What Dell Doesn't Want You To Know

[Botsu]

As a European customer neither me nor any relatives experienced any serious problem with Dell's customer service. They were usually responsive and helpful.

Don't know about their failure rate though nor if it's significantly different from their competitors', I think it's highly subjective. A while back I've had to replace a display after a few months (black screen of death) and last year my brother purchased an XPS 15 that went barbecue (literally, smoke was coming out of the vents lol) and was quickly replaced too, but I wouldn't dare to pretend my own personal experience is is a good representation of the reliability of their products...

[moogleassassin]

well.... just to add to this...

I received my Dell system end of Feb2012. Problem encountered immediately and I notified Dell within the 7day return & refund period. I asked Dell to either ship me a replacement or collect the system and issue a refund. They convinced me to let Tech Support look at it (despite me saying that if they wanted to do that then I still wanted to be able to send back for a refund if it wasn't resolved by the end)…

%insert stuff about Dell messing about trying to fix it%

Fast forward to present day about 3 months after taking delivery and Dell have been unable to fix and also tried numerous times to say that I'm not entitled to a refund because it is past the 7 days return.

I have had to escalate many times, provide email conversations that clearly show "if you want to do Tech support and can't fix then I still want a refund or I'm sending it back now".... I had to threaten to take to the small claims court and still they resisted.

Fortunately I have managed to get a refund authorised last week and now it has been >1 week since their returns team were meant to call me and nothing.

Dell *can* be very good, but they can also be a steaming pile of poo.

true story.

[Dell-Bill_B]

well.... just to add to this...

I received my Dell system end of Feb2012. Problem encountered immediately and I notified Dell within the 7day return & refund period. I asked Dell to either ship me a replacement or collect the system and issue a refund. They convinced me to let Tech Support look at it (despite me saying that if they wanted to do that then I still wanted to be able to send back for a refund if it wasn't resolved by the end)…

...
Fortunately I have managed to get a refund authorised last week and now it has been >1 week since their returns team were meant to call me and nothing.

Dell *can* be very good, but they can also be a steaming pile of poo.

true story.

Sorry to hear about your frustrating experience. If you want us to follow up on that return and refund, feel free to reach out to us using the links in my signature. We have social media care and tech agents who work with our teams in all regions that can make sure things are moving along. If you are on Twitter, you can tweet to @DellCares and do a follow/follow back in order to give them your email and customer number. They can take it from there and find out what's going on. If you're not on Twitter, you can hit our Facebook page using the message link, and John should be able to run everything down. If you are on neither Facebook or Twitter, you can send me a PM here with your details, and I will forward to the team for follow up.

[moogleassassin]

Hello Bill,

I called them again today and they *assure* me (again) that I will get an update tommorow. If I don't hear anything then I'll contact you - hopefully you can use your "hammer of resolution"

Thanks

[exaltare]

Of course, I got an e-mail today that I hadn't sent back my adapter as I was required. Every time I have to do this dance, a part of me dies. It's frustrating how often Dell representatives have given me conflicting or false information. I have multiple e-mails in my box which outright contradict each other. I even said I'd prefer to send back the adapter with my own packing materials, and I was told that wasn't required.

You know what makes me seethe though? This last part.

You may be contacted by our 3rd party recovery team.

That sounds like you might have put out a debt collection notice. If that does show up on my credit report and influence my credit rating, I'm going to be insanely mad.

[jet757f]

In order to play the game you have to know the rules.

Always know what the refund period is with any company. If I buy a new or refurbished product and it is defective I am not going to spend time with technical support (where english is the second language) to trying and fix a product that should be working correctly. Instead call customer service and get a return and refund immediately.

Amazon is actually excellent on returns including computers. Everything is done online and they even send you a prepaid shipping label for the return.

[jaug1337]

I don't know what to say.. heard stories beyond my worst dreams.

And you are probably correct to some degree, but my 4 year old M1530 doesn't lie although exceptions are to be made

[GloStiX]

LOL Dell is a for-profit business. Businesses care only about the bottom line: PROFIT. Customer service, social media, it's all BS damage control nonsense. Look at the other manufacturer subfora on here, I don't see a buncha social media reps on their boards. Notice also that this board has the most complaints about the manufacturer, and we get multiple Dell Reps here for some reason. Make sense now?

Integrity is inevitably lost when any industry is scaled up beyond the artisan level (cobblers, bespoke suitmakers, rural doctors, etc.)--especially to a global market. The bigger, the more anonymous, just like OP pointed out. Reputation still matters, it just works differently.

That's just how the game is played... but a previous poster was right: know the rules of the game. Arrives with overheating --> immediate return. Don't waste your time/energy with CS.

[Dell-Bill_B]

Customer service, social media, it's all BS damage control nonsense. Look at the other manufacturer subfora on here, I don't see a buncha social media reps on their boards. Notice also that this board has the most complaints about the manufacturer, and we get multiple Dell Reps here for some reason. Make sense now?

No. It does not make sense. The presence of Dell helping out here is evidence of poor service or quality? Did you do a count on complaint posts to determine there are more about Dell? Not saying there's not. Just trying to understand your methodology.

Why not ask why the other manufacturers are not here? Is it because no one is complaining on their boards? Is Dell only here because of the number of complaints? If that were true, we'd have left a long time ago based on no ROI. I've been here over 4 years. No plans to leave no matter if what I'm doing is changing those numbers or not.

Quick count:
154,626 Dell/Alienware threads.
36,916 HP threads.
I'd venture to guess if there are 4X more Dell conversations than HP conversations, by your assertion (basically paraphrasing) that "more complaints=Dell reps here is BS," then we should be able to count all the complaints and see 4X the complaints about Dell. I doubt you will see proportionately equal numbers, but it's your assertion, not mine. Of the HP complaints, what percentage receive an HP response, or does that matter since it would be social media, marketing BS hype anyway?

[dave-p]

Well I owned somewhere about 30 dell laptops ranging back to the early days in Dell, and I only had 2-3 major repairs, and maybe 1-2 minor repairs done

That's including the Accidental coverages when laptops took a fall.

I only had one new dell arrive DOA, which was promptly taken care of.

Dell is one of the few if only vendor who will allow user to upgrade memory, drives etc and not void the warranty.

I have to laugh tho at some who think they are going to get the same level of support for a 400 dollar laptop as you would a $ 2000.00 laptop.

Having worked as a technician for over 30 years I know Electronics can and will fail, and most times do so within the first year of use.

Is Dell Perfect - no, but my History of support has been good, and having the Dell Reps hanging around these and other sites speaks volumes to me, So thanks Guys.