During the tech support problems of part 1 I was tweeting my troubles with Dell. I searched twitter.com hoping Dell is smart enough to have a presents on twitter. Well, they are smart enough to have someone there but not smart enough to have that person be responsive to complaints.
The person I found was Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger for Dell Inc. He was not very responsive to me on twitter but he did pass my information on to Bill Bivin who didn’t contact me until August 27, after Dell sent me the replacement laptop.
Bill introduced himself as the laptop liaison but his email signature says he is the “Community Liaison” with “Dell Communities & Conversions”. Seemed like just the person to help me with my warranty extension problems.
On September 3 I sent him an email detailing the problems I described in part 2 and told him that I was beginning to feel like I was getting the run around. I was concerned that if I don’t get the problem resolved before the grace period will ran out than I would not be able to get the warranty. I also told him that I was beginning to wonder if that was by design on Dell’s part.
I got no response.
On September 5 I sent him this:
Hello Bill,
I wanted to give you an update and request that you respond. Yesterday was the last day for me to extend my warranty.
I called and left a message on the extension Jennifer had given me as well as the one I got from Mike. I also sent an email to Mike stating that I would like to continue attempting to extend my warranty. No response from either of them.
I called again for a random Customer service person and got Marcus XXXXXX. We went through the same routine trying to clear this up. He put me on hold for a while then said it was taking longer than expected and could he call me back.
I forwarded the email I had from DHL which confirms that Dell has received the Insperion. He assured me that once the inspirion was processed through their system he would wave the $50 fee an extend the warranty even though the 7 day grace period was over. He also assured me that he would be working today and that he would get back to me today.
I sent him an email asking him to confirm my understanding of our conversation and he did not respond. I’m getting lots of verbal promises but when I ask for written confirmation I get no response.
I called and emailed Marcus today and got an email auto response saying that he would be out of the office today.
I called back and got another random customer service person, Mel, extension XXXXXXX. This is person number 4. After going through the same routine…again… she said that I had to wait until 9-22 and I was to call back on or after that date.
This makes no sense at all. It very much appears that Dell is giving me the run around in an attempt to put things off and make sure I won’t be able to extend the warranty. Has Dell already forgotten Jeff Jarvis. I know you got him to come to Dell and write a more positive article but those of us having trouble with Dell’s customer service have not forgotten.
Remember Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000. Frustrated customers now have options. Needless to say, you can consider this email to be the ruff draft of a blog post, forum posts and probably comments on many other blog posts. Dell will also be getting a mention on my podcast. I also have a nice following on Twitter where I will start talking about my problems with Dell…again.
I may not have a Jeff Jarvis size audience but I do have an audience and they all have computers.
He still has not responded.
More to come in part 4
Tags: Computer, Customer Service, Dell