Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Dell Tech Support

My brother is about 10 years younger than me and heading off to college this fall. In preparation, he bought a Dell desktop PC for school. After he received it he noticed that whenever he pushed the power button, it would shock him. He told me about it and I told him that since he had just purchased it to call Dell and have them to fix the issue. He called Dell Tech. Support and after waiting on hold and following the prompts, he got through to a Customer Service Representative. He explained the issue and the service rep. told him that it was static electricity. My brother explained to him that it was not as it does it everytime you touch it, not just once until you move again. He was advised to wear a glove whenever he turned it on and if he still felt the shock through the glove to call back at that point in time.
Great customer service. I have long since promised myself never to buy a Gateway and now Dell has made it on that list. For the past 7 years or so I have resorted to just building my own systems anyway and am very happy with the tech support I provide myself. :)

Some questions:
-Is this typical of your tech. support scenarios?
-What is your worst customer service story?
-Do you have difficulty understanding the person you are speaking to on the other end of the line?

2 comments:

misawa said...

The times I get frustrated are when the person I'm speaking with won't deviate from the script at all. I was on the phone with Bellsouth trying to report to them that their webmail was being troublesome and extremely slow. First it was reset your modem, then reboot, then ping this address, then ping that address, now try to connect - still won't connect. Now we'll try it with a different browser - oh, you're already using Firefox? Well, we need to download it anyway... blah, blah, blah. The conversation ended when I informed her that I wasn't running a Microsoft OS (Linux) - and she started talking me through how to load Windows.

And then there was the time I got a customer service guy with a strong Mexican accent that wasn't allowed to speak Spanish with me because I selected the English prompt...

B Nettles said...

We got a Dell laptop for Philip this year. When it arrived, the wireless card didn't work. They immediately shipped a new card. Didn't work, so we went online an "escalated" the problem and asked for a new laptop. They immediately responded, "okay" and we had a new laptop 4 days later. Working.We were please with the response.

If your brother got a case number, have him go to the online tech support page and escalate the case, state that it is a health hazard, and he wants a new system. Phone support is worthless with anyone but JEA!

But now it takes 2 minutes to load Windoze...argh!