On August 24th I placed an order with Dell on their toll-free order line. The first person I spoke with was "Tiffany", a pleasant native-born American. Took about 15 minutes, but when it came to payment on our Dell Preferred Customer Account, she couldn't verify it in her system.
She saved the order and gave me her extension number and said to call back in 15 minutes or so. Unfortunately the extension number she gave me was wrong. This begins my two-day odyssey in Hell With Dell.
I called back the number she gave me which was answered by a man's voice mail. I knew this was wrong, so I keyed back in to speak with another "customer service rep." Big mistake.
This began a never-ending loop of one Indian (as in Bangalore, India) non-English speaking person after another. I found out last night that recently Dell has outsourced ALL of its Home and Home Office sales to India.
With English as their second language these "customer service reps" are working from a script. If you ask a question that isn't on their script, they go into brain freeze and proceed to ask you the same stupid non-pertinent questions over and over again like some broken Stepford wife.
I spent two hours on the phone trying to complete the order. The last guy I spoke with, a "BJ", took an hour to complete my order, repeating himself over and over again until I was exhausted and screaming at him to just "get it over with." Then when we were right at the point of him giving me my order numbers, he disconnected me. I was insane with anger.
I called back again and got a "Mary Ann." She spoke English well enough and was apologetic and within 10 minutes or so I had my order numbers. OK, I thought.
Today, the 25th, I checked the status of my order online at Dell.com and to my shock and dismay 2/3 of my order had been CANCELLED. I called customer service, and guess what: back into the Continous Loop That Is Called Dell Hell Based In Bangalore India.
I spoke with no less than 1/2 dozen "reps" none of whom could figure out what the hell I was talking about. They could not reinstate my order. I would have to place a new order. Finally I told them to cancel the whole thing and I would go online and place a new order myself, which they did.
Within 10 minutes I had completed my order online. Now to my utter horror they have billed my Prefrred Account for BOTH systems, the one I cancelled and the new order.
I'm really not sure what to do now. I tried calling Dell Financial Services but I ended up back in India again.
I purchased a new laptop and a desktop from Dell in 2003 and never once experienced these problems. I guess the India thing is new, but if Dell doesn't come to their senses soon and get back to good old American customer service, they are going to lose a LOT of good repeat customers like me.
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