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Recourse For Poor Customer Service?
eleventypie writes "I am in the Army and currently stationed in Afghanistan. Recently I found myself without a laptop so I decided to build a studio 17 from Dell. I designed/customized my laptop on 2008-09-17 and placed my order, which totaled approximately $1,700. The laptop was built and apparently shipped on 2008-09-28. Given my APO address, I know mail can sometimes take a little while to get here, though 7-10 days is normal. Dell said to give my laptop 6-8 business days and occasionally, it might take as much as 4-6 weeks. So on 2008-11-12 I sent another email to Dell informing them I still had not received my laptop. One person said to give it more time, while another person responded to my message telling me to send my address again and they would send me a replacement. So I sent my address immediately and never got a response. It is now the 30th of November and I still have no laptop and Dell seems to have quit responding to my emails. This is very frustrating being out $1,700 and not having a laptop to talk to my friends and family and do school work. Phone calls aren't easy so calling them is pretty much out of the question. Any advice on what I can or should do at this point to get the computer I ordered or get my money back?"
...and dispute the charge. No laptop = no payee.
and have them reverse the charges
Apparently you're at a computer with internet right now, you should try using SkypeOut or another free software VoIP service to call tech support and figure out what's going on.
There are members of the U.S. Armed Forces who attend college while enlisted and even while stationed overseas. Certainly you've heard of online degree programs offered by schools such as Argosy University or University of Phoenix?
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My son is an Army JAG Attorney. He was telling me that helping servicemen with such problems was part of the job that gave them much satisfaction. They can write some very good letters on your behalf. You probably have a few deployed with/near you.
meh, i would have had the laptop shipped to a relative and asked *them* to ship it in a plain box (not one marked DELL DELL DELL) with insurance, delivery confirmation or whatever option they could get from USPS or whoever.
as others mentioned, do a chargeback. :)
then buy a thinkpad
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Go to consumerist.com they have numbers and email addresses for corporate customer service.
1) Dispute charge with your credit card issuer (as others have recommended)
2) Check out the consumerist blog (consumerist.com) and use their guidelines to get consumer satisfaction.
Don't let them BS you - put the beef out in public and you're more likely to get results. Dell and other large companies don't care about you, an individual consumer - make it public and affect thousands of buying decisions and you'll likely fare better.
Note: If they resolve this to your satisfaction, also post/email/whatever a follow-up showing that they made good on a bad situation. If they do not, of course you should let everyone know that as well.
Good luck!
The credit card company won't eat the loss - they'll mediate his dispute, and unless Dell can prove that he received the laptop, Dell will be out the one (or two) laptops they claim to have shipped and the OP will have his money refunded by his card company, who will in turn deduct it from Dell's account.
Given that it's an APO address, it will be hard to prove receipt. Better call the card issuer soon; chargeback rights vary by issuer, but typically expire 60-90 days after purchase.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Looking at Reseller Ratings Dell has a really shitty customer service team.
I would suggest:
Good luck
Actually in the Army you can get a degree from most normal colleges while deployed as well. Theres a college exchange program where you can take classes at any approved college (including some classes taught by the army itself both online and offline) and receive your degree at the participating college of your choice (and they do have a good selection of participating colleges.)
There are a lot of options for service personnel, most of which are better schools than the ones you mentioned. Pace University had professors aboard my ship while I was in the Marines in the 1990's - unfortunately I couldn't attend because I actually had to go ashore and fight in Somalia while the rest of the Navy floated around and earned college credit.
I think it's great that these options are available to those in the service, it gives them a great head start when they get out.
Call your credit card company and dispute the charges.
...everyone else is just trying to get their shit back!
Brother someone stole your shipment without a doubt. I can't believe you would even order something like that while in country. When I was in Opsec, Afghanistan we had our mail stolen all the time. Mostly just cartons of smokes. You should have ordered it through AAFES if you couldn't wait to pick one up on your R&R.
We also had quite a few CONEX get broke into during shipping. They would simply take the hinges off, take what they wanted, and weld it back shut.
My suggestion to you is to make sure you report it. Maybe one good thing out of it is one of those USSR employees will get fired.
Good luck Sir
I want to be retired when I grow up.
Purchasing your Dell computer through AAFES (Army Air Force Exchange Services), online or off, has 2 benefits:
1) Tax-free.
2) Your Dell helpline service tickets will be assigned to the Small Business department, instead of Joe Public.
PS: You can also buy your Harley-Davidson motorcycle through AAFES while you're deployed.
Did you see the part about making phones calls being difficult for him? I work at a company that has a lot of military customers and it is very hard for them to call our Pacific contact center via the phone. First getting a phone call out is tough, then spending your minutes (normally on calling cards) waiting on hold is aggravating. If you get disconnected, you have to start the whole process over with a new phone card. My company has some DSN numbers is Asia they can use if the hours match up, but I doubt Dell has resources on bases to provide this. Normally you are left with email and faxes for any business that doesn't have a DSN connection.
I used to work for Dell in a call center doing technical support for business and the Army was one segment that I supported quite often. I dealt with many calls from overseas Army bases and it was always a headache. It's called OCONUS or Outside the CONtinental United States and it is a completely different process to send something OCONUS than it is to ship normally. The reason for this is because of export restrictions and other trade regulations. If Dell screws up and sends something where they aren't suppoesto they could loose their ability to ship anything outside the US so they take it very seriously. There is a special department in Round Rock TX that deals with this, all of my shipments went through them. I had to set it up a certain way, or it wouldn't work, nothing would be shipped and I wouldn't know it wasn't shipped unless I remembered to check back a couple of days later and see the status of the shipment. So, the end result is that because most agents don't get many OCONUS calls, possibly 1 or 2 a year, they either don't know that it has to be done a certain way, or they can't remember how to do it the right way so it fails to ship and the agent who set it up is NOT notified unless they take the time to check a few days later on the status which they usually don't have time and would not think to do anyway as 99% of the time it is unnecessary. Now bear in mind, this is in hardware warranty support, not sales and it has been about a year since I last worked for Dell so things could have changed but, I kind of doubt it. This was an ongoing issue for me as I worked the night shift so I got at least 3 or 4 OCONUS calls in a week which is much, much more than the average agent. I became the go to guy for OCONUS (in my department) calls because I did so many of them. Another issue is the APO address. We were told NEVER to ship to an APO if there was any other address available because it could often take 3 to 4 MONTHS, not weeks to get there if it ever did. I ALWAYS had issues shipping to APO's. So that could be the issue as well. You need to realize that the agent could be trying to do their best to give you good service (which may or may not be the case) but they are very limited on what they can do and more likely, do not know all the options they have available to them. As this is a rare case - shipping OCONUS to an APO, most agents would not have ever done this and not know how do do it correctly. I would follow the advice of some other posters and call and talk to a live person, during business hours in EST which probably means you need to call at 2 or 3 am your time. Be prepared with all the information you can possibly get and be ready to spend quite some time on the phone as it is better if you can stay on the phone while the agent goes and talks to someone who knows what to do or looks for someone who knows what to do. Shipping overseas is a pain and is always a hassle. also it's not Dell making the hassle it's the US trade regulations so blaming the Dell agent won't accomplish anything, even though it might be their fault for not sending it correctly in the first ( and second and third...) place. Asking for a supervisor won't work as there are no supervisors for you to talk to. there are managers who do not talk to customers, the best you can do is get another agent but then you will be starting back at square 1 and have to explain everything all over again. Another person posted offering to follow up with Dell for you, this won't work as they are not the person how placed the order or the cardholder so Dell probably will not talk to them, this is the normal customer confidentially policy Dell has. the easiest thing to do would be to have a family member buy a computer for you and then send it to you the way you normally receive mail from family and friends. Any other company (like HP or Apple) will have the same difficulties shipping to you as Dell but they might have better trained agents, or not. I'm not trying to defend Dell here just tell you the realities of shipping from Dell to your APO.
"Send in the Marines!"
He's Army. Send Rangers. :P
Make sure you talk about this with your CO. Don't go to the media or any place that make make this and your name / rank location public without prior approval. afaik you need to have prior approval before even making so much as a message board post.
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Eh.. I had a dispute like this once. I wasn't in the military but something I ordered never showed up. I disputed the charges and they claimed it was delivered with a note saying it was left on the porch so the CC company would charge it back.
It turns our that they left it on a neighbors porch who was on vacation so it sat there exposed to rain and mother nature for a month and a half before I got it. I ended up taking them to small claims court and got a judgment on them when they didn't bother showing up. It took about 6 months to collect on that. I guess their Visa bills went up when there was an outstanding judgment debt on their credit reports and their brad and dunstreet ratings went down.
If you can get ahold of Dell customer support by the phone ( or maybe even chat?) ask to be transferred to the 'reparations department'. The one goal of this group is 'customer satisfaction' and the can give you just about anything u want as a 'please forgive us' gesture. I found out my freshmen year as a poor college student about them and ended up with a gratis $200 Linksys wifi router, and that was just b.c. of a comparatively minor laptop repair shipping issue! At least you can get a little extra since you have waited so long - good luck!