Quote:
Originally Posted by taustin
When did your experience happen? Cuz the links I mentioned above have been there for as long as I've dealt with Dell, which has been quite a few years.
|
It's been a fair number of years. Long enough ago that by the time a helpful user found the web page where I had documented (and snarked) the email exchange with Dell and sent me the file I needed, the monitor had failed (ripple, if I recall correctly). The monitor I got to replace it has
also failed (the magic smoke came out) within the past year. And the company I bought it from was bought by another company, which subsequently closed it, and that was a couple of years back. That would put it somewhere between five and nine years ago. I spent a couple of hours trying every possible route to find what I needed, before my first call, long before my first email. Their website today looks like what I would expect of a computer manufacturer; back then, it didn't. Perhaps it was the amount of time they spent answering my phone calls and my emails in strange and ultimately negative ways ... multiplied by thousands more like me ... that led them to the conclusion that maybe the other computer companies were doing something right.
I think the very fact that I haven't even looked at Dell's website for all these years is a perfect example of how wrong they got it when it came to dealing with one lil' customer who just wanted one lil' file. The futile website searching, the frustrating phone calls, and especially the moronic replies to multiple emails, led to me being so ticked at Dell that I've never known if or when they fixed any of the problems because I never went back to look ... until now, actually. And even though I can acknowledge that they may have learned a lesson, they're still not getting my money. There are plenty of places eager to sell me hardware, and most of them don't drive me to red-faced fury when I interact with them. Lack of fury is a big selling point.
Edit:
I dug around on some backups, and the incident in question happened in 2002. Yeah, Dell managed to tick me off so badly that I've remained ticked for 9 years.
Here's part of the final email from Dell:
Quote:
While you have a valid point of having purchased a Dell monitor, this
was not purchased from Dell but a third party. We do provide best of support and service to anyone who directly purchases from us. A Dell monitor purchased from Dell has three years warranty. The files you wish to download are part of this same service coverage. Therefore, the site doesn't allow such files to be downloaded directly without account identification number.
While we do appreciate your comments, we must respectfully decline your request.
|
Obviously, they've since realized that this sort of thing -- allowing driver downloads only to people who buy directly from Dell, and only during the warranty period -- was not making people want to buy from Dell; quite the opposite, in fact. But because they did it when I needed that wretched little file, they got me mad enough to stay mad for the better part of a decade.
That's just stupidity, though. The bad customer service comes from the multiple times (in four separate emails) in which they did not read my email, did not respond to what I was actually saying, and in one of the more memorable ones, said "Support for all third-party software and peripherals is provided by the original manufacturer of the product." (mind you, this was after several emails, including the one that was in reply to, in which we had been discussing specifically a
Dell monitor) The entire exchange was like that, ranging from the ridiculous to the surreal.
They might have cleaned up their act. I'll never know, because that monitor was the last piece of hardware I will ever own with a Dell logo on it. And they can thank their assorted cut-rate offshore customer disservice personnel for that.