I Try Dell Online Sales: EPIC FAIL

[TeMerc]

Yippee.. YHOO I got some extra money and wanted to get me a new tower to and upgrade my old Dell 8250 which has been great for all these years, never a glitch. As was my experience with my first machine from Dell, an Dimension 350. Still have it in fact, collecting dust.

Jumped online to order a generic, run of the mill box, Inspirion 846 mini tower.

Nothing special, no crazy upgrades to vid card, or any such thing. They should have a million of these laying around.

The date of order, was Dec.24, X-Mas Eve. Estimated delivery date of Jan 20. Thought that was a while, but figured, wtf, I can wait, it won't kill me. I was gonna be out of town for 5 days or so anyway in that near month.

My delivery date approached and I was contacted via email saying there was a delay. The first person I spoke to said there was an issue with a component. New delivery date, Jan 27 or 29. Bummer, ok.

I can wait.

Became close to that date, so I went online to check my status...huh? <?> Estimated delivery date...Feb 5?? But I didn't get an email this time. On the phone with order support, they tell me they 'under estimated demand for the tower'. Underestimated a generic, run of the mill, bread and butter tower?

Wow, I'm annoyed now, especially since I got no notice. But I did see they had changed my shipping to 'Next day', so that showed a little encouragement.

But that makes 2 delays and is not a good sign. Now I'm wondering if I made a mistake. Goodness knows I can walk into any mom and pop shop and walk out with a tower equivilent to that, in 15 minutes. How's a company like Dell not have these in abundance and how, when this was realized they didn't have enough, did they not order an emergency batch?

So as Feb 5 approaches, I get anxious. It's been long enough, honestly, I'm surprised I hadn't lost my cool already after speaking to several call center people who can just barely manage clear English, but I won't go there...for now.

Last nite @ 8PM MST, I jump online, status is the same, 'not shipped' but the date is still the same. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, knowing full well, if it has not shipped by then, it's highly unlikely I'll get it on Feb 5.

I try to call, oops, too late, closed.

Just before getting to sleep(1AM), I try the site again to check and what to my amazement do I see?? Estimated ship date: Feb 12!!! 30 seconds later...'blip'...email from Dell prompting me to take action before they cancel they order!

I hit the sack !@%* pissed, spitting nails.

Call this morning again and get to an order support person who tells me, yes, it's been yet again delayed for......yes, high demand and no supply.

WTF? I cancel order and try to get to some type of manager to handle upset\irate\pissed off customers. Which by now, I most certainly am.

Instead I get the order support manager who essentially tells me he's sorry for the problem and they'll try harder, but will not give me any email, telephone number of anyone to bitch to.

I try to call sales to get some type of manager who can listen to me and assure me in any way that my complaints will be listened to and forwarded.

I get the same schtick from this support person. I insist to speak to someone who can hear me out and can handle my complaint with some type of authority, so they pass me off to yet another manager.

And finally, after 3 supposed 'managers', this person is able to tell me that they will indeed pass this along and ask for a phone number, which I gladly give.

She even tried to get me to take another tower in place of the one I was trying to get. I told her no way she can get me to take anything under any circumstances from them. I had originally told the first agent if they sent it free I'd take it. No way now.

She tells me more than once that she's sorry this happened and would escalate the issue.

So, there we stand, I never got my new box from Dell and will be heading out to COSTCO or BestBuy this weekend and will in all likelihood, have a new machine in the office.

I will NEVER buy again from Dell online. I may wind up with a Dell machine because I really love their products and I've never had a hiccup with a single one, but as far as online purchases, never.

Dell just gained a person who will tell everyone he knows about his experience with their online sales.

[mountaintree16]

Ugh, I'm sorry, that's terrible

Wow.

[goldhound]

Agreed that Dell desktops have been very good, ours certainly were! However.....

Last year we purchased two Studio 15 laptops, pretty much loaded ...... and lots of problems.

Within days BIOS upgrade for both but they still would not wake from sleep mode 50% of the time! Dell support sucked other than the one lucky time i got a guy from Utah.

These machines were carefully cared for and maintained, never dropped and never had malware or a virus (thanks to MBAM paid version for wife ) but batteries in both were hooped within 8 months even though they were also properly used and maintained.

One month after warranty expired (two weeks ago) the backlight on my wife's screen went out and the keyboard malfunctioned the next day! She was so angry that yesterday she bought a new Toshiba and i have her Dell for parts

No more Dell for us!

[TeMerc]

And funny thing, it just hit me, if they had told me the second delay of an offer for a similar desktop, I'd have taken it.

Especially since they clearly have no clue as to when the parts will be readily available.

How many other people are waiting on this? I can only surmise the number is so small that they're playing a 'numbers' game and not worrying about it.

[goldhound]

I really think Dell has cash flow issues due to a lot of dissatisfaction with their product and the economy the past year or so. Their profits have dropped 54% in the past year. Not keeping much extra inventory is common under those circumstances but one would think they would pay close attention to customer support in order to keep what base they have.

[mountaintree16]

The Dell we have now had this weird issue for a long time for a year or so, starting when it was new. but I don't think it has it anymore, and hasn't in a long time.

When things would freeze, TaskManager couldn't kill them, and the whole computer wouldn't be usable (nothing could be clicked, start menu didn't work right, etc...) so the computer had to be shut off via the button on the tower, then turned on again.

[Firefox]

I have not had issues ordering from Dell.... but then again when I do order I am buying over 100 computers at a time, so they work with me a lot better and faster, plus I have an account manager that overseas my orders.....

[TeMerc]

The Dell we have now had this weird issue for a long time for a year or so, starting when it was new. but I don't think it has it anymore, and hasn't in a long time.

When things would freeze, TaskManager couldn't kill them, and the whole computer wouldn't be usable (nothing could be clicked, start menu didn't work right, etc...) so the computer had to be shut off via the button on the tower, then turned on again.

I just picked up an Dell Inspiron from BestBuy, and this system is exhibiting the same issue. It seems that if left for an extended time, it freezes, just the mouse will move and will have to resort to a restart using the on screen set up. Tho one thing, so far the restart is only about a minute with W7 installed.

But I do not have the entire system loaded for use yet.

[catscomputer]

My first computer was a Dell (with XP Pro) and it used to do exactly the same thing as you have described Mountaintree! I've had this HP for a year and a half now, and I don't think it has ever had this issue. I'd quite forgotten about that little 'quirk' of my first computer until I read this thread. It would do it randomly; I don't think it was only when left for an extended period though. I used to have to hold the off button down to force a shut down as it was the only thing I could do.

Glad you got your new computer now Te Merc. The experience with Dell Online sounded dreadful!

[princess_sophia]

Add another incident to the dell fail pile. I've found dells to be the complete opposite of good. The sound is horrible, and appearently there's a bug where the dell basically says "No, just no" and fails to post at all. I had to use fixmbr to fix it. (Don't ask)

[mountaintree16]

@ catscomputer

Ack! So we are not alone! What a crap! That was so annoying. It hasn't done it in a long time, maybe a Windows Update or something fixed it, I dunno. I am pretty sure it happened to our computer too (mostly just) when it was left on for an extended period of time.

I don't think our next puter will be a Dell I don't like them too much... heh

[Firefox]

I have seen this happen, but not on a dell, it was an Acer and a Toshiba....

They have a service that protects the Hard drive in case you drop the laptop. On those two computers, when I disabled that service all was good.

May be worth looking into that.... it was something like Acer Hard Drive Protection....

[catscomputer]

Yeah that I suspect that old computer of mine had had a hard life before I got it when it was 18mths old, and I would not be surprised if the reason it did this complete freeze thing fairly often had absolutely nothing to do with the Dell sticker on it's butt (even though that is the thing in common in this thread). It had a TINY hard drive, was as slow as a coach and I discovered some software on it that was not cool at all. It could have been infected even.

I'm glad my new computer doesn't do it anyway.