dell's service... yay or nay?

[spanky]

my experience with dell customer service has been pretty good thus far. i guess that may be due to the fact that when i call them at work, i call the government support ppl, and all our machines have next day on-site warranties. however, i just made a personal purchase from dell outlet, and the machine came pretty much DOA. it boots and i run the xp initial setup. upon reboot, it hangs on a black screen. all attempts to reboot result boot failure. i'm pretty sure its a bad hd.

so i call the number for home and office tech support and the lady tells me i got the wrong number. i apparently got small biz tech support, so she said she will transfer me to the right dept. ok, so like 10 mins later, i get a guy who tells me i got the wrong number. this time, i got the government tech support. so i am being transferred again and am on hold. this sucks. is home tech support always this crappy?

i just picked this machine up from UPS 3 hours ago, and i think they are gonna make me box it back up and send it back for warranty service. fug... i'm prolly gonna have to eat the shipping cost too. god dammit.

 

[OutHouse]

Server support rocks.

 

[d33pt]

I have nothing but good things to say about Dell CS. We had a server at work that was 3 months out of warranty and the RAID card took a crap. I called them up at 11PM on a saturday night. Explained the situation to the tech. He put us in touch with the Technical Account Manager for that night. The TAM authorized to have that server put under the gold service we had that was still active on another server. Gold service is 4 hour response. At 1am I had the card in my hands, delivered via UPS SonicAir.

THAT is service. I fully expected them to tell me to bug off... and would've accepted it.

Their hardware, on the other hand, I can't really vouch for. A compaq server wouldn't have failed like that.

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: d33pt
I have nothing but good things to say about Dell CS. We had a server at work that was 3 months out of warranty and the RAID card took a crap. I called them up at 11PM on a saturday night. Explained the situation to the tech. He put us in touch with the Technical Account Manager for that night. The TAM authorized to have that server put under the gold service we had that was still active on another server. Gold service is 4 hour response. At 1am I had the card in my hands, delivered via UPS SonicAir.

THAT is service. I fully expected them to tell me to bug off... and would've accepted it.

Their hardware, on the other hand, I can't really vouch for. A compaq server wouldn't have failed like that.

god damn... 4 hour service is nice. i expect to be on hold for 4 hours right about now.

 

[BornStar]

Originally posted by: spanky
my experience with dell customer service has been pretty good thus far. i guess that may be due to the fact that when i call them at work, i call the government support ppl, and all our machines have next day on-site warranties. however, i just made a personal purchase from dell outlet, and the machine came pretty much DOA. it boots and i run the xp initial setup. upon reboot, it hangs on a black screen. all attempts to reboot result boot failure. i'm pretty sure its a bad hd.

so i call the number for home and office tech support and the lady tells me i got the wrong number. i apparently got small biz tech support, so she said she will transfer me to the right dept. ok, so like 10 mins later, i get a guy who tells me i got the wrong number. this time, i got the government tech support. so i am being transferred again and am on hold. this sucks. is home tech support always this crappy?

i just picked this machine up from UPS 3 hours ago, and i think they are gonna make me box it back up and send it back for warranty service. fug... i'm prolly gonna have to eat the shipping cost too. god dammit.

That sounds rather familiar. I had a machine that I swear we purchased through Dell Small Business but they informed me that it was purchased through Dell Home. It took me 3 days to get it partially straightened out. We ended up just purchasing a new laptop because it was easier.

I'm not too pleased with Dell's support at this moment. It took almost 2 weeks to get a replacement part (next business day onsite business service). I just had to ship it back to the depot for Dell to work on because they refused to send me any more parts (after breaking the video on the laptop after replacing the motherboard).

I know you asked about Dell Home support but my only experience is with Small Business support since I gave up on Dell Home several years back. I got far to upset with them. I've decided to have a chat with my boss as we're looking at purchasing new systems and I have no interest in dealing with Dell ever again.

 

[mzkhadir]

Isn't dell service provided by IBM or Unisys ?

 

[Budmantom]

I can't think of any company with much better support... or much worse...


Tom

 

[ruffilb]

I think it's pretty good.

Not sure though.

 

[spanky]

damn, when i spoke to the wrong tech depts, i got ppl who spoke perfect english. now that i finally got a hold of a tech at home support, i'm speaking with a lady who i can barely understand and have to ask her to repeat everything twice. fak.

 

[BornStar]

wrong button

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Originally posted by: spanky
damn, when i spoke to the wrong tech depts, i got ppl who spoke perfect english. now that i finally got a hold of a tech at home support, i'm speaking with a lady who i can barely understand and have to ask her to repeat everything twice. fak.

That's tech support at any computer company out there now.

 

[DVad3r]

Terrible service. Not gonna get into specifics but the people that pick up the phone don't know how to speak english or follow instructions. Also I have not yet got a single response from the numerous e-mails I have sent them to various addresses etc.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Of course, they are better than HP. HP reps refuse to acknowledge that there is a way to transfer their warranty when I have the contract sitting in front of me.

 

[spanky]

well after being on hold for 30-40 mins, i talked to a rep and gave her the error codes from the diag i ran. she put me on hold for like 20 more minutes, and came back to tell me they will replace the hd. good news is that they will not force me to send the machine back to their depot for repair, becuz they will send me a replacement hd. i wonder if they will give me a free upgrade? bleh... prolly not. they also forgot to send me the venice blue snap cover.... grrr!