago DELL sold and sent me one of their Inspiron laptops. To this day I am unable to use this laptop as anything more than a typewriter.
Nor will DELL FINANCIAL SERVICES, the muscle end of the operation, refund or credit my account more than 50 percent.
Once you receive a box from DELL, you automatically owe DELL fifty percent of whatever DELL maintains is in the box.
Even if it's just a picture of a DELL computer - you still wind up owing DELL FINANCIAL SERVICES and DELL about two grand what with finance charges.
If you object, or if you flat-out refuse to pay, DELL will turn you over to a collection agency quicker than you can say Hewlett-Packard.
Factor in about two thousand desperation calls to technical support over in either India or Pakistan - you know it's out-sourcing because tech support people speak incredibly poor, incredibly broken-English that's almost impossible to understand.
Especially when you're being led-by-the-nose through complicated-computer - manuevers guaranteed to fix your four-hundreth-DELL-migraine.
Plus you know it's DELL TECHNICAL SUPPORT in India because their names are always Jim or Mary.
So that you kinda like think of them as being a city or two away.
If you ask your DELL TECH SUPPORT helper where, in fact, he or she is located, they have to decide whether to lie or tell you the truth.
Some lie and say right here in America, sir.
While others hesitantly and eventually acknowledge that they're this-close to the Afghanistan border.
Being paid six-dollars-an-hour by DELL. And damn grateful for that. Plus DELL sends these TECH PEOPLE to three DELL beginners' classes that most DELL consumers are well beyond.
So it's been an exercise in futility and haplessness - exacerbated by two Limbs that call themselves DELL CUSTOMER CARE and DELL FINANCIAL SERVICES.
To attain a job at either-limb you must prove you can do simple addition, walk in a semi-straight line, and have the ability to tell the difference between the colors red and black.
I've cooled-off considerably, mind you, during the first eighteen months of this fun/pleasant DELL go-around I had a twitch and was treated for onset of DELL clinical depression - necessitating psychtropic medication.
-Plus the forty Tylenol a day.
When you have a DELL issue, the various Limbs get-behind the DELL product, defend it to its' death - in that a senior V.P. Listens in on all of the calls.
That would be the Listening Branch of DELL, which most of us didn't think existed.
It does, but the DELL-Listening-Branch isn't in place to listen to its' customers - only to weed out disloyal DELL employees not housed in the Middle East.
To be fair, I've also had a DELL desktop, a 4550, and it's been excellent all along, so my issue is limited to everything but the desktop.
DELL CUSTOMER CARE pretended to listen, apologized the-exact-number-of-times recommended in the DELL customer care manual (4).
Assured me that all would be worked out to my satisfaction. DELL CUSTOMER CARE (Jerry Strother) then hung up the phone, called DELL FINANCIAL SERVICES (Jessica) and informed the latter that I probably dropped the laptop at some point.
That it's all much ado about nothing. About the most I can do is suffer the ding on my credit report - thanks for that, DELL.
Report it to consumer complaints, thank God for places like consumer complaints.
-Forward the issue to the FCC.
-Then the BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU in Lubbock, Texas.
DELL doesn't even pretend to care.
If you break down, begin sobbing over the phone, a kind DELL CUSTOMER CARE agent offers to email you a survey from DELL.
Which no one from DELL ever follows up on.
It's a company that's literally gotten too-big-for-its-britches.
On literally my first day of having a DELL INSPIRON, my first laptop, I had a blank screen DELL assured me they were providing a fix for.
That was July.
Hey but thanks for the typewriter, DELL.
Thanks, too, for the DELL printer you sold me that's also just as useless.
But mostly thanks for all of the callous DELL SOB's I've had to deal with -
and for over two years - from your various Limbs.
Come to think of it a typewriter's not a bad idea - wonder if they still make
a good IBM Selectric.
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