Slashdot Mirror
New York Sues Dell for Poor Customer Service
Phanatic1a writes "New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is suing Dell, alleging bait and switch financing tactics, false advertising, and 'numerous other deceptive business practices relating to their technical support services, promotional financing, rebate offers, and billing and collection activity.' According to Cuomo himself, 'At Dell, customer service means no service at all.'"
Now Geek Squad - that's who really needs to be sued. Have they ever actually fixed a problem? Anecdotal evidence says no.
sounds like someone didnt pay for the Gold support. ALWAYS pay for it. Or use another vendor, its your money!
Dude, you're getting a lawsuit.
State normally takes advantage of the Customer Service Support. Corporations usually have support as a last resort for the State it is normally in the middle.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This can not come at any surprise to the /. crowd. Especially from Dell.
Windows Vista Help Forum
I live in NY, and I am glad for the work that Eliot Spitzer has done. Now that Cuomo is the AG he is trying to make a name for himself the same way Spitzer did. Spitzer took on powerful interests within the state. Cuomo is taking the easy way out and going after out of state entities like colleges who have less than ethical relationships with loan organizations. Cuomo is a corrupt politician just trying to get his name out there. I fear that in the end his little adventures are going to go badly, and it will not reflect well on the state of NY.
This cannot have anything to do woth Dell selling Linux preinstalled
I guess it's time to welcome our new plutocratic neonoble overlords.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Like bragging about their customer support, but then when you do call them up, you get some foreign person with an accent you can't understand talking over a phone connection that makes him barely audible, that you can only speak to after being redirected for a few hours, and who will then tell you your hard drive needs replaced because there's something wrong with the fan in your power supply? That may not be illegal, but it would be nice if they changed that.
For some reason I actually paid for an extended warranty on the Vaio I bought at Bestbuy. Strangely enough, I got some value out of it...
They replaced a DVD writer that failed, and a keyboard (the P fell off while I was typing). My biggest complaint was that when I picked up my laptop, I needed to wait for about 40 minutes. No geeks were in sight most of that time.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
I kid you not, I just finished a gold support call to Dell for a server. They were prompt and courteous. They didn't know how to fix it offhand, but called me back quickly with the right information. The guy even spoke English, which was a very pleasant surprise.
I don't really know where the New York AG is coming up with the "no service at all" comment. While I'm not sure about their problems with promotional financing, rebate offers, and billing activity; when I am forced to interact with dell for customer support on work computers I have always had good experiences. Maybe it is because I can fix most software issues and the only time I really go to them is when something fails. They have replace what's broken quite readily. Even if his problem is with their other practices I think he's over stating the support problems. Don't get me wrong, I am definitely not a fan of dell but I don't like them because of the proprietary hardware and the preloaded bloatware.
Sincerely, Best Buy.
Dude, you're gettin' a lawsuit.
In light of how their sales are dropping, I would guess that the last CEO was trying to push his money up by making loads of short-term thinking changes (moving customer service to india, moving production to China, etc), and now the company reaping what he sowed. The funny thing is that I would not blame the last CEO but the shareholders who helped to push this. They had a job to look out for their long-term holdings and did not care.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Support has been good though sometimes the indian support reps can be annoying. I always get a resolution that I am happy with. Been buying dell for over 8 years, at home and work, wouldn't have it any other way.
Why not go after the sleaze in NY Cumo?? Oh thats right, because it's you.
Gadget News at Gizmo.com
So some jerk in NY with some pull bought a Dell for home use and got pissed at what every other home user experiences from Dell.
You know, I've despised Dell for years but I have to give some credit to them for not wanting to support certain (l)users. E.g. Customer buys a Dell loaded with Crapafee Virus scanner... Crapafee acts up... (l)User calls Dell. Another example... (l)User craps out their machine with infestations of malware and junkware... (l)User calls Dell bitching and moaning... My analogy on it all... "You buy a Honda. Then go out and buy a Harmon Kardon radio system for it... Radio acts up..." Why in the world would you bring it to Honda? 1) Its not Honda's problem. 2) Its not Honda's problem and 3) Its not Honda's problem. I've had the unfortunate circumstance of calling Dell in Colorado (Colorado, New Delhi that is), and have had my issues resolved quickly. On the other hand I won't beat around the bush and tell whomever firsthand. Look I rebooted, I did this, I did that. And to make things more dramatic, I scour Google for error codes on hardware so I can bypass all the fuzzy "read from the script Mandinipuor" garbage tech support spews... Its not always Dell's fault some of the idiots are luzers
Infiltrated dot Net
Is a loan sharking operation which will charge you 29.99% APR. I quickly transferred my balances and will never use that service again.
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
Apathy
If we don't take care of the customers, maybe they will stop bugging us.
I guess mom was right, if you run too long with the wrong crowd, in this case Microsoft, you will sooner or later get into trouble!!
Had the misfortune to call Linksys recently too. An entire Saturday wasted going through the first-layer support morons, who were just reading the scripts from their screens. Some of them — reading so slowly, I could not help thinking, they are on drugs. Others — lying that the supervisor is "on a meeting"...
Finally, someone had brains enough to realize, the problem is above his level and transfered me to the second level support person, who quickly understood, what I was saying all along, and proceeded to tell me, how to cold-reset the wonder Linux-router, which promptly fixed the problem — 6 hours after the first phone call to Linksys...
Don't know, if any amount of legal prosecution can help against this sort of moronity.
The main legal beef of this prosecution, I guess, are the (alleged) financing/collection irregularities — a heavily legislated and regulated area. The populist "no service at all" rhethorics are just thrown in to help Mr. Guomo repeat Mr. Spitzer's feat later on...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
A state should not be in the business of suing companies for bad customer service! People should go and by Apple, or HP, or lenovo. But leave it to NY or MA or CA to go and get the state involved where it has no place. I notice that Andrew Cuomo is failing upwards..
If you want to sue someone for terrible customer service practices, I can add a few more necks to the gallows.
How about...
COMCAST - Customer service is non-existent. Advertised cable-internet speeds are excessively exaggerated. Bills constantly increase, yet service level goes down. They even have the balls to ADVERTISE on their own guide system. If they're making advertising money by putting ads on my screen while I'm browsing channels, that should be money OFF my bill, not added to it.
VERIZON - Customer service is horrible. Expect to talk to at least 3 or 4 people to solve any problem more complex than simply paying the balance on your bill. Also, ANY CHANGE that you make to your Verizon account somehow ends up adding a year to your contract with them. I don't understand how this is possibly legal.
While we're at it, let's just completely ditch cell-phone contracts. I should be able to get a decent phone service plan without signing my life away. Predatory lenders have less complex contracts.
I think it's nice that our elected officials are going after customer service departments and tackling social ills like the fact that a pint of ice cream isn't really a pint. But haven't we got bigger problems? Even forgetting about national issues like our tattered Constitution and our dictatorial "President" -- we've got dozens of billion dollar New York corporations that don't pay taxes, we've got $6 BILLION OF
FRAUDULENT TRADES A DAY on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. We've got estrogen in our water supply which is decreasing male fertility (and fish stocks). And the list goes on....
Somehow I don't think Dell customer service really qualifies as an emergency...
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Allow groups of consumers to sponsor a visa for an IT guy from Banglore to fly over, service 100 or so computers and then fly back home with earnings that are attractive by his local living standards. A round trip ticket is only like $800 or $8/person for a flight reserved well in advance. If big companies are allowed to outsource labor abroad, it's only fair that individuals are allowed to do the same thing to address their personal needs rather than paying a premium to Dell to cover US-based salary of its executives.
Who the hell are they to sue anyone for bad service. Get me through the DMV is less than an hour and maybe then you can talk!
Wow, can we suggest more lawsuits?
How about Comcast for the undisclosed limits on downloads even with "unlimited" service? Or Microsoft over the Microsoft tax you end up paying on new computers unless you jump through tons of hoops. Or Paypal for, well, the tons of crap they've put people through.
Or any of the other places that give you crappy service; I'm sure Slashdotters could come up with a pretty long list...
Spitzer was a good AG for New York. If Cuomo wants to follow in his footsteps that's fine by me. I have no problem with someone auditioning for future jobs by doing their current job well.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I agree just last year their support was horrible. Offshore support was less than helpful and made me more frustrated after calling. But recently at work I had to have a few machines repaired and you know what their support is back to the old Dell I know, the people I dealt with seemed to be American, helpful fast and gets the issue resolved. Whereas HP now has offshoring and calling them is an exercise in frustration, and at times the calls must have been routed through a string and a tin can, static, unable to hear the person on the other end, and disconnects.
I guess it depends when you dealt with Dell support and what time they were at in deciding to keep support domestic of overseas.
I for one am now satisfied but a couple years back I would agree with Cuomo.
I bought my Compaq notebook six months ago and it's about to go in for the fourth time. Last time it took weeks because they sent it back signature required and they would only attempt delivery when I was not home.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
It's really about bait & switch tactics in their finance arm, attracting people with 0% offers then denying even those with good credit, making them pay 20% or more finance fees. "The lawsuit accuses Dell of luring consumers to purchase its products with advertisements that offered attractive "no interest" and/or "no payment" financing promotions. In practice, however, the vast majority of consumers, even those with very good credit scores, were denied these deals. In a classic "bait and switch" scheme, DFS instead offered consumers financing at high interest rates, which often exceed 20%. Dell and DFS frequently failed to clearly inform these consumers that they had not qualified for the promotional terms, leaving many to unwittingly finance their purchase at high interest rates." THAT is what it is really about. The rest is just to throw on a little more on top, to scare Dell, and more importantly to make the public support it.
-Daniel
This is what you get with offshored support! D'OH!
And with all the offshored engineering Dell's products just continue to promote the cyclic need for calling support. Double D'OH!
You want excellent free service and support while also paying extremely cheap prices for your computer. You are stupid. If you want super-duper support, PAY FOR IT. Additionally, I have many years of in-field support experience. I have spoken to Dell support many, many times. Sometimes I've had bad experiences. Sometimes I've had great experiences. It depends on who you happen to get. Of course, the enterprise support is typically awesome. That's 'cause it costs enough to allow for the hiring and keeping of quality, knowledgeable employees.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Dell service sucks, no doubt. But what about HP service? How about Sony's telephone support? Just trying to get things fixed that are broken with these others is as bad or worse.
If someone thinks that customer service is bad with Dell, they are going to think it is universally bad and all computer makers need to be sued. Sadly, not very realistic.
Is it that the laws are different there? Or maybe NY is the only one that gets decent press?
Lack of service or double-evil financing practices can be assumed with most big businesses. Dell isn't even the tip of an iceberg, it's an ice cube from the tip of an iceberg.
I'd really like to hear some opinions as to why other states aren't doing the same.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
The State of NY is one of Dell's biggest government customers.
On good credit, you'll get 8.x %, and then depeding on your credit score, it goes up. If you got offered 29%, your credit score is probably in the gutter, as was mine when I was in my 3rd year at school and had to finance my laptop through them.
Took out a 3-year loan at 27.99%, paid it off 1.5 years later. Of course by that point most of the interest was paid and not so much principal, but that was my only way to buy a notebook which I really needed.
Always, always, always use the online real time chat for Dell tech support. The waits are shorter and it does a lot to reduce the language barrier.
Try their Web chat: http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx /support/gen/chat
There are no unintelligible accents, or standard troubleshooting questions. You enter your service tag and go. I don't know who they've got manning the other side, but they get the job done, and probably for far less cost for Dell. I can get a replacement part overnighted with 5 to 10 minutes of chatting, everytime. It's excellent!
Do not confuse Dell's server support with their desktop support. Servers make Dell money. Desktops make them well-known.
I don't know how it works in other parts of the world, but here in the UK the routine is:
1. Call Dell Technical Support.
2. Give the service tag to the call handler (always sounds like an Indian accent, but ICBW).
3. If the service tag refers to a desktop/laptop, regardless of the level of support, it goes to India and deal with the communication issues that so often seems to entail. Server calls go to Ireland and communication issues are non-existent.
4. The level of support you've paid for now comes into play. Depending on what you've chosen, parts may be drop-shipped within 4 hours and an engineer should arrive to fit them also within that time, or an engineer will arrive next day - or, if you're a cheapskate, you'll have to ship the item back to Dell at your own expense and it'll come back to you when it comes back. Customers with a Gold (24x7) contract can also ask their account manager for the telephone number of the appropriate team which is manned 24 hours a day, rather than the number on the website which cuts over to a recorded message after working hours to say "please call back tomorrow".
And yes, I have made support calls under such contracts with Dell and also with other companies. In my experience, as soon as you're talking about real hardware rather than desktop PCs and you're paying real money for the support, the level of service you get is not bad.
But now let's go after other such practices like Rent-To-Own and Rent-A-Center.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
I always found that getting support from Dell meant spending literally hours battling their phone system, mostly on hold, and escalating beyond script readers to problem solvers, to get maybe 20 minutes of actual support. So I rarely use it. Plus, I had a couple of recalled power bricks for which that I completed their process for replacing, then never heard from them.
However, I recommend to the many people who ask me to help them buy/upgrade their PCs that they just call Dell. Because those people mostly need script readers, and the encouragement of long hold times to fix it themselves, which they usually can do.
But we're not getting what we're paying for. Dell is clearly profiting off inadequate support for which they raise their prices. If they fixed that, we'd either pay less, or get our money's worth.
Go Cuomo. My low expectations of your brainpower and competence will be defied if you prove negligence and fix Dell.
--
make install -not war
Recently I had a problem with my printer and it took 27 calls over 3 days and about 16 hours of waiting on the phone and talking to Indian after Indian whom couldn't answer my problem. My problem isn't with Indians as I have many of them as friends and Indians are very smart people. My problem is with Dell outsourcing to India and giving them no power to correct even the smallest of issues. Basically if it's not on their troubleshooting sheet they have in front of them chalked up with canned questions/answers, then you are SOL.
When are companies going to understand that they may get a first time buyer with their cut-rate prices. But if that buyer ever has a problem with the hardware and receives cut-rate support, they are not going to buy from the same company again.
Just one reason I buy HP.
h
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
1. Look cool.
2. Be healthy.
3. Do not buy small items that will not last more than three years with credit.
If you really need to finance $800, perhaps you should not be buying it. As far as I am concerned, Dell provides cheap hardware that performs relatively well for its price. What they do with their financing is really not that bad considering that private banks charge through the roof for college loans.
He should look in his own back yard at all the shady electronics/camera merchants in Brooklyn. Fix you own problems first.
FWIW, I paid for business level support on my laptop, and with very few exceptions have had nothing but quick response from fairly knowledgable reps.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Dangit, I agree with you: I'm sick of people who are unclear on the concept of just what a "free market" is.
... why use it to mean anything else?
"Free market" implies that there is no single party or group that has control over a market, not just governments. A single company (e.g. Microsoft in the OS space), or a cartel (e.g., the RIAA member companies) that can dictate the vast bulk of a market's behavior thus means the market is no longer free or capable of the self-correcting behavior that are the benefits of a free market.
Gas prices are high because a single cartel, OPEC, dictates the price per barrel. This is not a free market.
California's "deregulation" was more appropriately a "re-regulation," and was only called "deregulation" for marketing purposes. It failed to help end consumers, of course, because they really don't have a choice where their power comes from; there's no way to go to the corner store and buy a few kilowatt-months to take home and keep in the fridge til ya need them. In other words, it's a market that is necessarily never free, because you always have one company controlling delivery.
It keeps being used only in the sense of "no government interference," which is just wrong. Maybe that's an accepted meaning, but since a market dominated by any entity or cartel cannot be free and does not have the benefits of a really free market, then
Look how well deregulation of the energy market worked for California
The California energy market was NEVER deregulated. They just changed the regulations. And when they changed the regulations, companies like Enron figured out how to exploit the new rules in order to get profit for doing nothing.
Basically, when California's energy market was 'deregulated', new rules were put in place that set the cost of power based on congestion - the more demand there was for the power lines over which the power was transmitted, the more money you paid for that power.
So the energy companies just moved power around essentially in circles, creating more artificial demand, and inflating the cost of power.
If the California energy market had been ACTUALLY deregulated, California's utilities wouldn't have been forced by regulation to pay too much for power, and there would have been more than enough power at reasonable prices to go around because the statutory incentive for the power distribution companies to artificially inflate demand wouldn't have existed.
So, in short, it was REGULATIONS that caused the rolling blackouts, NOT a lack of them.
paintball
OK, I saw the bit on the news. The woman had paid for "in-home" support (300 bucks I think) and they would not come out. Maybe I'm crazy, but "in-home" is pretty clear. It means I call, they come. If dell can't do this for 300, then they should not have offerred it. When I bought a big-screen, I got "in-home" support (500/5 years with yearly cleaning & adjustment including). When the TV died, I called, they came a day later, not 3 freakin months later as was the case for this poor woman. The woman was not tech-savvy at all. She did some kind of knitting biz. So she did the smart thing, she paid for service and did not get it. No idea what "gold" service from dell means. "In-home" is pretty clear though.
I'm not sure how many of the /. crowd are familiar with the concept of service level, so I figured I'd pass this along:
For any company that is worth a flip, they measure a statistic called service level. When you call a customer service number for a company, all of the calls are tracked on their telephony switches. I'm sure everyone is familiar with having to wait on hold to talk to someone. The actual metric of service level is "the target of answering X percent of calls in X seconds or less". So to measure this, if Company A has a service level goal of 80% answered in 45 seconds, and by chance they answered all of their calls for the day in 45 seconds or less, they have achieved 100% for the day. (This would technically be cost inefficient because they had too many people answering the phones, but I'll save that for another day). In this example, the company wants to end up at an 80% achievement for the day. They hit 100%, so they overserviced. Good for the customer, bad for the company's budget.
Depending on the industry, service level targets range anywhere from 80%/45 seconds for credit cards, home/cell phones, etc. Industries like sales, product activations, etc. have a much higher percentage, such as 90%/20 seconds... If the user is trying to buy something, a long wait time makes the customer impatient and they'll hang up resulting in a lost sale opportunity. For industries like computer tech support, the service levels are much, much different. A call for a computer user is going to be much longer than someone who calls their credit card company to complain about an over-the-limit fee. For tech support type calls, the service level will usually be something in the neighborhood of 70%/240 seconds.
You may be wondering how this relates to the Dell story? Last bit of information I received (approx. a month ago), Dell's computer tech support service level was 60%/20 MINUTES. Yes, that is minutes, not seconds. This means that if they answer 60% of their tech calls in 20 minutes or less, they feel they are providing a proper service to their customer.
I'm not surprised in the slightest to see this lawsuit. I'm actually surprised to see that is has taken this long.
Gas prices are high because a single cartel, OPEC, dictates the price per barrel. This is not a free market.
Price of a barrel of oil is only one component of the price of a gallon of gas. In the US, the price of gas is much more closely related to the supply of refined gasoline vs. the demand for refined gasoline. Presently, there is about a $1 swing between the price of a gallon of gas in the winter and in the summer. Every year. Does the price of a barrel of oil swing by $20 from the winter to the summer?
No, it doesn't.
Does OPEC reduce oil production by 25% in the summer?
No, they don't.
So what accounts for the swing in gas prices?
Supply and demand. We only have a finite amount of refining capacity. In the summer, demand goes up, but supply does not - there is no more refining capacity available.
The real culprit in the high gas prices are the oil companies and environmentalists. Oil companies don't want to invest their profits in more refining capacity, and environmentalists make it difficult to build new refineries at all.
OPEC, on the other hand, doesn't like high gas prices any more than you do - the higher the gas price, the more attractive alternate energy sources become. And if there's one thing OPEC definitely doesn't want, it's people investing in ways to use less gas.
paintball
I had a terrible time with Dell - but I think it was because they were poorly managed and not because they intentionally set out to be underhanded. I bought a highly rated and well reviewed 2007WFP monitor. It used a S-IPS type panel well regarded as a superior panel to other panel types for photography. The problem was that after a few months Dell began a "panel lottery" and would randomly swap out the S-IPS panels and use low quality S-PVA panels instead. The quality of the Dell S-PVA image was not comparable at all. The S-PVA made dark areas seem darker face on, and a viewer had to tip side to side to see details. Many people were upset to buy a superior Dell monitor and instead have an inferior monitor delivered. There were revolts in Dell forums and the staff there seemed stuck between rocks and hard places. However, Dell also undersold it's superior monitors capabilities on its web site. The speed of its 2007WFP was given as 16ms when it was actually faster (6ms gtg). Supposedly the slower time was meant to allow for the use of slower panels without having to explain any slower times when the superior panels were switched for inferior ones. I know other manufacturers also swap parts out (HP no longer lists what panels are used in its monitors) but Dell was really sloppy about swapping inferior panels for superior ones. It was like putting a Taurus engine in a BMW. Trying to get panels exchanged was both very easy and very hard. Dell didn't refuse exchanges and many people returned monitors 2 or 3 times until they got a S-IPS panel. I returned my first monitor because of stuck pixels. My exchange monitor was the poor quality S-PVA. Dell "forgot" to send return shipping label for monitor number one so I was stuck with two monitors. I now knew I didn't want a Dell anyway but instead wanted an NEC 20WMGX2 (most awesome monitor I ever owned). Well to cut a long story short it took two months of over two dozen calls, case numbers, dropped calls, etc to get monitors returned. I lot of the service people seemed nice enough and they seemed like they wanted to help but from one person to the other the system seemed to break down. To me it just seemed like chaos and not criminal intent. A compnay trying to gouge people doesn't let them make 2,3,4 returns at their cost no questions asked. They don't hide their best selling statistics. This is my opinion after many hours stuck in this situtation from Nov 06 to Feb 07. Dells accounting was so bad they counting even refund the CC I used with PayPal and they had to send me a check after 4 weeks of mishaps on their end. I can't say Dell didn't ask for trouble because they were awful. But I don't think they were criminal as much as poorly managed. I am sure there are worse companies out there.
I can totally understand the issues with Dell's Financial Services. Our company was a victim of theirs as well. It took 4 months to finally convince our sales rep to STOP setting us up withtheir Financial Services plan and just invoice us outright.
Their technical support on the other hand really isn't all that bad if you know what to ask for. (Of course we do pay for premium) It's not as good as Sun's tech support but I've had much worst response issues with companies like Gateways 2000 PCs back when I was supporting those. I'd give Dell an above average rating for their tech support.
I find it funny that when an article is about customer service, a lot of people post like "I am superior and the tech on the phone is a moron for not listening to me" Then when we have a post about customers we get a lot of people saying "I am superior, the customer on the end is an idiot and shouldn't have bought a computer" So which is it? Granted I've been on both sides of the spectrum. I've had poor CSR's before who didnt resolve my issue, and I've also worked tech support when people would call me asking "Why doesnt my modem work? So I'd start diagnosing connectivity problems. No the TV wont turn on my modem is broke" You'd be amazed how many people call a computer a modem. Anyway, some CSR's suck some clients suck. Nothing really new here.
I started having problems with my Dell laptop in December. I sent it back for repair 3 times and each time it came back worse. It is now a doorstop. After it came back the second time and I was fiddling with it to try and get it to boot, I removed the battery. I was astounded to find a label on the hidden side of the battery that said "BAD BATTERY do not install in system". Their techs can't even follow their own instructions. No more Dell for me.
Can we please stop putting the names of New York attorney generals in the articles. This guy (I won't say his name, don't want to help his google ranking) just wants to follow the Guiliani/Spitzer tactic of suing big name companies and "standing up for the little guy" even when it's not actually prudent (I'm not judging this case one way or another).
"At Dell, customer service means no service at all." - Attorney General of the State of New York.
Now that's bad press. Visualize that on a billboard, or in a competitor's commercial.
So, I had a broken A key on a laptop. The damned thing fell off completely. I call up Dell support expecting them to immediatly send out a new keyboard pad. After 45 minutes on hold, the rep decides to take me through Dells little software troubleshooter program they load. I interrupt him "whoa, wait. I am holding the key in my hand! It is completely detached from the keyboard!" His response, "oh...ok...so click on Hardware..." And he continues on with the software troubleshooting!! At the end he asks me if it fixed the issue. I told him "no, I'm still holding the key in my hand." Finally he says "ok, we'll send you out a new keypad"
I saw a brief bit on the local news while waiting for the weather & traffic this morning. They showed someone's grandma with a horror story about the Dell technician telling her to open up the computer and try to figure out what kind of RAM she had. Then she stated that she fought with support for 6 weeks before they sent someone to her house.
Now, this might be just someone (or a few someones) who is not used to working bureaucratic problem-tracking systems, and simply waited for calls back, or whatever, but with how the news was spinning it, it did seem very much focused on the home user not getting on-site support, when it had been paid for...and not focused on business service.
attracting people with 0% offers then denying even those with good credit, making them pay 20% or more finance fees
How did they make people pay?
I thought that people signed up voluntarily, but this sounds like Dell forced them to do something against their will. I just hope our saviour, the AG, gets them for this.
It's also much simpler and cheaper for Dell to deal with a single law suit rather than hundreds.
Deleted
Look, you may not like the 29.9% rate --- but it is 100% legal and 100% voluntary. The rates that credit cards (of all kinds) charge you are very very high and you certainly have the right NOT to use them. If you didn't read the fine print, that is 100% your problem. Not Dell's.
My question to you is this: why in the fuck are you buying a depreciating consumer item when you do not have the money to afford it?
I really, truly, do not understand some people's financial decisions. Leasing cars, paying ridiculously high APR's....and then wondering why, after all these years of hard work, they are poor.
You said it, it's both. So why did you ask?
No rebate program is as bad as Circut city's..horror storys. Lots and Lots of passing the buck when try to get your rebate, oh yeah you "have to" send in your original documents for your rebate so you have nothing to back it up. That's right Circut city you ----SUCK!!----
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
I have a brand new cutting edge Dell laptop and I broke it twice in the past month. I have a simple mail-in warranty. No Gold Service thingie and my company is small fry.
A couple keys snapped off, I called them up, I had a new keyboard the next day and the problem was solved.
Then I fried the board. Called them up, they picked it up no charge, fixed it (motherboard, backup battery), and had it back to me THE NEXT BUSINESS DAY. I kid you not. This was Monday THIS WEEK.
I never thought I'd say this: Dell customer support for me has been EXCELLENT. I'm sharing this simply because its 100% true and, scanning through the responses, nobody else seems to have had this experience. Maybe they are doing something new? The people were very friendly, English speaking, kept in touch. I don't see what they could have possibly done better.
Obviously... Dell's going to sell linux so MS have to pay someone to give bad publicity, come on they have to protect their almost 300 patents that we (linux users) don't violate.
ghostbar page.
Does refinery capacity magically disappear in the summer, and come back in the winter?
It's called supply *AND* demand for a REASON!
My original post ASSUMES refining capacity doesn't change. That's the whole point!
What DOES change is DEMAND - there is a lot more driving done in the summer than in the winter; DEMAND goes up, PRICES go up.
Refining capacity yeilds a particular gas price in the winter. That SAME refining capacity, faced with HIGHER SUMMER DEMAND, yields a HIGHER price in the summer? Get it?
paintball
You're right of course. They're all the same. I use this strategy:
Lookup the real support number at gethuman.
Write down the bogus names they give you and say them often. Tell each operator who transferred you and ask who they're transferring you to (this is really frustrating for them because they know the names are bogus). Ask for a direct line phone number for every person you talk to.
Get a service ticket number.
The instant you're on hold, call from a different line and give the ticket number. Always use the same number.
Repeat for as many phone lines as you have available. Use cell phones too.
Most people surrender before they get service. Don't be one of them. This part can be really hard: always be courteous.
They get scored on calls per ticket and total time per ticket, so as soon as they realize you're burning three to six times the time as the usual victim, they're eager to really resolve your issue.
Using this system I can usually get them to RMA a flaky 512MB DIMM after only 4-7 working days of tech support, plus the usual shipping time.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This is not true. OPEC exists to keep oil prices high
Wrong. OPEC's goal is to keep PROFITS high. Getting the highest profits does NOT result from arbitrarily high prices. But, when producers collaborate, the price at which profit is maximized is higher than where it would be if producers competed. THAT's the goal of a cartel - eliminate downward price pressure caused by competition.
But, even the cartel has long and short term pressures on the oil price. In the short term, if the price goes too high, they move past the optimum point, the decreased volume of sales is not offset by the increased margin, and their profits actually go down. And even if they are at the optimal short-term price point for maximizing profits, in the LONG term, if the short-term price is so high that other people start investing in technology that ultimately reduces the demand for oil, then again, OPEC loses out on profits because in 5 or 10 years, everyone's car runs Ethanol or Vegetable Oil and demand for oil plummets. One of the big reasons we don't have more alternative energy now is that comparatively, gas has been cheap, so there wasn't any incentive to develop something else.
OPEC wants high profits - but to get high profits over the long term, they want to keep oil prices reasonable in the short term to discourage investment in alternative energy sources.
paintball
The other half of this dichotomy is over on MSN Chat:
Help stamp out iliturcy.
By keeping prices higher than they would be in the absence of a cartel.
Not arbitrarily, no, nor did I claim they sought to keep prices arbitrarily high. But its not to keep prices down. OPEC is, contrary to GPs suggestion, much happier with high prices than oil consumers are.
Its actually at exactly the same point, when you consider the aggregate profit of all producers.
The problem is that every individual producer has a dominant strategy of increasing production (and driving supply down) from that point where producers compete and have excess potential production capacity (increasingly, of course, OPEC is becoming irrelevant because of the absence of excess production capacity.) It ks (if you take the producers as the universe of analysis) a tragedy of the commons problem which the shared institution seeks to resolve.
Right, that's exactly what I was saying. I didn't miss anything.
So what? If this was a concern, OPEC's best course of action would be to pocket the excess profits now and invest them in the same alternatives, so that when that occurs, they are reaping the profits from that. But its really not: the very few OPEC countries that have taken the long view (like Kuwait) have been doing essentially that (not investing in alternatives directly so much as investing throughout the economy in things that do well when oil prices are low), but for the most part OPEC countries haven't taken the long view at all.
Anyone else read this as "New York sues Deli..."?
Reformatting my C: drive and reloading Windows almost always worked for me. . .
What?
But if you have Gold support, you'll at least be routed to real support personnel within a couple minutes, and you'll have replacement hardware within 4 hours.
Really? Are you quite sure?
About a year ago, working for somebody with gold-level service, I had a laptop motherboard fail. The replacement failed to show up anything like any 4 hours. The rep promised to have something ready by 24 hours. It was actually 33 hours before he showed up.
This was in Austin, Texas. Less than 20mi from Dell HQ.
True, less moolah for service level still might've gotten still worse service. But they weren't delivering on their promises that day.
Now, Michael Dell since has taken control back specifically to get control of this. I suspect it's getting better now.
...the problem most OPEC countries have is they are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to developing alternative energy. Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil because it's sitting on a lot of oil. There is nothing anybody else can do to get Saudi Arabia's oil short of invading them or paying for it.
Alternative energy doesn't work like that. Anything Saudi Arabia develops there can be developed better by someone else. And in a lot of things - like ethanol - they're at a huge disadvantage due to lack of arable land.
They're stuck. They can only sell oil so fast - if they try and sell it all now, they'll just plummet the prices. And if they raise prices to cash in now, then they're just making oil become obsolete sooner.
paintball
OK, so now we're down to picking apart peoples words? It's bait & switch, no, it doesn't MAKE people pay... but it's not a good thing, and depending on the level, can be illegal.
College loans fall in the 7-10% range... Dell is at 20%+... that's a big difference. Add to that the fact that it isn't the rate that is necessarily important, so much as the bait & switch tactics, and you have a real lawsuit there.
-Daniel
Around 1999-2000 I was doing workstation installs for about 1/2 dozen NY State agencies, and they all used Dell servers and workstations.
So if the State themselves are getting screwed by their service contract, then it's quite likely they'd sue.
(PS: Anyone else out there who worked for Atlantic?)
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Our court system is being used as a tool to guarantee corporations a profit, (e.g. RIAA). Now this same court system is being used to ensure that people get what they paid for. Imagine that.
Here's my anecdote:
ME: Called Dell support.
ME: Asked 'Here is my service tag#. Does my motherboard support hot-swapping SATA/eSATA drives?'
DELL: Your problem is a bad motherboard. We will ship you a new one.
ME: WTF?
They called me for the next three days trying to schedule an on-site engineer to swap my motherboard, even though I kept telling them I don't have a problem with my motherboard.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I used to buy dell regularly (now not so much). two years ago my company dumped $125,000 in one shot to replace all our servers at 20 locations (plus rack, switches, etc).
6 mos later I finally cleaned up the mess. wrong parts spec'd, quotes not corrected before the order (and the quotes were so disorganized it was impossible to find the error as a consumer).
things like:
-quoted the most expensive for a budgetary number... pedistal servers with the rack mount option added, with LTO drives. we opted to go with travan 40 drives and pedistal configs to save cash. They kept the LTO tapes and only deleted the rails from the order. So our pedistal servers with travan drives showed up missing the parts to make them pedistal servers (feet, top panel, etc), and the wrong tapes. they had to send me the conversion kits and it took me a day to convert them all back.
-when I sent back the 100 LTO tapes and ordered the replacement travan 40 tapes, they sent me 100 travan 20's.
-quoted a 240v fan top for the rack when I spec'd a 120v. was told "its the same part" when I questioned it. When it showed up, there was no voltage switch like I had assumed, and in 5 mins I found the part number they couldnt find.
but the BEST... the absolute BEST... when ordering from the spare parts division...
If its not available within 10 days or so of your order, they cancel the order with absolutely no warning. This is not isolated, as in the past 3 years, I have had 6+ orders cancelled without warning. What usually happens is I place an order for a part. after a week or so, I get an email "we're sorry, its backordered, it should ship within a week." Two weeks later, no part. I call for a status, and am told "sorry sir, that order was cancelled.". What?!?
Apparently if the order cant be filled within a certain time frame, the system automatically drops the order with no notice to ANYONE. That has got to be the most annoying part of the system. If they can email me to tell me its backordered, why not a courteous "sorry, we couldnt fill your order, so it was cancelled. Please call us to arrange an alternative solution."?
My Dell Inspiron D620 with gold support absolutely rocks. I dont have to talk to "Steve" (yeah right)in Bangalore, and when I call to say "um, yeah, my dog ate my laptop" they say " we'll see you tomorrow at your location" or "my server just started smoking" they say "great, see you in 4 hours".
In 2 years, my 21 servers have had a grand total of 8 service calls. not too bad I'd say, especially since all but 2 of those are for a specific problem with the Seagage tape drives... so not totally thier fault.
so gold service kicks ass, the products are rock solid... the rest is questionable.
The free credit report commercials that I've seen were from the actual credit reporting agencies (like Experian). The catch is that they try to sell you a detailed report, credit protection, etc. If you don't purchase anything and actually get your free report (one free per year, required to be provided by U.S. law), your information gets distributed to various credit agencies and you'll get buried in credit card applications. Fortunately, you just have to call the number or go to the website on the application to opt-out. I haven't had a credit card application since opting-out (which was a pleasant surprise). Anyway, if you want a free U.S. credit report, go to one of the big three credit reporting agencies, go back and change your options if you get prompted for payment information (because you've obviously accepted one or more of the defaults), and don't forget to opt-out (unless you like getting credit applications and giving your shredder a workout).
I used to work retail (who hasn't?) and we had the same type of credit deals. 0% financing for 12 months. If you didn't pay off the balance within the 12 months, *all* of the accrued interest was tacked on to your bill. (That's how most, if not all of those deals work.) Anyway, I used to do the credit sign-ups from time-to-time. If someone was buying a $1,200 computer, it was rare that they were approved for the full purchase amount. One of the guys that had been around for a while told me to double the purchase price when talking to the credit rep. That was usually enough to get the customer approved for the full purchase price including tax. I don't know the reasoning behind the credit approval was, but that little trick worked pretty well. Not one of the customers asked me how the 0% financing worked though. Either they already knew, or they thought that credit card companies were benevolent organizations.
When I bought my last notebook (The VAIO), Geeksquad quoted me a price for the 2GB memory upgrade, and half an hour later after the chips were in, the price was $50 more than expected. The geeks shrugged their shoulders and pointed at my guy and said, "He's new here". That will officially be my last trip to the geeksquad counter.
Dell customer service has always been good for me. I even recieved three calls from them to verify that I was happy with my XPS laptop (no not marketing calls, no mention of new products or anything, they asked if i was happy with the system and if there was anything they could do or any questions i may have had concerning the system and thats it, end of call since i was happy and had no problems).
On other occasions I have called them concerning some Latitude models for and a Optiplex, the call took no more then 20 seconds to route. The support was perfect, quick diagnosis, and then they send out a tech to replace the some parts.
One unfortunate occasion, I recieved someone else's Inspiron laptop. When I called support the service was horrible and i had to be rerouted twice just to let them know the box was misdelivered and follow up on any steps to get their box back to them or to its intended destination. I sat on hold, I got connected to the wrong people, and sat on hold some more then got rerouted to another department.
From all of this I will never buy an Inspiron or any of the economy models. The first thing you hit when you get to support is which model are you calling about... after which you get directed to the level of service you paid for.
Does anybody know where this complaint has originated from - the Law suite says People of New York Vs Dell. IS there a background link anywhere?
Gone are the days where Micheal himself would help set you up with your pc and make sure that your satisfaction was guaranteed.... I remember my first laptop from Dell being windows 98, and not knowing a thing about it, but never failed to amaze me how great customer support was back them for such simple things as getting your internet to work( modem atached ).
Now a days, no one I know would even buy from Dell unless they were a BIG company that bought upon hundreds of their pcs, and this would make them not want to LOSE THAT IMPORTANT CUSTOMER.
Too bad if you are a 55 year old grandpa that is excited about getting into the computing world,
you might as well just buy from a used store !
I hope they win and bring CUSTOMER SUPPORT back to reality, not the virtual one ( where they think its all about them, and not about the customer)
"Sometimes you gotta lose a little mobey to lose some more"
HP is just as bad if not worse than HP customer service. I called to have them send a replacement DVD burner for my laptop that was still under warranty.
I spent 15 minutes just trying to explain to the person on the other end that I did not need to wipe my hard drive, reinstall my OS, or buy a new set of DVDs. The representative also called me by the wrong name at least 5 times during the conversation, and I had to repeat many of my statements in "different English" so she could understand.
I never received a new DVD burner from the first call, and had to call back to get a new employee and jump through all the same hoops again. It took a bit of anger and coaxing to convince them that I had looked up my current DVD model online and read about it being defective before I could convince them to send me a different manufacturer model.
Does anyone know of a computer retailer that actually has technical support in the U.S.? I would gladly pay more for a computer if I knew the support I would get would be from someone indigenous to my own country.
Granted, if it turns into a festival of frivolous lawsuits I'll lose my zeal. But for now, hell yeah, it's a way to get my vote. Make the world a little better by suing corporations over screwing the consumer isn't likely to be a "bad" PR move.
OPEC can't alleviate summer gas prices by producing more oil. Having more oil does you no good if you can't refine it into gas, and since refinery capacity is already at its limit, only more refining capacity will push down the price of gas. Producing more oil is useless.
paintball
I have always had good luck with their laptops. The LTE series rocked; since then the road went all downhill. The Armada 6500 had heating problems the cd/floppy cover eventually popped off because of the heat; the machine died terribly.
I bought 2 Compaq N1000V's ; both had the same problem; heating problems, hanging and not succeeding its initial installation because the CPU would get too hot because of bad venting ducts on the back of the unit. Searching on the web gave plentoria of results of other people having the same issues with the NX and other Compaq/HP series.
This has taken Compaq/HP ****2 FULL YEARS**** to fix these units; 3 visits of their technicians, one time the manager of my file went "missing" together with the file; 2 times I drove to brussels and back and plenty of letters and faxes and as a matter of fact I started just using it again, after it was fully refurbished and it is hanging *AGAIN* at reinstall!
No need to say, I am a hard-core PC user; but I went on thin ice and bought myself an Apple; best decision ever, this laptop works like a charm! Didn't even NEED support yet; integrates in our network seamlessly; installs within seconds; which sounds the best deal for me when buying a new product since my work-downtime was practically zero. My next laptop will probably be an Apple again; if not only for their finished product lines and almost-zero-maintenance.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I've never had a problem with either Dell's Technical support or their Customer Care support. They've always helped me and I've never had a problem. However, I do recommend using their chat feature instead of calling support, because it's a bit easier to understand them.
Go Dell!