A Season in Dell

 

 

It’s been three months since I ordered my Studio desktop system fromDell computers, and, friends, it continues to be an ongoing catastrophe. First, they sent me a computer which had a few different flavors of not working. Then there were the countless calls to Dell ordering the replacement, including some software which I had not ordered originally. Then there was the return of the defective computer, during which Dell repeatedly asked me to quote tag numbers to them when I explained to them that I’m blind and can’t scan labels like that. This is the thing with Dell: doing business with them requires that one keep track of a whole handful of numbers. There are customer numbers, order numbers, dispatch numbers, service numbers and on and on. And no two departments ask for the same numbers if you call them for different reasons.

 

After many troubles and dropped calls, I was finally assigned Varma, a service recovery agent who told me that he was going to handle all of my service requests from now on and that I could trust him. Sucker that I am, I believed Varma and agreed not to return the new computer and take my business to Frye’s.

 

Now I’m trying to get an invoice --a simple invoice!—which I need because a foundation for the blind is helping me to pay for the system. I sat on the phone for the better part of an hour while a customer service rep did a conference call with a rep in their billing department. The billing rep vowed to me that I would receive the invoices in my email within 24 hours. But 24 hours have come and gone, and the invoices are yet to make their appearance.

 

The thing is, there hasn’t been just one problem or even two. The whole Dell system seems to be rigged against the ordinary customermaking any headway. Calls consistently get dropped, and when they aren’t dropped they are often not returned either. I don’t know how Dell survives. I only know that the next time I buy a computer, I’ll be going to Frye’s. Constant Reader, I advise you to do the same.

 

 

 

 

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