Complaint Review: Dell - Nationwide

Having worked in customer service for over 20 years and in purchasing for the last 2 years I can say with experience that Dell customer service is most definitely one of the worst on the planet! While management hides in some white tower, holding themselves above even their own long-time customers, they leave a very important part of their business to people who can barely speak English let alone understand what U.S. customers expect in customer service, but then that would mean that the company employing them would have to care about servicing their customers beyond collecting their money.

I bought a $1500 LCD TV in plenty of time for the Christmas holiday (12/11).

12/12/08 - I receive email from Dell confirming my order, says it will ship 12/16

12/16 - I receive email from Dell saying order is delayed and won't ship until 12/26

12/26/08 - I receive an email from Dell saying that my shipment has been further delayed to 1/2/09 and that I must confirm that I still want the order to ship or the order will be cancelled. I allow the order to be cancelled and go out and get the TV myself.

1/1/09 - I get an email from Dell informing that my order has shipped and should arrive 1/5-1/7what?

1/2/09 - I call customer service to tell them nicely that I will not accept delivery on the TV as the order was supposed to be cancelled. I am informed by a gentleman (who can barely speak English and seems to have a mental capacity that is so limited that he can only regurgitate what I imagine to be a neatly typed script that he received on his first day of training about two weeks ago) that this is not how they do business. I must receive the TV and then return it. He assures me that everything will be fine. I politely inform him that I will not be responsible for Dell's mistake and I certainly will not be responsible for a $1500 piece of sensitive electronics.

Having worked in purchasing the last two years I happen to know and work with the very same carrier that Dell was using to ship the TV. I knew that they would call me for appointment to make the delivery and I also knew that they would open the box on the truck before they even came to the door so that the customer (me) would only see a beautiful new TV and no ugly cardboard boxes. Hence I politely informed Mr. Customer Service, once again, that I would not accept delivery of the TV. The conversation went back and forth like this for a good 30 minutes. I am at work so I need to get off this merry-go-round. So I pull out the big guns and inform Mr. Customer Service that I work in purchasing and indeed, I know the very carrier they use and I also know that they can have the shipment re-routed back to them.

Well this is uncharted territory for Mr. Customer Service and he quickly realizes that he can no longer regurgitate some script. So he puts me on hold while he checks his resources. In the end, he tells me that they will contact the carrier and re-route the shipment then credit my account upon its return.

The kicker is that I could not get access to the order online before I called customer service, but after I heard Mr. Customer Service say what's this? while looking at my order and his subsequent refusal to tell me what he saw I decide to check it again. I find that my order, with my order number and customer ID, was shipped on 12/9/08 to someone in Florida! Tracking numbers are a wonderful thingalways get one.

1/12/09 - One week after the latest arrival date I was given, I get a call from the carrier to set an appointment to deliver my TV. I'm thinking uhm, what?!, and a couple of expletives I can't mention here. I tell the carrier that the order was cancelled and I will not accept delivery. The carrier politely says that they will take up the issue with Dell.

1/13/09 - I write Dell a nasty-gram politely explaining how their customer service department couldn't have any less of a clue if they all had full frontal lobotomies. I recount the story up until this point and reiterate how I will not be responsible for their error by taking receipt of said item.

1/14/09 I receive a phone call from Mr. Customer Service's supervisor. Mr. Supervisor tells me that he would first like to apologize for my inconvenience. He then proceeds to tell me that if I would simply receive the item they can process the return (here we go again). I say no once more. He, of course, assures me that there will be no interest charges or any other charges to my account until this issue is resolved. He then informs me that my account has been frozen to avoid these charges and has the audacity to ask me if I was planning on charging anything else to this account! He tells me that as soon as they receive the TV this issue will be cleared up. This is another 30 minutes out of another work day.

1/14/09 Not 10 minutes after I hang up with Mr. Supervisor, the carrier calls me asking for an appointment to come pick up my return. OMG! Are you kidding me? I inform the carrier once again, that I did not, and will not accept delivery of this item and that I am, in fact, not in possession of said item but that his very own carrier company is in possession of it per the last time I spoke with one of their representatives. Mr. Confused Carrier apologizes and says goodbye.

I am now desperately searching for some kind of corporate contact information on Dell but have found this impossible to find. Coincidence? I THINK NOT! This is yet another sad commentary on how far customer service has declined. While mega-giants like Dell are buying cheap labor from other countries, and staying comfy cozy in their unreachable towers, they fail to realize that history has taught us that this is always the beginning of the end (Rome, Caesar, Pharaoh, AIG, take your pick) and the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Not usually a complainer

Colorado Springs, Colorado

U.S.A.

Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on DELL