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“We’re Not Happy Till You’re Not Happy” — Unofficial Dell Motto
By Sean | February 13, 2010
Hi Everyone. I’m about to give you the short version of a long and impossibly frustrating experience with Dell.
Warning: (this is the longest blog post I’ve ever written)
If you are considering buying a Dell computer you may want to read this in its entirety before doing so. While my experience cannot be the way all experiences with Dell are — I cannot be someone that just got singled out for bad service either. The reason for this will be clear when you read onward.
My logic:
The reason I chose Dell (for the first time) was because my mother, who is in her late 70′s, needed a new computer. She lives thousands of miles away from me which makes it impossible for me to provide technical support very easily — especially hardware issues — even if they are relatively simple. Therefore her primary need was to have 24/7 telephone support and in home service if the telephone was insufficient to deal with the issue. The other major requirement was that she could pay a fee to have someone come and set up the computer system and configure the fax machine/printer she purchased.
My primary reason for recommending Dell over the local BestBuy that could send out a Geek Squad guy — was that at the time Windows 7 was not available and BestBuy did not offer XP on any of the suitable systems. Having had almost 28 years of experience with Microsoft operating systems I had learned to avoid certain software — and Vista was one OS that was never worth the trouble IMO.
Dell claimed to have XP loaded (or available to be loaded) on a machine with the kind of horsepower she needed for videoconferencing (with me primarily) and for another video program she has.
My Ignorance:
I should have seen it coming when the sales process became a nightmare. I went to the dell.ca web site (my mother lives in Canada) and called the number on the site so the hardware would be shipped to her in Canada. After spending a long time (a couple of hours) working through the specs and finally locating what appeared to be the right configuration I began to place the order and it was only then that the sales representative told me that I could not buy it from them. I inquired what the problem was and he informed me that Dell could not ship to Canada. After some discussion he told me that I’d called the wrong number and had ended up trying to place the order in the US.
First Contact:
Can you believe it? This guy is blaming me for calling the wrong place — even though I called the number prominently listed on the dell.ca site. After hanging up and continuing to place calls to numbers on the Canadian site “dell.ca” and getting routed to the US without asking to be — someone in the US finally got me through to the Canadian Dell office or fulfillment center or whatever it was I was speaking to. In the end most of the operators turned out to be in India and many of them had no clue about US or Canada or even the difference.
Finally:
Once I got someone in Canada who took the order I also made sure that we arranged for in home setup — paid around 150.00 for that — and also bought “in home” computer support contract in case the issue could not be resolved by telephone. After no less than 5.5 hours (I did not log every call) on the phone and many frustrations that I cannot begin to document without boring you — we finally got the order placed.
Piece by piece the equipment began to arrive. I now understand that it is normal for dell to ship just about every piece separately. After numerous phone calls to my mother — with her trying to describe everything to me that had arrived — in non-computer terminology — I was satisfied that everything was there — or so it seemed.
The “Installation” Experience:
I was surprised that nobody had contacted my mother about setting up the system in her home and so was she. I began calling numbers (by now I had several) and asking about the in home setup package we’d purchased. I was told there was no such package and that we had to set it up ourselves — that Dell has never done “in home” setup — and was rudely and even abusively treated — even yelled at by no fewer than 2 of the Indian representatives I’d been speaking to. Finally after several calls and more than two hours of battling with people who insisted I had no idea what I was talking about — found a guy who was in Montreal who helped me sort it out — or so I thought.
He was also convinced that there was no such skew as “in home setup” but he was patient and arranged for the housecall to be done by a service tech. Then a couple of days later she finally got a call from someone who was to do the installation. Then another day after that someone else called to also do the installation. Turns out they do offer “in home setup” and everyone I’d spoken to that thought I was a liar and a cheat — trying to get something for nothing (even though it cost 150.00 or 195.00 — I forget now) was wrong — I was vindicated — but nobody cared or apologized for the hell and abuse they’d put me through. I decided not to care much either.
Only one of the guys ended up showing up — but that should have been enough anyway. My mothers version of events seemed odd the way she related the behavior and work the installer did — but that was confusing to me too so I’ll leave that out. In short the fax/printer was not working and had to be unplugged from the phone line for the phone to work. I was one of the people who could not reach her for days because the fax was always screaming in my ear and she had no idea the phone was even ringing. I guess the installer figured she did not want any delays on incoming faxes and set it up to answer instantly.
Being a Dell customer:
Eventually she began calling for assistance to fix the dell.ca fax/copier/printer she was told the service contract covered. When they tried to walk her through the troubleshooting process she was not able to follow their instructions because none of the people she talked to had the patience to help someone who was largely a techo-peasant.
In Retrospect:
I honestly figured that Dell was very much a consumer type organization and was probably successful because the must have figured out that a happy grandmother as a customer — would be worth many many dollars in terms of lifetime customer value. However Dell appears to have no clue about such things. She had such bad experiences after three or four of these nightmare phone calls with the “dell people” that there is no way in hell or heaven that I can get her to call them again.
She has hired local talent to fix things and with me on the other end of the phone things are getting worked out. However she has had to pay about a couple hundred dollars additional in support fees to get people out to her home to fix her system.
My failure:
Personally I feel terrible about it because as a retired senior network engineer who ran a full service business to business IS firm (as well as an independent retail outlet) and sold, serviced, and supported tens of millions of dollars worth of hardware — why did I make such a bad recommendation to my own mother? I should have known by the terrible sales process I went through that this was the tip of the iceberg. Common sense would tell anyone that if a company cannot get its sales process right — they certainly will not have their service department in order.
It is about 10 months later and she has tried skyping me several times lately. I can answer the call and she sees me on video and I write notes and hold them up to the camera to guide her to the chat window. I cannot see her video and there is no audio either way. Clearly her microphone and camera are probably unplugged or defective but I’ve never seen the equipment and I have no idea if the camera, microphone, and speakers, are in the monitor like I’d ordered — and if I did know that I don’t know what the connectors look like. I could eventually figure it all out but I’m working on projects right now that would cost me a fortune in lost revenue if I put the time in to find out all the models, fight with Dell to get physical images of the products so that I can describe to her what to do.
My Personal Beef:
That is precisely why I had her pay Dell — because they have all that information at their finger tips — and I knew there would be some support issues that I could not afford to attend to myself. Dell you let me down too.
In the end I should have bought the gear at BestBuy or Frys and shipped it across the border. Equipment that I’d seen and that I could support more easily. Why did I trust Dell? Because I figured their size and success had something to do with service and support. Was I wrong! My guess is that their management is convinced (maybe by real numbers) that spending on support to keep customers is more costly than acquiring new ones. I’d always been taught that new customers were expensive to acquire and that it is cheaper to service them well in order to hold onto them.
Therefore when I was recently talking to a former employee, long time friend of 25 or more years, and veteran of the IS industry and told him about my mothers experiences with Dell he said to me in his typical wry tone – that he’d heard that Dells motto was “We’re not happy till you’re not happy!”
That was a cathartic moment for me. I laughed myself happy. Someone else understood. Maybe a dell employee came up with that.
Dell if that’s your unofficial motto — mission accomplished.
PS. I wrote this story for the express purpose of getting my message to the Dell tweeple, one of whom recently tweeted me, saying that it was not Dell’s intention for me to feel that way. First thanks for saying so. My response would be that, while I don’t believe that it is Dells conscious intention for me to feel that way, I do believe that by failing to look after customers it is still Dells passive intention for people to feel that way.
PPS. Management at Dell is, in fact, happier if they can get away with not providing sufficient support. Why? Because Dell management internally pressures support departments to meet requirements that are more time sensitive than results sensitive. Their internal policies ensure that certain percentages of people will not be happy — thus Dell is not happy until those of us who need a little attention outside that time window — are not happy.
PPS. In the end Dell provides no efficient, obvious, and/or easily understood complaint escalation process for people like my mother to appeal to. She is terrified to talk to Dell anyway based on the treatment she received. I too would take up the challenge and help her, but knowing how much time I’ve already wasted and how impossible many of the numerous people I’ve spoken with at Dell are — I won’t call them either. And that is coming from someone who has spent half his career on support calls — either receiving or providing them.
Topics: Good Products | 2 Comments »
February 13th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Dell used to be synonymous with customer sat. They have left that path to profits some time ago… Sad.
Got my first 3 Mac’s recently and I doubt I will ever look back. Combined with MobileMe you can use “Back to my Mac” and get Right into to mums machine.
February 13th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Mike I know what you mean. Strangely I never thought for a moment about advising her to get a Mac. Looking back that would have been the logical thing to do. There is a Mac store near where she lives. All the pieces are nicely integrated.
I’ve got a Macbook Pro that I’ve had for three years sitting right here next to the PC I’m typing on right now. Unfortunately I didn’t even think of it but the Mac would have been a great choice for my mom.
Remote access is not a problem for either OS but still the Mac integration and support is definitely superior since Tiger and newer Mac OS’s.