The situation with Dell has been resolved. Bill, the guy who wasn’t responding to my emails did respond after I started putting up blog posts about Dell. If you read the comments section you can see that he says that he thought he had responded before but apparently had not hit send.

The cynical bones in my body, and there are many, were screaming: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!.  At first I strongly felt that he only responded because I went public. But since then I have talked to him. There is something about having a real conversation with another human. Either he made a couple of really bonehead moves in not responding to my emails and it truly was just human error, or he just didn’t take me seriously and intentionally blew off the emails.

When I talked to Bill I did not hear any animosity in his voice. He seemed very embarrassed to have screwed up and wanted to make things right. I’m going to take him at his word on that. If I’m wrong, than kudos to Bill for his acting abilities.

Since then Bill has been bending over backwards to clear up my concerns.

So here is the resolution to my 3 questions in part 4.

1. Why was I told that I should call back on or after September 22.

Our best guess is that the rep wanted me to call back after the Insperion had been processed through their system.  I have another email, about another part that says it takes 10 days to process a customer return, that would be Sept. 13. Still not sure why the rep chose that particular date of Sept. 22. It’s minor and not worth researching.

2. Will you refund the $126.29 difference between the price I was quoted and the price I was charged.

This one created a technical challenge. Complicated story of 3rd party companies, tax issues with no retale stores in my state, etc. You would think any company would be able to simply cut a check or refind a credit card. But at a large corporation level it’s not always that simple. They were not refusing to do it, just complicated.

Bill asked if there was any product I might be in need of. As it happens, I was outgrowing my hard drive. So we found a solution that worked for both of us.

3. Why are your employees not allowed to put anything in writing? They seem to want to help but are not being allowed to. Do they even work for you or are you farming out the work to some other company?

The part about them farming out the work was just me being snarky. I know every big company does this to some extent. My main concern was the apparent policy of not allowing employees to put promises in writing.

Bill assures me that there is no such policy. He also assures me that they will be taking measures internally to make sure the reps understand that if they are making a verbal agreement they should be willing to put it in writing for the customer.

So readers, here is what I want from you: if you are having trouble with Dell I want to know about it. Help me keep their feet to the fire. Don’t go off on the reps, they are just doing their jobs and yelling at them won’t get you anywhere. Be polite, be reasonable, and take lots and lots of notes. Use Fonolo.com if it’s available to you (currently in beta).

Then tell me about it. I am satisfied with my situation but if they are just giving me the brush off and continuing to do this to others, I want to know about it.

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I continued pestering Dell over the next few days. I’ll spare you all the details of unresponded to calls and emails, here are the highlights.

In most conversations with the support people we didn’t get far enough to talk about the cost of the extension. When I did talk price with the multiple reps I worked with, the price for a one year extension was a little over $100. The only one I have in writing was for $110.

On September 11 I got a call from Marcus. He had finally been given the go ahead to let me purchase my warranty but the cost was now $ 236.29. More than double what I was told in numerous conversations.

I went to check the one I had in writing. I had asked for an extension on MY WARRANTY. The Super Duper Wazoo, Covers Everything, We will fix it NEXT DAY, warranty. Instead she had given me a quote for “Dell on Call, Annual Upgrade, 3 Incidents”. 3 incidents? That’s not nearly enough coverage for a lemony fresh Dell.

In a way Marcus is the hero of this little tale. He actually got back to me. Something that few Dell employees did. He also gave me the warranty I had requested. Wow, someone at Dell actually did his job.

But that doesn’t make up for having to spend more than twice what I was quoted for a warranty extension.

So here are my questions to Dell

1. Why was I told that I should call back on or after September 22.
2. Will you refund the $126.29 difference between the price I was quoted and the price I was charged.
3. Why are your employees not allowed to put anything in writing? They seem to want to help but are not being allowed to. Do they even work for you or are you farming out the work to some other company?

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

Yes, I actually wanted to pay them money for more “next day” service that takes over a week to get satisfaction. I only covered the recent problems I was having with the Insperion in the last post. I’ve had to deal with tech support several other times and I expect the new laptop will be the same. The warranty is an insurance policy that I expect they will have to pay up on.

On 8-28 I called to extend my warranty which was to expire on 8-29. I was told by Jenifer that there was a problem with extending because I had not returned the old laptop yet. I was still trying to pull data off of it. I was assured by Jeniffer that I would still be able to extend the warranty once the laptop was returned but it had to be within 7 days. I took it to DHL the next day. Due to the weekend and the Memorial Day holiday it did not arrive at Dell until September 3.

September 4 was last day of the 7 day grace period for me to extend the warranty. I attempted to contact Jenifer to see if the system had been cleared and to attempt to extend the warranty. The phone extension she gave did not go to Jenifer. Once it went to a recording saying that they are in a staff meeting and to call back tomorrow and once to another person’s voice mail.

I called back again with out giving the extension and got Mike in Warranty support who said that the warranty still could not be extended and to call back tomorrow. This time I asked him to send me an email so I would at least have some Proof that I talked to someone in Warranty before the grace period was over and that I’ve been making a good faith effort to resolve the issue. He did send me an email but was unwilling to confirm in writing that I would be able to extend my warranty.

That’s when I knew I was in trouble. I was getting lots of promises and reassuring comments about extending the warranty being “no problem” once the old laptop was processed into their system and that fees for being beyond the 7 day grace period would be waved. But no one was willing to put anything in writing and I had no proof of all the verbal promises. It all seemed very fishy.

More to come in part 3

I’m not complaining about the 5 hours. It’s to the tech’s credit that they were willing to try everything before telling me that I may have to lose all my data.

The Dell techs have always been patent and polite. I should know, I’ve spent many, many hours on phone and chat with them. I try to return the courtesy and remember that no matter how frustrated I am with their company, they are doing their jobs and most of them are willing to go the extra mile for me if Dell is not tying their hands.

Due to the late hour I was not prepared to start a project like reinstalling the operating system so we ended the chat.

I spent the next day double checking that all my kids pictures and important documents were backed up. I contacted them again on August 12.

I got a fantastic tech, Margaret. She started to walk me through the process and made sure I had all the appropriate disks and downloaded the appropriate driver. While we were doing this the computer shut down on it’s own at random times.

The chat had taken longer than I expected 2 hrs. Again, not complaining about that, these techs go over the top to make sure I don’t lose my data and I appreciate that. However, I had a playgroup to get to and she wanted to research the mysterious shut down problem so we ended the chat.

When I got back to Margaret that afternoon she had found the problem. Like I said, when Dell allows them to they do their jobs well. I’m a big fan of the Tech Support people. Individually, as people, they are awesome. How they got hired by Dell I will never understand.

The laptop needed a new hard drive, system board and processor.

I have “Next Day, Onsite Service” Warranty. Paid a very pretty penny for it too. Lots of pretty pennies. I’ve had to use this several times in the past so I know that the “next day” is not exactly accurate. The tech rarely receives the parts next day.

This was happening on the 12^th and I was leaving for Los Vegas to attend the New Media Expo the next day, Wednesday. I would be there Thursday and Friday so I arranged for a tech to meet me there and dragged my non working Laptop to the NME with me.

The tech did show up and installed the new parts on Thursday August 14. That night I tried to install the operating system with no luck. Contected tech support by phone. Long story short, after replacing just about everything except the fan, the fan needs to be replaced. It was running hot and causing the laptop to go in a continuous cycle as I tried to start up. So I dragged my laptop and all the install files all the way to Vegas for nothing.

This was Thursday night. No way to get the part to the tech on Fri and they don’t count Saturday or Sunday. I arranged for the part to be sent to a tech in CA for Monday delivery and repair.

Monday came and went along with a call from the tech saying that not all of the parts arrived so he would not be able to do the repair until Tuesday. Thursday to Tuesday = 6 days! NEXT DAY SERVICE MY ASS!

It was late Thursday so I’ll give them a one day pass but still Friday to Tuesday is hardly “next day service”.

I arranged for the tech to meet my hubby at work on Tuesday with the computer since I would be out and about with the kids and didn’t think playgroup at the park with 8 toddlers would be the ideal setting for computer repair.

The tech replaced the parts but the laptop auto shut down upon start up. They started it up again and it appeared to be working. So Hubby started the OS install process. That night I tried to finish the process. I contacted Dell support again to find out what the driver order should be. While I was on with Support the computer shut down…multiple times.

Fortunately the tech who did the repair earlier that day had made an incident report about the laptop shutting down so there was proof that I am not a lying cheating customer, just trying to get a free replacement laptop.

After leaving me with no computer during the one and only tech related conference I will attend this year, they finally agreed to send a replacement. Remember I have the Super Duper Wazoo, Covers Everything, We will fix it NEXT DAY, warranty! With out that I wouldn’t have gotten anything.

Finally, a replacement laptop was on it’s way. But that is not the end of the story. No, not the end at all. I am still not a happy customer. But this blog post is long enough, it’s getting late and I’m tired of typing. Look for part two coming soon.