And this is why they call it Dell Hell

Timeline

April 7th - Top-of-the-line XPS Computer dies. Last words - "Hard drive failure." Fortunately for me, I have the Dell Super Duper You-Should-Never-Have-to-Worry-or-Suffer-Needlessly extended warranty plan. I feel confident in the personal guaranty I get from Dell.

April 8th - Called Dell support and say that the computer fails to boot. "I think it is hard drive failure, because the computer gasped with its dying breath, 'Hard drive failure.'"

Dell's response: "We think it is a Windows issue. Reinstall Windows and it will work fine."

It does not.

April 9th - Marathon SIX HOUR call with Dell support during which time we uninstall and reinstall Windows, erase and replace the BIOS, unpartition and repartition the hard drives (several times), and perform all manner of terrible remedies to the computer in hopes of reviving it.

None work.

Before we begin applying the electronic version of leeches to the XPS, the Dell support person asks, "We will have to erase the hard drive, is that ok?"

"No problem," say I. "I have all my information backed up on this external hard drive. As long as no one touches the external hard drive*, everything will be fine."

"I think it is the motherboard," says Dell support eventually. "We will send a technician out. You should receive a call from the technician within 48 hours."

The technician never calls.

*ominous foreshadowing

April 10th through April 17th - Wait for technician to call. Emailed Dell Support several times with issue number and nice little note asking about the technician call.

None of the emails responded to.

Used Dell Support Chat a couple of times from work and get runaround about how much they want to help, but unless I am sitting by the broken computer, pulling my hair our in frustration when they ask me to reinstall Windows one more time, there really isn't anything they can do.

April 18th - Talk to Dell support chat on my laptop while sitting in front of my broken computer. Dell says, "Oh, you are using the wrong Windows installation disc, the wrong Dell support disc, and the wrong Dell diagnostic disc. We will send you the right ones."

They send me the wrong ones.

Specifically, they send me the Dell diagnostic discs for their bottom-tier laptops instead of their top-tier XPS desktops so none of the drivers on the disc work. AND Dell sends a French-language Windows installer disc, apparently because they want to reward me by giving me the opportunity to learn a new language.

May 9th - Long, involved, multi-hour chat session with Dell support. Dell support person says that yes indeed , they sent the wrong discs and they can try to send the right discs again to me.

Logic dictates that if they just try enough times, eventually they might correctly address my problem once, right? Sadly, I am past the point of logic.

I express a level of frustration and contempt that gets me transferred to a supervisor. Dell supervisor tells me that I might have been right after all and that it probably isn't a software issue. They agree to send out a technician.

May 13th - Dell technician comes out to the house. Doesn't replace hard dives properly. Somehow, my 300GB hard drives gets magically replaced with a 150GB hard drive.

Also, the technician decides to plug in the external hard drive, the one I use as a backup into the computer and format it.

Apparently Dell technicians are NOT trained on the fact that FORMATTING A BACKUP DRIVE DESTROYS ALL OF THE BACKUP DATA ON IT.

May 16th - Dell support tells me that, yes, a Dell technician came into my house and effectively deleted about three years' worth of data. All the personal data. All the professional data. All of those iTunes files I paid for and backed up so that money wouldn't be wasted.

Everything. Now gone.

But somehow, thanks to the power of corporate magic Dell is not really responsible for this. They owe me nothing for my time and my grief and while they are very sorry for the fact I am effectively up the creek without a paddle, AND while they pretty much admit that they pointed me to this particular creek and then stole my paddle, I'm really on my own here.

So... um... that's my customer experience with Dell. I drop a large chunk of change and buy their top-tier computer and then pay extra for their top-tier customer and technical support and am rewarded by having my external back up hard drive erased.

Thank you Dell for taking all my money and then repeatedly kicking me in the virtual nutsack because it amuses you so. Thank you Dell for making me angry enough to blog about
what a craptacular waste of time and money your entire support network is.

But mostly Dell, thank you for giving me a story to share with each and every person I know who comes to me and asks what kind of computer they should buy. Because I plan on sharing this story with as many people as possible for years to come.

One of THOSE People

Cyber D's nice little rant inspired this post.

There are promises to yourself you keep. And then there are promises you make to yourself that you amend.

My first job out of college was as a video store manager. Anyone who works retail for three consecutive Christmases will say the same thing, "I have never served in the military, but I do know what it means to be surrounded by hostiles." When I left the retail industry, I made a promise to myself that I would not become one of THOSE people.

And by that I mean people who abuse people in the service industry. People who yell or demean or go out of their way to make servants know they are servants. There is this kind of cruelty and arrogance from people with power and money towards the helpless that I have a hard time accepting. I know you are busy, and I know you didn't get a chance to go shopping for your kid until one day before Christmas, but we are out of "The Princess Bride" and calling a sixteen-year-old sales associate a "stupid bitch" and making her cry doesn't magically make one appear.

That was before I became a business traveler.

Timing is very important to a business traveler. In the world of connecting flights and lost luggage, you need to make sure everything not only works, but that it works in the right order at the right time. If you have been on the road for any period of time, you have learned the hard way that a missed flight means sleeping in the airport, and those seats are not comfortable.

For the better part of last year, my week was like this:

Sunday - traveling. It is amazing how a single three-hour flight takes six-to-eight-hours when you include packing, hotel check-in, car rental, security, and flight delays.

Monday through Thursday - Ten-to-twelve hour workdays. Thursday night is a three-hour flight home.

Friday - Sleep in. Paperwork and assorted catch-up work at home.

Saturday - Day of Rest. Somewhere in there a dry cleaners run.

Then it starts all over again.

The mere act of traveling from one place to another is stressful enough, but if this level of stress is part of your routine, you get cranky. You learn to cherish your system and schedule. And you get angry when your schedule is disrupted. If you miss the Thursday night flight and instead fly out on Friday, you have effectively lost your weekend. And if you leave the office at 4pm to catch a 7pm flight and there are two wrecks and you get to the rental car place late, the last thing you want to do is bicker with the dude checking your car in.

For the longest time, I used this car rental company that rhymes with "shifty". I wasn't super-duper happy with their service, but they didn't make a name for their award winning service; they made a name for their low low prices. I was a member of their super-elite frequent rentaholics club and this one associate, Michelle, would upgrade me to Ford Mustangs because she thought my old driver's license picture was funny.

The downside is that Michelle was the only person in that whole office who knew how to work the computer system. If she wasn't the employee that checked me out, inevitably there would be problems when the other attendant checked me in.

So there I was, running late and coasting on fumes when my non-Mustang rolled into the rental car parking lot. The guy checked my car and looked at the gas gauge.

"You're going to have to go fill up this car with gas before you turn it in."

"No way. I prepaid for a tank."

"Not according to this," he said, tapping on his little hand held receipt-spitting device.

"No no no. I'm Platinum-Frequent-WhooSeeWhatsit!" I produce - nay, I whip out - my Platinum-Frequent-WhooSeeWhatsit card and show him my number. I even point out that three of the sixteen-digit account numbers are '007' which I think it kind of cool. "It says on my Platinum-Frequent-Whooseewhatsit profile that I always prepay for a tank of gas. Its on my profile."

"Well, it isn't coming up here." He points to the device again. "At $11.50 a gallon, that will be an extra $172.50. There's a gas station down the road." And he waved in the general direction of South, which did not reassure me or calm me down at all.

"Charge it. I need to catch a plane and I can afford it."

"That's a lot of money."

"AND I MAKE A LOT OF MONEY!"

The look on his face told me right then and there that I had become one of THOSE people. I knew the look of resentment and bitterness because, back in the day, I gave that look all the time.

"Here's your receipt."

"Look, I didn't mean to yell. If I miss this plane, I spend the night in the airport."

"Whatever."

I don't like yelling at people, and I totally understand that, from this guy's perspective, he was trying to be helpful and trying to do the right thing by saving his customer almost $200. I also realize that the situation wasn't his fault. The company has a really crappy computer system, the employees aren't properly trained on it, and the customer web service isn't properly connected to the check-in computers which in turn aren't properly connected to the little hand-held receipt thingie.

But I also understand that this guy was standing between me, my weekend with my wife, and quite possibly an alcoholic beverage or two. And that is a bad place to be.

So here is my amendment - be nice whenever possible to people in the service industry, but recognize that "nice" is a nice to have. It is not necessary to get the job done.

And remember to be extra special nice to hair stylists because they put sharp cutting-type objects right up against your head.

Another Story from the Video Store

One of the interesting things about video stores is how people assume the people who work in the store have real connections to the entertainment industry.

And by real connections, I mean people think they can come and complain about contemporary films and somehow, the video store people will fix it.

Back when The Hunchback of Notre Dame was in theaters, one guy decided to come into the store to let us know exactly what was wrong with this film so we could magically command Disney to take it back and pretend it never happened.

"You don't understand!" he told me after 30 minutes of harassing my employees. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame is NOT a kid's story. It is a serious examination of French society and religious hypocrisy! It is SERIOUS LITERATURE! It does does not need talking gargoyles or musical numbers! It's disgusting what Disney is doing! Absolutely DISGUSTING!"

And to prove his point, he waved one of our Hunchback dolls for emphasis.

"You heard about Disney's next cartoon, haven't you?" I asked.

"What?"

"Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov is this guy who can talk to the street rats. One rat gets on each shoulder and they sing a song about the nature of good and evil with one 'evil' rat whispering in one ear and a 'good' rat whispering in another. We're selling the T-shirts in about a month. It should be really exciting to see how they pull it off."

I am sad to report that we permanently lost a customer that day.

Wherein I Use the Blog to Warn Everyone about the Clarion Suites in Augusta, Georgia

Hi. I am writing this from the Clarion Suites in Augusta, Georgia.

Let me describe our stay here.

Our check-in was wonderful - wow, what great customer service. It really made us feel like we were in for something enjoyable. We were all excited and happy about our stay.

But when we got to our room... eh, not so much.

I understand that all hotels aren't created equal, and rooms like these might not be up to snuff. So when my wife complains that the closet door closes only with the aid of a swift kick, I can say, "You know, we don't live here."

I am not even bothered when she points out dirty footprints on the bathmat, dirty bed linens, a little rust, a paint job left over from the 1980s, toilets that tease you if they are actually going to flush or not when you press the handle, and even a few electrical outlets without covers on them. This I can deal with. It is not like we went out of our way to look for a $400 a night establishment.

But what I can't deal with is a housekeeping service that comes into the room, takes all the pillow cases off the pillows, and sort of starts cleaning the room, but then leaves everything unfinished. Because that is exactly what happened. I feel like they thought we were spies and just went through our stuff, looking for the secret microfiche, leaving us to deal with the mess afterwards.

There is a nice little sign in the room. "If you aren't 100% satisfied, the room is free." Next to it is a survey we have to fill out and mail to Clarion. A survey that does not have an address on it, so we can't actually mail it, though.

But that is not the big deal. The end all, be all happened tonight when this little guy came in our room to say, "Hey there! What's happening? Welcome to the Clarion Suites!!!"



Here's a close up, in case you don't realize what is exactly happening here.



Unfortunately, our little friend had an accident involving me trying out some patented ninja moves involving spinning high kicks and steel-toed sneakers.

Hey, don't look at me. I asked him if he wouldn't mind being my sparring partner, and he seemed perfectly ok with it, and that is what I will continue to say to the jury if this ever comes to trial.

Anyway, after much debate that involved the word "Ew," we decided to leave him for the housekeeping service that may or may not ever come.

Here is a photo of the thank you note we left.


Thus ends our stay in the Clarion Suites in Augusta, Georgia.

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.