Poll: anyone getting bad customer service from dell?

[AG73]

I called dell a few times recently to order something, and was utterly shocked when the computer voice on the other end told me the approximate waiting time was 32 minutes! jeez! same thing happened to me a few days earlier at a different time of day... can anyone confirm this for me? I was under the impression that dell was known for good customer service, but what's with the 32 minute hold time????

AG

 

[iamwiz82]

i have never been on hold with dell's cust. service for more than 5 min. That is totally acceptable to me.

 

[pulpp]

they been good with me, but its not uncommon to see people complaining about Dell either.

 

[AG73]

hmmm... i dont get it. the phone message *definitely* told me the wait time was 32 minutes. but then again, i navigated to the small business peripherals section in the phone menu, to pick up a refurb'd TB Santa Cruz sound card. maybe I'll try not to navigate too deeply next time.
AG

 

[Jfur]

i am FUMING mad at Dell right now -- have had waits of over and hour, never follow through or call back when they say they will, "lose" replacement parts so next day is actually two weeks. last year they have really started to suck big time, and i'm not just talking about a few incidents.

 

[Johnlee]

I had a bad episode this last month with them. Went to a clients home who was on the phone with a Dell rep. He was *trying* to help her set up her email. She asked him what do I click on now? (At the "what type of email protocol will you be using" (or whatever the verbage is) He sat on the phone humming and hawwing. I told her to hang up. Uh....POP3??? doh.

That week, she waited on hold with them for 45 mins, 1 hour and another time at 1 hour. They are apparently very busy. They also shipped her a puter with a fried hdd and took more than a week to send another one. Then they claimed that WinME was "corrupted" and they had to send a whole new machine out. LOL.

I always heard Dell had the best CS. I'll keeping my decision on that pending.

 

[BruinGuy]

Well I am talking to them now and it wasn't more then a 5-6 minute wait.

 

[Jfur]

that's really weird. they must route it according to service tag and put me in the crap list, because it always takes at least 30 and often more than 60 minutes!

 

[goodoptics]

<< that's really weird. they must route it according to service tag and put me in the crap list >>

What do you mean by &quot;crap list&quot;?

 

[Pyxis]

I've never had any problems with Dell customer service. Everytime I call they pick up within 5-10 minutes.

 

[Keego]

<< << that's really weird. they must route it according to service tag and put me in the crap list >>

What do you mean by &quot;crap list&quot;? >>



Imagine &quot;Office Space&quot; with the guy in the basement. That is the crap queue.
(if the company was CS not a program company)

 

[Jfur]

well, I have just had such bad luck this year... all with the same system... they lose records of previous call, don't do what they claim they will do, and I have never gotten through quickly. SOME of the tech support has been very good, but many are awful. I know that different types of systems go to different support units, so maybe that has something to do with it -- all I know is that I have called repeatedly and had bad service most of the time. Prior to last time, the few times that I called (I have 4 Dells) were great. After their layoffs, service really started to suffer... so the x-tra $$ I was willing to pay for service/support/warranty is no longer an issue

 

[iamwiz82]

i think they treat companies versus normal customers from what i am hearing. I have never had to wait long, and i get all the parts shipped overnight for free.

 

[UnixFreak]

Part of the problem is, calling them. This is the scenario, the Dell tech support division has been moved to a third party company in India recently. It is cheaper for them, as they pay them around .85 cents an hour. These .85c techs are barely worth that. Their job is to get you off the phone in less than 17 minutes. They are not so interested in helping you, as they are in keeping thier average call times under 17 minutes. If they did want to help you, the majority of them dont know squat anyway. This is inside information, this, IMO is the worst decision dell has made to date. I call these people almost every day. Rather than troubleshoot the issue, they search for ways out of the call the entire time you talk to them, they are only concerned with an &quot;out&quot;. I have talked to techs who did not know what the registry is, an enumerator, IRQ, an ECP port, things a basic tech should have at least heard of. My guess is, these are people off the streets they pull in to brush off calls, they have no interest in support, in the literal sense of the word. My best advice, (soon, ALL of their tech support will be in India) is to spend your money elsewhere next time. Things will only get worse from here.

 

[vi edit]

I make most of my calls on behalf of a business customer and the longest I've had to wait is 10 minutes.

I will say that the overall quality of the tech on the line has gone down the crapper in the last 12 months though.