Be wise to avoid buying from Dell Direct

Galaxy66

Galaxy66

Jeremy Beadle
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My name is Mal not Jeremy :)
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For anyone thinking of buying from Dell Direct you would be wise to think again, I wont go through the whole saga as it would take too long.

We bought two identical laptops on the 17th November , both of them were faulty Then followed the most frustrating experience ever trying to get replacements out of them dealing with staff in the Phillipines, emails were ignored or took days to answer, emails would make no sense, emails would contradict previous emails, confusion would arise with dealing with different people, promises to call me were not met.

Finally two replacements arrived and on trying those out they also were faulty, and I had the suspicions that were were refurbished as they had finger prints and a slight mark on one.

After demanding refunds we then went through the same saga as before and finally yesterday we had our card refunded.

Their customer services are the worst I have ever experienced, their incompetence was beyond belief, they could not even arrange a simple collection without messing that up and having us wait in all day when it was never arranged, they even sent a flat pack box for packing that was too small !!

After that experience the replacements are being bought from a bricks and mortar premises of good repute.............. John Lewis.
 
I find John Lewis and Debenhams to be as competitive as many online services and other large suppliers for a lot of electronics.

I havent had to deal with Dell service dept but have had enough of their products to stay away from them. I think it was about 2001 the last time I used a Dell product. Dont think I will be returning either! Thanks for sharing your experience.
 
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We have two Dell PCs, two Dell Monitors and a Dell Chromebook. Touch wood, no problems so far. Having said that any company is only as good as its customer service and back up, which we haven't had to test.

AL
 
I used to use Dell and never had any major issues, and as such didn't need to deal with their customer services. Products were always ok though.
 
Have bought 3 XPS8700 desktops from Dell over the last year. There was delivery problems with all 3. I will be avoiding buying direct from Dell themselves where possible going forward, will probably continue to buy there gear elsewhere though. To be fair to them they did give us a hefty discount for the hassle but who wants the hassle.
 
Galaxy66 said:
For anyone thinking of buying from Dell Direct you would be wise to think again, I wont go through the whole saga as it would take too long....
Their customer services are the worst I have ever experienced, their incompetence was beyond belief.....
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Hear, hear!
I bought an XPS 15 laptop from Dell UK last Spring. My saga, involving attempts to get it running properly, and finally having them take it back for refund, is too long and convoluted to detail now, but, shortly put, my experience of dealing with Dell's so-called Customer Support, who in my experience were based in India, has been the most infuriating, frustrating, unprofessional, & profoundly unsatisfactory process that I have ever been involved in.
I do not wish to expand on the detail meantime, as the matter appears, regrettably, to be destined for the Courts, but I do feel driven to repeat and reinforce the OP's warning.
Presumably many, indeed probably most, of Dell's products function properly on receipt, but mine did not, and I have been shocked by the incompetence, or worse, that I have been met with from them. Therefore I too feel obliged to support the warning that if you find yourself having to deal with their "Customer Support", you may be in for a very nasty shock.
How this part of the Dell corporation has been allowed to become so incompetent, or worse, astonishes me- it must be slowly and steadily ruining the brand image, formerly so strong .
 
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Interesting to hear these horror stories, mine is perhaps the opposite.

I also bought an XPS 15 laptop from them (Dell Outlet) and it arrived with some awful coil whine, every time you plugged in the charger it would emit a high pitched noise that drove me mad. All I had to do was phone up, describe the problem and the next day an engineer was booked to come out and he replaced the motherboard for me, the problem was fixed. Simples.

Judging form the posts above I may have been one of the lucky ones who has a positive experience of dealing with their customer support!
 
JYC said:
All I had to do was phone up, describe the problem and the next day an engineer was booked to come out and he replaced the motherboard for me, the problem was fixed. Simples.
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Were you cleverer than me and found a way of contacting someone from Dell U.K.? I had to go via India throughout, and I'd like to make clear that my complaint is not with any local (U.K.) technical staff.

I purchased the laptop from Dell's web-site and when the faults very soon became apparent, I could find no option of seeking support from U.K. based staff. The only way I could find to contact Dell was by email or telephone, and that always connected me with “Dell Customer Support” in India.

At no stage was there an offer of a visit by a technician, so I have had no dealings with any Dell staff in the U.K. and can not comment on their helpfulness or otherwise.

What happened was that Dell Support made some efforts to rectify my laptop from India by taking remote control of it on some occasions, and on other occasions they talked me through various procedures such as reinstalling the operating system and so on, without success.

The matter remains unresolved, months later, with the undesirable last resort of litigation regrettably imminent..
 
I use JL for most stuff like PC and Electronics, great customer service wins for me every time.
 
doggel said:
Were you cleverer than me and found a way of contacting someone from Dell U.K.? I had to go via India throughout, and I'd like to make clear that my complaint is not with any local (U.K.) technical staff.

I purchased the laptop from Dell's web-site and when the faults very soon became apparent, I could find no option of seeking support from U.K. based staff. The only way I could find to contact Dell was by email or telephone, and that always connected me with “Dell Customer Support” in India.

At no stage was there an offer of a visit by a technician, so I have had no dealings with any Dell staff in the U.K. and can not comment on their helpfulness or otherwise.

What happened was that Dell Support made some efforts to rectify my laptop from India by taking remote control of it on some occasions, and on other occasions they talked me through various procedures such as reinstalling the operating system and so on, without success.

The matter remains unresolved, months later, with the undesirable last resort of litigation regrettably imminent..
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That doesn't sound very helpful Duncan!

Think the phone support was also overseas when it happened to me (about a year ago) but I made it very clear that it was a hardware issue not a software fault so they had no option really but to send an engineer after trying a few things on the phone (like turning the keyboard backlighting up and down) had no impact on the whining noises.
 
I had a very bad experience with a faulty laptop a few years ago from Dell... Vowed never to buy anything again from them for me personally or my business.

Customer services was pathetic and it resulted in me issuing a county court action against them, they settled immediately and refunded before it went to court.

But what a hassle....
 
Strange how experiences can be so diverse ... I have two Dell desktops and a Dell XPS laptop and apart from them all being excellent I have only had to contact Dell support on two occasions:-
  1. A problem with one of the desktops caused my to contact Dell Support, who talked me through the problem and eventually controlled my machine to completely and successfully resolve the problem.
  2. Bough a grandson a small cheap Dell Netbook, which he dropped and damaged, (screen hinge broke and keys lost), so I contacted Dell to find out what it would cost to repair ... they asked me to send it back and within a week I had it returned, fully repaired and without charge.
 
I only phoned them the once and that was a complete waste of time and after discovering that I had been taken for nearly £10 on my phone bill for the privilege kept it to emailing them..............a total of 64 sent and received !

After reading of Duncan's and Mark's experience I should count myself lucky that the £1300 it cost me for the two laptops landed back in my card account without having to resort to court proceedings !.
 
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I bought a Dell laptop for my daughter several years back. I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole again. Problems started with some of the keyboard tiles falling off, then the power supply packed up after 13 months. Dell wouldn't replace it as the warranty was only for a year. Fair enough I thought and bought a replacement, but again it only lasted just over a year. There was a known problem with them, judging by the large number of complaints on the web, but Dell consistently refused to acknowledge any problem. Incidentally Dell wanted over £30 for the power supply, even though they looked identical to generic ones going for a tenner and Dell's are also Chinese made.
 
Ha ha may think twice about buying Dell in future after all these stories!!
 
I used to manage a school network with 500+ laptops & 200+ desktops & a small server farm so I have plenty of experience of vendor support from Toshiba, DELL, Lenovo & others. We always avoided DELL consumer oriented products such as XPS & Inspiron, their 'business' products like Latitude & OptiPlex are much better & the business support in my experience was good. Their business support used to be based in the Republic of Ireland too, or at least it was the last time I needed to contact them. The OptiPlex & Latitude generally ship with 3 year NBD onsite warranties too.
 
I use Dell at work and have generally been quite happy with the service and the product. That said we buy Latitude and Optiplex. When I looked at their consumer stuff a few years ago I wasn't that impressed.

My experience with my latest problem, this January, wasn't quite up to the usual standard. The fault that kept reoccurring 24hrs after engineer visits didn't help but the phone waiting time and response to e-mails was abnormally sluggish this time. Started to loose my rag a bit when I was asked if could reinstall the OS after telling them the notebook wasn't even getting as far as the power on self test. To be fair the problem was resolved pretty quickly once I escalated to someone else, the responses got quicker and a seemingly new custom built replacement was supplied quite quickly.

I do notice when I call the business support line that I'm always asked by the automated system to confirm I'm a business user. Judging by the consistently wide range of accents they either have a reasonably diverse local work force or use a world wide call center network that is presented as local. Either way as a business user I always end up with someone who is fluent in English,very easy to understand and usually competent which is what counts. I have often wondered what the experience would be like if I indicated I wasn't a business user on the automated system, not as good then maybe.
 
If you buy from Dell, always use the business site. Even for personal purchases. You generally get better support, and a years free onsite support is a regular offer if you wait for it.
 
I've bought my Dell machines from mcs technology, got some really good prices and so far every machines been faultless. Not had to test them with warranties so far but their communication has always been spot on so don't have no worries.
 
broc said:
I used to manage a school network with 500+ laptops & 200+ desktops & a small server farm so I have plenty of experience of vendor support from Toshiba, DELL, Lenovo & others. We always avoided DELL consumer oriented products such as XPS & Inspiron, their 'business' products like Latitude & OptiPlex are much better & the business support in my experience was good. Their business support used to be based in the Republic of Ireland too, or at least it was the last time I needed to contact them. The OptiPlex & Latitude generally ship with 3 year NBD onsite warranties too.
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Spot on. I've bought (not from Dell) refurbished business class Dell laptops which have been excellent - great specs, well made and easy to maintain. I made the mistake of buying a consumer level 17r laptop and it was horrendous to maintain. Had to remove the keyboard and goodness knows what else just to swap the hard disk out!
 
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