A Lesson Learned...

P

Puppyraiser

PFG, Picture Framing God
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So I had gleefully ordered Mike's latest Dell Computer find. It was supposed to ship on 5/5 so I checked the status today. There was no order. The printout I had was for what was in my cart, and never went all the way to getting an actual order number as close examination today showed. (looked like an order when I printed it out at 11pm) I called. Spoke to India. Got the wrong info. Called again. Told to 'press 2' which I did. "This is not a working extension"(I'm not making this up!) Called again. Got an entirely different menu with no way to connect to anyone until I pushed "0", (not one of the choices listed, however) Got a Native English Speaker. Went through the whole deal. He passed me off to someone else. Went through the whole deal. OOPS! He is a point of sale guy. He passed me off to someone else. Went through the whole deal. The best he could rig up for me was $200 more than 'Mike's' deal. I will therefore wait patiently until Mike finds another deal. Oh, and you'll LOVE this! IF I had placed the order by phone they would have a record, but by doing totally on the computer, there was no way to trace it. Fine. If Dell would rather have me call a salaried person, so be it. I was soooo looking forward to my new computer too!
 
Just wait a bit Ellen, there'll be another deal soon. It seems as though there are no "middle of the road" experiences with Dell. The experience is really good OR really bad; but for me the good outweigh the bad 2:1

It sounds like the ordeal you went through with might have had something to do with my Smith Barney broker calling yesterday and strongly suggesting that we dump all our Dell stock to cut our losses now rather than later.... SOLD
 
Honestly, I don't care how good Dell computers are, I wouldn't buy any of their stuff, because of lousy customer service.

Having said that, who is left there besides Dell? HP, even more suckage!

Point is, monopoly is alive and well. Same thing is happening with banks, gas / oil companies, etc.

Go ahead and buy Dell, but hope that you'll never have to call them if it breaks down, they charge you too much, they mix up your oder, etc.
 
I used to have my computers stick built by a local guy when I lived in IL. He was really good at what he did and didn't charge you an arm and a leg to build a system. He would ask some questions about what you wanted to use the PC for and then he would build it for you.

The Dell I have now is the first PC that I actually bought in the last 15 years or so. I bought one of their daily specials that Mike found and had great luck with it since. It showed up at my gallery about 3 days after I ordered it and hasn't broke down or given me any hassles at all.

I recently doubled the memory and it is almost like having a new computer! I heard that extra memory would speed up a computer but I didn't realize how fast doubling it would be!! It really flies now, boots up XP in the time that it used to take for the Windows logo to appear on the screen!!

Framerguy
 
So I bought the Deal of the Week (again!) but bought it on the phone after designing it online. The young (I am guessing ) man was very nice, and the price, while not being q-u-i-t-e as good as Last Week's Deal, is doable. So I am happy again. And anxiously awaiting my new computer once more...
 
Good customer service is available from Dell if you buy 3 year next business day on-site service. It is usually an inexpensive upgrade when buying from their Small Business division. You get to talk to a US based Technician who is knowledgeable about your system, Parts are sent overnight to you or the repairman as necessary. For a business related system, this kind of protection is essential. I don't know about equivalent programs from HP or other vendors, but I guarantee nobody's $499 computer comes with this type of protection without additional cost. I don't think I ever paid Dell more than $100 for one of these upgrades - how important are your computers and your time to your business? Get real - there is no free lunch.

Pat :D
 
Food... or dogs!
 
I purchased a DEll service p[lan ..I think it was for 1 year...very much worth it. I had a laptop that crashed ...they got that up and running then helped us with another computer that had popups coming up all over the place ..and then a third computer that needed to be fixed. They were very patient...

Anyway that year long service contract thing coverd something like 5 service calls and we had 3 days on each call to fix the problem. I think the cost was either $125. or $150. and you could use it on ANY computer not just Dells.
 
Judy, when I tried to buy it for my laptop after the original 3-year warranty (for which I paid initially) had expired, they wanted $250. + and that got you five calls only, and only on that computer.

I about hyperventilated, declined, and called a teenager: it was a software problem. Hardware's another game, but the experience somewhat soured me on Dell, and we own three of them. oh, well

oops: TWO of them. The "third" one got changed to a Compac.
 
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