Complaint Review: Dell - Round rock Texas

Several days ago I ordered an xbox one and a game from dell.com. They were the only site at the time offering pre-orders, and at the top of the order page it said in big bold letters the order would be shipped to arrive no later than Dec. 31st. 

Well, I got an acknowledgement of order email, but no order confirmation email. It said I should get that email after 24hours, no dice. I called, spent an hour on the phone with 7 different people in 5 different departments, and got several different answers - some said my order never went through. Some said there was a problem in "Texas", and my order wouldn't be processed. Some said my order number was invalid (even through the other people could find my order).  It was clear no one knew what they were talking about, and they were just passing me around. After all this they finally said "That order will never work, lets make a new order. Oh wait, we're now out of stock". I have multiple people assure me that the order won't work so I won't be charged. She says she'll have their Xbox order person call me about getting me all set. Which sounds great, but they never called.

So the next day the product is back In stock. In hindsight I should have already learned all I needed to about ordering from Dell, but I placed the order again.

This time I got my order confirmation email - success! Except ten minutes later I got another confirmation email, this one for that first order. Now I've got two orders totaling ~$1100. Perhaps worse, even through the item was advertised as delivered by Dec 31st, the estimated ship date on both is Jan 28th, 2014!

So I call again, and the rep tells me the ship date is definitely January not December, despite the big bold "Delivered by 12/31/13" right in the product title. So I ask to cancel both of them, because screw their deceptive advertising - I'll take my chances with Target and Best Buy.

She connects me to "cancellations" and after 20 minutes of hold, the phone call disconnects. I waited a couple hours to cool off and wait to an off time to try again, but then Dell called me. I thought at first maybe someone had discovered my problem, and they were calling to resolve it. 

Unfortunately not so. Their order fraud department wanted to know why I ordered two Xb1's from two different states (I placed one order on my phone while traveling for work). Their order system messes up and charges me twice, and they send the Dell Police after me accusing me of fraud. I've never gotten such bad service, but I stayed polite - even if these people on the phone were useless it's not their fault. After I explained the whole story, she said I would have to talk to customer service, because she couldn't cancel my orders either (what would she have done if she thought it was fraud? Not cancelled them???)

Customer service said she couldn't help, after I retold her this entire tale - I have to go to Order Cancellations. 40 minutes in hold and they pick up. The woman attempts to talk me out of canceling my duplicate order by offering me $50 off. Seriously?  I tell you it's a duplicate order and you offer me money to keep an order for TWO OF THE SAME THIMG?  At this point I cancelled both orders. Good riddance, I will never buy anything from them again. They're shamelessly advertising a hard to find oroduct as being available sooner the anywhere else, when really they're just luring in suckers and making it hard to cancel the order.