“This mistake may in fact cost you millions”

I was surprised by some of the comments about Dell after one reader’s complaint that the company forced her to pay extra to talk with an American call center. Maybe I shouldn’t have been.

Now along comes the story of one customer who spent so much time on “hold” with said call center that he’s ready to give up on Dell once and for all. And this time, it could cost the PC manufacturer more than the loss of a single customer. This one claims to command a budget of millions of dollars in IT spending.

It all started when he ordered a Dell Latitude E6410, paying $1,200 for the refurbished machine.

Just one problem: It didn’t work. Repeated attempts get get Dell to fix it were unsuccessful.

I’ll get right to the relevant part. He writes,

Dell, you really screwed up on this one. Not only is my company a decent spender, I make recommendations to Fortune 500 companies on a regular basis on the best way to allocate their I.T. expenditures. You cannot possibly expect me to recommend you to anyone in the future -this mistake may in fact cost you millions.

It’s a shameful story, and has already been picked up by my friends over at Consumerist and WebProNews.

Could any of this have been avoided? Probably.

Call centers can be helpful, but sometimes, an email sent to an executive works better.

There’s talk on his blog of sending “executive carpet bombs,” which are complaints mass-mailed to executives and consumer reporters. While they can be effective, my experience is that they’re not as useful as targeted messages sent to one person. They also sometimes undermine the complaint-resolution process, which should always start at the front door (the website form) and not with an email to the CEO and several VPs.

But the story appears to have a happy ending. A Dell representative has already contacted the disgruntled customer and offered to fix his non-working computer. So Dell may save itself a few million dollars.

If only it showed the same level of concern for those of us buying one computer.

(Photo: cande scent/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Frank-Clarke/100000180732678 Frank Clarke

    I already own the last DELL I will ever have.

  • Anonymous

    I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve always purchased Dells…new and refurbished and never once had any problems with them. And just so you don’t think I only have one or two Dell computers, I am currently running 10+ dell computers in my home including:
    two Dell laptops
    two Dell rack servers
    two Dell Mini-9 netbooks
    and various other older Dells including an ancient Dell running a PIII-800 dual CPUs and a SCSI buss!
    Sure, I’ve had problems with some of these Dells, but nothing that Dell couldn’t fix by me either sending the machine to them, or them sending a tech to my house!
    The fact that my last two machines aren’t Dell has nothing to do with  Dell, more on the fact that I wanted to try my hand at building machines like I used to in the olden days!
    In fact, my experience with Dell has been so smooth, I’ve referred Dell to my family and between them they own another 6 Dell computers including laptops, netbooks and towers!

  • beverly

    i have bought Dell’s for the last two times and i Have found this last time, the customer service was TOTALLY outstanding.. i thought i bought a fax/printer.. got it installed and when i called Tech to figure out why i couldn’t fax..  i found out i hadn’t bought the right one. the TECH guy sold me the correct one, made it so i’d get a return invoice so i’d get credit for the mistaken one and sent me the new one. THEN he called 3 x in the next couple of weeks to make sure all was okay and all worked. Dell Rocks in My book

  • Richard Hirchert

    I also had a big problem with dell tech suport. My computer was running very slow so I called Dell support for help formatting my hard drive. They insisted the problem was not enough ram, even though they had sold me the computer with the ram that was in it. purchasing more ram was the only solution. I bought more ram from them. Calling back for help with installation, I was told that was the wrong ram for my computer, I needed to purchase different ram, so I did. Upon calling for help with installation, I was told that once again I had the wrong ram and needed to purchase different ram. I did. Upon calling for help with installation I was told that I had the wrong ram and the original ram I purchased was indeed the ram I needed which they helped me install. Upon trying to boot the computer they discovered that my hard drive was bad. So in the end if they had done what I requested, format  the hard drive we would have discovered that the hard drive was bad and the whole solution was a new 50 dollar hard drive not more ram. My computer was down for 2 months because of their attitude of selling rather than fixing.
    I then purchased a different computer from them. I called to ask about faxing and was told I needed to buy a fax machine from them and there was no way to use my current computer to send or receive faxes. After hanging up I used windows fax to send and receive a fax to my oldest son. So it appears that Dell technical support has become a new arm of Dell sales divisiion rather than any sor of problem resolution center. Will never buy another Dell product as long as I live. Would rather deal with company that honestly says we only have pay tech support than a company that pretends to have tech support but only triesto sell you stuff you don’t need or want! I have had nothing but Dell for 10 years but am unwilling to deal with this kind of nonsense! 

  • Anonymous

    Ditto.