Shows how often I read my comments...

Hey!

I just read this in my comments area:

Dear Mr. Turnage,
I just read your blog post dated 11/15/06 and I am sorry for any confusion you may have experienced regarding the strange email. So that I may investigate the matter further, please send the email in question to me at the address below. I look forward to your email. Thank you and have a great day!

Best Regards,
Marie
Dell Customer Advocate
Email: Customer_Advocate@dell.com

That is totally awesome! Too bad I deleted that email weeks ago because, frankly, it is better to be safe than sorry, and anything that promises to give me a new Dell laptop is too good to be true.

But I'm happy to know where to go when I have a problem. I like the whole idea the Dell trolls the blogs, looking for complaints. That is a great business practice and Marie deserves a raise.

Believe me, if I ever run into a problem again, I will be emailing Marie. (If her text is any indication, she probably is the spitting image of Olivia Newton-John.) Marie, you are truly a wonder.

This made my day.

Another Customer Complaint

I recently bought a Dell laptop.

I recently got an email, apparently from Dell, saying that if I take this survey about my laptop, I might win another laptop.

This sounded fishy to me, or, more specifically, phishy.

So I filled out a customer form to Dell, copying and pasting the email into their form with a quick note, "Is this spam? Is this a phishing scam?"

And this was the response:

I would have been glad to assist you in this query, however, let me please inform you that we , at Customer Care only deals with post-sales and logistics issues.

Therefore, I would request you to please contact our Customer care department at
the toll free number 1-800-624-9897 between 7AM to 11 PM CST Monday through
Saturday for this particular issue as they would only be able to verify the
requested information.

***

I would think that, on a corporate level, that any company would love to have internet con artists not sullying their good corporate names and logos. Paypal, eBay, and Cingular all have email addresses for you to FWD emails to if you think they're suspect. Why isn't this an industry standard? And why can't the Dell support guy simply click the hyperlink in the email to see what happens? I'm totally afraid to, but why can't someone behind a Dell corporate firewall do so? And why can't someone in customer support just look at current marketing promotions and see if this is a legitimate one or not?

These are some of the problems with being a large corporation with a strong brand presence. I just don't understand why Dell isn't prepared for this.