Dell Hate and Horror
On the same day I read that Marketers Scan Blogs For Brand Insights, I read Dell lies. Dell sucks from Buzzmachine by Jeff Jarvis. I hope those same marketing firms are scanning for customers that hate their clients, instead of just looking for new marketing programs to appeal to teenagers. The Dell Lies post is remarkable because of all the Dell hate and horror stories in the comments and there’s not much CIA-inspired natural-language processing needed to read the words, “NEVER EVER EVER BUYING ANOTHER DELL.” As Pete Blackshaw notes in the article, you can’t just dismiss vocal complainers because of the emergence of blogs and Google.
A quick Google check on, “Dell Sucks,” and the Jarvis post is the 5th hit.
I agree with Halley that Michael Dell should make a personal visit to Jarvis and fix his computer because the complaints are going to just continue. One of the concerns business have about blogs is engaging with negative customers. “What if they say bad things?,” I’ve heard and responded, “they’re going to do it anyway, it’s better to engage them head on.”
In the Dealing with Bloggers: Partnering and Defense Strategies session from the last blogbusinesssummit, Scoble, Anil Dash, and Buzz talked about how some companies learn the hard way about blogs. Dell is a good topic for the next BBS05 in San Fran.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I have a Dell 3000 w/home service. I called today 8/27/05 to get help/service on my Dell. My CD-Rom has been acting up making noise and hard to get discs out once they are in the ROM. After more than an hour waiting to talk. An agent Idian/China guy took my info about the rom. He put me on hold and never came back. The music continued to play etc. I gave up.
This is really my 2nd problem w/ Dell. I tried to cancil my original order proir to receiving the computor. I had seen a flat screen “upgrade” advertised locally as a freebe. Again the agent from India said, “Don’t send it back, a rebate coupon that you can use to purchase a flat screen. Waited the 24 hrs for the coupon to be “available” on Dells network. The clerk said it was on the net but she could for some reason access the rebate coupon and that was that.
Now screwed twice by what appears tobe a global bandit, Dell.com
Frank
Never get Dell business lease…End of lease is disaster in gimmicks, charge ups, left me hang hard… NEVER AGAIN
Not so dear Mr. Dell,
While a graduate student in Texas A&M, I was looking at your firm as a dream concern to work for. Those were the days when your stock price was at an alllll time high of $45. And as the saying goes, be careful what you are wishing for, as it might come true.
And it came…the offer letter from Dell. I was flattered, went to cloud 9. I accepted the wonderful offer, and readied to file for my H1B visa, because my hiring manager Craig and my HR Jennifer wanted me “rightaway”. Not wanting to loose an inch of ground, I was ready for accepting to commute everyday between Austin and College Station for my last 2 months of graduate school.
And then the bad news came…before I could get a list of documents required for my H1B filing from Dell lawyers (who took a cool 10 days and didnt give me any information), the H1B quota of 65,000 got filled for that year. Now, do I blame Mr. Bush or you for this? Ofcourse, you had nothing to do with this, so I totally cursed President Bush for his policies. Oh well, Dell is ofcourse one of the best companies to work for who take really good care of their employees. Well, prospective employees? Almost an employee…lets see about that.
When I enquired the next step and asked if Dell can wait 9 weeks, yes, 9 weeks within which I would get a work permit for 1 year through my student visa. To my shock, the immmmediate response I got was that Dell would withdraw their offer as they would need someone “right away”. My world just came down.
I picked myself up in a couple of days and maintained a polite face and tone to Craig & Jennifer, hoping that something would work out. My job search went on well, and 2 months later, I received my work permit and immediately called Dell to mention that I was ready to work. I got an offer letter pronto, with my sign on bonus increased by a whopping $2,000 (no, I did not miss a zero there) for the trauma I had undergone. I got call after call from 3 Managers and Sr. Managers convincing me that they “always wanted to hire me”, except the visa was a barrier.
Guess what, 1 hour before Dell made an offer, I received an equally competing offer from another reputed Fortune 100 concern, which I gladly negotiated using Dell’s offer and later on accepted. IF this is the way they treat their people, I am not sure what motivation there would be for anyone who works there. And if there isnt a motivation, the only thing that comes out of such workplaces would be junk. Well, thats my theory, but that what comes out there is junk is proven.
End of Chapter 1.
Begin Chapter 2.
Well, I am an avid photographer now, and saw a Canon 20D at Dell for $1199 for 2 days, called up and received a quote…decided the timing was not appropriate and dropped it there.
Two weeks later, I decide to check if I can get the same camera for the same price, and to my disbelief, a sales guy said he would be able to. Well, just for information, the price Dell sells it is at $1440. I asked him to go ahead and complete the deal for me and he put me on hold for a minute. 1 minute. 2 minutes…3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 30, 35, 45 minutes. At some infinite point of time, the call got rerouted to the sales queue again. Not wanting to miss the incredible price on the camera, I went through the queue and specifically said,” Eric from Oregon (the previous sales guy) offered the camera to me at $1199 and I was wanting to complete the deal, he put me on hold and I got lost in the cracks.”
Pat came the reply, “No sir, the lowest price we can offer in that camera is $1370.” I said, “Well, thats not what I heard, you can call up Eric and ask him, why dont we have a conference now?” The sales guy mentioned that he knew Eric from Oregon and agreed to conference and put me on hold, again. A minute later, he came back and said that Eric would not be able to offer it to me for that price, and the lowest he would be able to offer me was only $1370. Eric had conveniently decided to pass on the message through his buddy instead…why face a customer anyways?
I was furious already, but politely asked to be connected to a manager, to which John gladly forwarded me to an answering machine. I left a message, and thought I was done. But my heart didnt listen…I wanted to talk to a live person and get an explanation.
I called back, and this time, I reached the sales queue, explained the entire saga, and got the same response, lowest price is $1370. I requested to be connected to a manager, and the response was, “We do not have a manager on duty here, can you please call up customer service?” I was like…what? You dont have a manager on duty…wonderful. Had no choice, called up sales again, and got routed to a 4th guy.
This time, it was Mike, lovely music in the Dell wait queue, and then same story, same price, thankfully a manager now. The manager listened to me entirely and patiently, and then said he wont be able to offer it to the price initially mentioned and did not have an explanation to why the other rate was offered to me initially.
Well, they basically wont stand up to their own word. As simple as that. I was furious, but maintained my calm and politely replied that this is the worst I have ever faced and I will never get anything Dell again. Not even if it is a Canon make sold by Dell, I would pay the premium to buy it from Dell’s competitor.
YES, I WOULD PAY THE PREMIUM TO BUY IT FROM DELL’S COMPETITOR. AND NOT JUST ME, MY PHOTOGRAPHER FRIENDS, MY PHOTOGRAPHY CLUB MEMBERS AND EVERYONE AT MY WORKPLACE. ooops…to bad!
End of Chapter 2.
There better not be a Chapter 3…there wont be. There is no third time charm for Dell. And yes, this is my real name, and you can pick up the offer letter from your HR department.
DELL! Never, Never buy DELL!! I have spent 2 days attempting to purchase a new CPU Fan for a customer’s Dimension 4600. They either do not have it, can not find it or just want to make us go away and buy a different computer! they will not sell us a FAN! what the heck is wrong with you people!? is my question to DELL
When I purchased a Dell Computer (Dimension 2300) back in October of 2002 I was asked what specifications I wanted, would there be gaming on it, etc. I said several times that yes, indeed, there would be a lot of gaming being done on the Computer. But, to my absolute horror, I did end up with some guy named Malahujabakur Kretspitakilum (dramatization, of course) who spoke un-understandable English to the point I would be asking him to repeat his questions over and over and having to pass the phone off to my parents (I was quite young at the time). Anyway, they ended up shipping out the Computer with horrifying hardware specs such as 256MB PC133MHz RAM and an onboard integrated Intel Graphics Accellerator 32MB Memory video card which was not nearly up to par to play any of the “hardcore” games I was into at the time. So, the next day I called Tech Support and explained my issue to yet another foreign support guy with horrible English skills, and I was told, in short, “Sorry but it’s the game developers problem so please contact them.” and told me they wouldn’t even send me a cheap PCI video card to show at least SOME sympathy. I was stuck with a Computer I had no use for gaming-wise. I ended up keeping it for 5 years until 2007 when I learned much more over those 5 years about Computers (learning that the motherboard Dell placed in it had no available AGP slots and only a few available normal PCI (not PCI-E) slots.) So, I had to buy a crappy PCI video card which did let me play *some* games but none that I was expecting when I was ordering the Computer.
All in all, over those 5 years of having a Dell Computer, I learned much and this year I built a Custom Computer and I couldn’t love something more than this! Cost nearly the same amount of $$ and it’s astonishingly better in all aspects. Absolutely wonderful.
Good-bye forever, Dell.
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