Mea culpa. Shel Israel was right. There really is a "Dell Hell."
In October 2005, I protested that the Dell Hell thread running through many blogs amounted to piling on bad reviews for a good company. Unfair, I said. Dell still provides good customer service.
But on Friday night, a crazy train of phone calls to multiple toll-free numbers handed to me by clueless Dell customer representatives (clueless because each rep had a different 800 number to which they referred me) left me with the distinct feeling I was in Dell Hell. Worse, the main number I kep trying -- a number I found on Dell's support website, could have referred me to the tech support to fix my problem. Instead, for a computer covered by a bumper-to-bumper service plan, I spent two or three hours on the phone being shuffled around.
"You know, Dell is an worldwide company," one rep told me. Not my problem, I said. It's not my job to navigate a worldwide company. It's Dell's job to navigate its own tech support system. I'm usually tolerant, but Friday night I was jerked around. I didn't like it.
On Sunday, I went to the Apple Store in Indianapolis. I'm tired of fighting. The next time I buy a computer, I think I'll switch.
Comments