Dell customer service: horrible, frustrating, outrageously bad

Canceling an order for a laser printer cartridge should be easy. With Amazon and other competent online retailers it is. But with Dell, it's insanely difficult.

This morning I spent well over an hour trying to do something that should have taken me a minute. There's no excuse for this, Dell. Either you're trying to make it extremely hard for customers to cancel an order, or you are a mismanaged company.

I don't use my Dell 3000cn color laser printer very much any more. I've flown the PC coop and use a Mac now. Dell doesn't offer a Macintosh driver for the 3000cn, so I have to hook my old ThinkPad laptop up when I want to use the printer.

Which I did today, having a bunch of color Christmas letters to print. A message popped up, saying the yellow cartridge was low. I figured I should order a replacement for future laser printing needs.

That was easy. Dell's online ordering system works well. But Dell's unordering system is one of the worst I've ever encountered.

Soon after I pushed the submit button on my order I remembered a box sitting in the back of my office closet that had a Dell logo on it. Digging it out, I saw that it contained a yellow laser printer cartridge.

"Good," I thought. "Now I can save myself $70. Just need to cancel the order."

A whole lot easier said than done. The Dell order confirmation email contained no info about how to cancel an order. I checked the Dell "help" link on its web site. It told me to phone the Home & Home Office number to cancel an order: 1-800-624-9897

OK. Sounded simple enough. Except I ended up on hold after navigating through several automated options.

After fifteen minutes of being told my call was important to Dell and someone would be with be shortly, I put my phone on speaker, remembering that an offer to chat online with a sales person had popped up when I was ordering the yellow cartridge.

I clicked on a "chat" link. And found that I was #7 in line. Didn't sound too bad, since my phone was still playing annoying recorded music and announcements from Dell, assuring me that my call was important, blah, blah, blah.

In five minutes or so I was chatting with a Dell guy. I typed in that I needed to cancel an order I'd made not long ago and gave him the purchase number. He wrote back: "You need to call 1-800-624-9897."

I got testy.

I responded that at this very moment I was on hold with that number, it looked like I'd be on hold for a lot longer, and I had better things to do with my day than spend an hour or more trying to cancel a simple order.

He typed back: "Call our Customer Adjustment Service, 1-800-247-2076." I thanked him, though I didn't feel very thankful.

Dialing that number, I reached another guy who had a distinct Indian accent. I told him I needed to cancel an order. "I can help you with that," he told me. Oh praise Krishna, I thought, finally!

He asked for my order number. I gave it to him. Then he said, "I'll transfer you to someone who will complete the order cancellation."

And I swear to God, holy crap!, I heard the exact same recorded messages I'd been listening to before. Except I figured I now was at the end of the on-hold waiting line that I'd just spent twenty plus minutes on.

I went upstairs to my MacBook, put the phone on speaker again, and tried to figure out another way to cancel my order before the irritating music and repeated "a representative will be with you shortly" messages drove me more insane than I already was.

I tried to reply to the Dell email message confirming the order. I said that I wanted to cancel and was going to refuse to pay a restocking fee if the order was shipped before I could cancel it and I had to return the cartridge.

As I expected, my reply bounced back, since the Dell email had come from an automated system.

Then I tried the "Email customer support" link on the Dell web site. At first the "order support email form" looked promising. I dutifully filled in all the information requested, including my Dell Purchase ID.

Except, that ID wasn't recognized as a valid order number. Also, several entries (zip code, phone) on the Dell email support form were garbled on my Safari browser, probably because Dell figures that it isn't important to make their web site fully usable by Macintosh users.

I recall clicking around and finding another web page that had a "cancel order" listed on a pull down menu. When I selected that, another Oh fuck me!!! passed through my ever-more-frustrated psyche, since I was told to phone the number I was still on hold for.

I fixed lunch. Passed the time by Googling Dell customer support horror stories. Found quite a few (here's an example).

Eventually, after being on hold for about an hour, a human being came on the line. By that time I just wanted to be done with Dell. Plus, I figured it wouldn't do any good to yell at a worker bee who wasn't responsible for the messed-up Dell management.

She quickly canceled my order. Asked if there was anything else she could do for me. I said "No."

Though I was thinking, If you could find the Dell CEO, tie him up, and make him listen to his company's recorded music/messages for a couple of hours, that'd make me feel better.

This being impossible, my next-best goal is to never buy anything from Dell again.

Comments

[JC]

Sooo... you called to cancel an order, and after a very long hold time (close to Christmas, btw) they promptly canceled your order.

Insanely difficult? Really?

[Blogger Brian]

JC, no, Dell was much more incompetent than that, even though it is unacceptable to have such long wait times on hold no matter what time of year.

Dell gave me a phone number to call that was supposed to expedite the order cancellation. I got a live person, likely in India. Then I was transferred back to the same phone number I'd been on hold with for a long time. That's ridiculous.

It's also ridiculous that a high-tech company doesn't have any other way of communicating with a customer about an order cancellation than by talking on the phone. No email. No online chatting. No online order access. Like I said, Amazon and other competent Internet retailers are light years ahead of Dell in this regard.

[Charlie Powell]

You couldn't be more right on your assessment of Dell Service. I have trying to return ink cartridges for two weeks now. I even offered the saleperson the item numbers, he declined, knew more than me, and managed to send the wrong ones. Out sourcing is criminal with those folks and will eventually shut them down. I did mange to get two live voices after waiting about 30 minutes each time, only to be told they would get me help when they found out I was not buying something which just put me back into the wait line. I am and like to be a loyal customer but this has sent me over the edge and will getting ink elsewhere.

[Jacob]

I am a Management university professor who have purchased a Dell Latitude E6500 from Dell-Ireland about 15 months ago and purchased an extended guarantee for four years.

I have attempted to use this guarantee in several occasions and found Dell's customer service extremely useless and frustrating. One of the issues had to do with two wireless peripherals that i purchased: Dell wireless keyboard and mouse. Both did not work well and caused frequent system freezing. To my detailed inquiry i received ridiculous advice and when followed it through and still the problem was not resolved Dell customer service just stopped reacting to my messages. They never resolved it and i ended up switching back to my older wired keyboard.

The second problem has to do with the Vista OS i purchased with my laptop. About a couple of months after purchasing it, it started having troubles, esp. failing to install updates. After a year of extensive work to resolve the issue, including several visits to our computing help service and trying to use all the recommended help suggestions posted on MS and Dell sights, as nothing helped and the system performance continued to deteriorate, i attempted Dell customer service.

At first, i tried to use the chat facility. I waited in queue for 1/2 hour just to see me being disconnected from chat. This repeated itself in my second attempt. I have then tried to use Dell's automatic system check and this failed to, forcing me to reinitiate the process and describe the problem all over again, this time through email. Over a week ago I received an automated response indicating that i will be contacted regarding the issue within a day. I am still waiting...

To sum, i would not be buying Dell equipment again and would not recommend it to anyone. My colleagues, who are like myself have been using computers for about 20 years now, have had similarly frustrating experiences with Dell.

This experience will surely provide me with an example of 'how to lose customers and generate frustration' when I teach my MBA students.

[Blogger Brian]

Jacob, thanks for sharing your experience. It sure fits with mine. Something is amiss in the world of Dell customer service. It baffles me how a company can be so uncaring about pleasing customers in this economic downturn. You'd think Dell would want to hold onto buyers, rather than pushing them away with crappy customer service.

Recently I had a choice between buying something via Amazon, or via the company that made the product. I chose Amazon, because from long experience I've found that Amazon treats its customer's orders competently, fairly, and expeditiously. That's the sort of behavior that earns repeat business, something Dell doesn't seem to have grasped.

[jeremy dav]

you got lucky because i couldnt cancel my order and now i got this package to send back and it is so difficult, im waiting for an email to print and put on the package for return and its been 3days and still waiting :(

[Patman]

I cancelled an order after a frustrating encounter with support. It was a 2K laptop. well imagine my suprise when I receive the wireless mouse I ordered a week later. This made me go online and check and found they had re entered my order the next day without my knowledge. well I freaked on them and they cancelled the order and asked me to ship back mouse. Because of the holidays and a scheduled vacation I was not able to even after they called asking for it on Christmas eve. These orders were on the 15 and 16th of Dec. and i checked online and they showed as cancelled.Well imagine my shock when I received a laptop today. I went online and it appears that they re entered the order on dec 22nd again without my knowledge. Is that not fraud?? I have not called them back yet because I am too mad at the moment to talk to a call center in India that is clueless. I figure I have a free laptop but of course judging by my experience I am afraid that they will screw up my bank information. Lets see what they say tomorrow. I am willing to close the bank account that I gave them for fear of fraud by forigners..Grrrrrrrrr

[Burning in DELL HELL]

If you buy from Dell make sure you are getting a significant discount as you will need to offset the terrible customer experience that comes with purchasing and dealing with any issues. Customer Support requires you to learn to understand individuals with a thick indian accent. Policies are inconsistent and absurd to the point that you could develop a good consulting practice teaching what not to do based on your dell experience. Hope the few dollars you saved was worth it.

[Emily]

Here's a real horror story for you. I've called Dell and their associates for three weeks straight trying to get a technican to come fix my computer. The computer is brand new and from what I can gather came to me defective. Every day some prick tells me they have no idea when they'll be able to come and repair it because of a lack of technicans. That may not be Dell's fault but three weeks after the fact, I'm going to want a new damn computer. The laughable customer service is no more than a bunch of outsorced employee's in India (because the american economy is doing so great we don't need the jobs) who do nothing but transfer you endlessly. I've wasted over 20 hours on the phone (literally i added it up) between Dell and the tech office they employ. My computer is still broken and I have to drive an hour just to do my college assignments. I have enough stress in my life as a college student so i'm breaking down & taking out a loan to buy a macbook.

[wes]

dell tech support which i paid a 199.00 dollars for screwed my computer up went to bed thinking they would fix it had the redriect virus woke up next morning could not connect abunch of dumb tails they are tied in with macafee cant under stand them the only thing they did was help with reinstall then told me if they helped me 3 more times they would have to charge me go figure what was the 199.00 for they are crooks dont get the tech support service you wil regret it get some one local they tried to tell me they got rid of the virus i told them that was a lie i did by doing factory restore macafee is a scam beware

[Denis]

1-800-624-9897 is not dell. You were talking to a scammer