OT: Somewhat odd encounter with Dell Parts

[Daddy Dee]

This might sound like the familiar customer service rant, though this experience certainly has elements that are business as usual for sorry customer service. It's not intended to be a rant.

My experience began with my attempts to reach Dell Parts to order a replacement system install disk for XP Professional which had been lost in a move. I just need to reformat and reinstall as is the Microsoft equivalent of required occasional septic tank pumping. People sell these on Ebay for about twenty five bucks and there is no license issue involved since Dell kindly places a sticker with one's own license product key on each laptop.

First, Dell makes it hard to contact Parts requiring every caller to go through Customer Care in India. It took 50 minutes and two calls to India to finally get transferred to Parts. Another ten minutes into the call the guy has gotten my system up on his screen and satisfied that my request is legitimate. Lost in a move is a satisfactory reason to request the replacement CD. Finally he tells me since my computer is out of warranty the replacement will be two hundred dollars. I explain that I don't want to repurchase the license, only the media. He puts me on hold and comes back to say he can offer me a deal... one hundred bucks AND free shipping. I explained further that it would be reasonable and customary to pay something for the media, but that would not be appropriate to charge more than twenty or so bucks, and that is generous. Being at an impasse, I thanked him for his time but I would not be ordering the CD.

There is something odd about that. Dell would offer the replacement as a cost free courtesy if the computer is in warranty, that's cool. I can certainly understand paying for parts for an out of warranty replacement. The pricing of the CD at two hundred bucks is not reasonable. (I think I could buy the same laptop with software on Ebay for $200) It was curious that when I balked at that price the parts guy was quick to offer an alternate price half of the original asking price. I'm not quite sure how to articulate what seemed strange about this, perhaps I'm not expecting Dell to be a quirky outfit.

This might make perfect sense to others. Any enlightenment is appreciated.

[Frzninvt]

I think I have one that I can send you for free! I went to my IT folks and they had drawers full of the things as they come with every PC that they buy. I run XP Media and Home editions anyway.

[Tarheel]

Just had a 6 month old Dell laptop and printer serviced yesterday.....the tech got the number off the printer driver and said the driver was 6 years old according to Dells web site! Had to uninstall the complimentary McAfee security that was set so high email would not come through. Have spent $180 on three tech visits so far.

No wonder Dells share price is where it is.

[BEC]

Dee,

May not apply to your case, but Michael tells me our "couple of year" old Dell Laptop did not come with a restore disk.  It came with a "restore partition" on the hard drive.  

Bob

[mark1101]

I had the same thing happen with Dell. My laptop had JUST gone out of warranty about 2 months before the screen cracked. I spent what seemed like forever getting to the proper person and was forced to surf through the whole telephony system rediculously. The repair was quoted at a little over $300....which I had no intention of paying since it was a minor crack and the laptop cost about $750.00 brand new. When I told them this they immediately offered me "a discount"....but not until I absolutely refused to pay the initial price. The discounted price was $198.00 with free shipping. I still declined and never fixed it.

My wife just bought a new laptop from Best Buy and got a warranty with 2 free screen crack replacements. Of course we have not tried to use that warranty yet.

[LarryC]

I discovered that I didn't get the backup discs with a new Dell desktop I bought early last year, when my hard drive failed in January (a lesser brand of hard drive with a somewhat higher failure rate) . It used to be I would get a complete set of discs with a new Dell computer. This time, I was able to obtain a set from Dell for free.

[DoubleJ]

I've been dealing with Dell for the past 10 years but always dealt with the Small Business Division and they have been excellent. You have your own dedicated account team that hails from the US. Their Home division is a different story, which is too bad.

LarryC: about a year or two ago, Dell has been very misleading when it came to the Recovery and Driver CD's. When configuring a system, you have to add the Recovery CD's just like any other component. The kicker is that there is no extra charge for them. Just for the record, I know that this is the case when ordering from the Small Business division. Not too sure if this is true for the other division.

Daddy Dee: I have hundreds of Dell recovery CD's, so let me know the Model of your computer and what the original OS was.

JJ

[Daddy Dee]

Gentlemen,

Thanks for your thoughts here and the kind offers for the CD's.

[NastyHabits]

I've been in the PC field since the orginal PC. what you describe is not so odd. I used to recommend Dell to everyone because of their great technical support. Not anymore. The cause? Us. We all want cheap stuff and in order to compete on price, customer service had to go. Now I tell people to buy the cheapest PC that will work for them. That way they can afford to simply toss it when it breaks. At the dizzying speed of hardware changes, there's very little point to "upgrade" or even fix a broken PC.

Dell is not what it once was. Their computers are crap. Their parts are cheap and proprietary. Buy a cheap HP from whoever, or roll your own.

PS: I work in technology in a large investment bank. It's a Dell shop and have to deal with blown motherboard caps, dead power supplies, dead hard drives, faulty memory everyday.

[DrWho]

I discovered that I didn't get the backup discs with a new Dell desktop I bought early last year, when my hard drive failed in January (a lesser brand of hard drive with a somewhat higher failure rate) . It used to be I would get a complete set of discs with a new Dell computer. This time, I was able to obtain a set from Dell for free.

If you purchased the computer from the Dell website, then you need to make sure you check the box under customization that says "send me all the discs" or something to that effect.

Then once you get the computer, the first thing you should do is wipe the harddrive and install everything from scratch. I can't believe the amount of crap they put on the computers. I only want what I payed for - not all this advertising temporary versions of software I'll never use. I think you can order them blank, or installed with only the software you want, but they charge extra for that (at least the last time I checked).

Anyways, I've had to purchase installation CDs for my grandpa recently and the total charge was like $20 + shipping for 5 discs or so....and we were well outta the warranty range. Dell Customer Service has like 8 different phone numbers you can call so I can only imagine that you were dialing the wrong one - they don't communicate very well inbetween each other which is extremely annoying.

For what it's worth, Dell customer service really isn't that bad....it just takes freaken forever to get issues resolved. But I can't say I blaim them for their method - just imagine the number of people that call everyday thinking their computer is broken when it's not even plugged into the wall. What they really need to do is localize their support so that troubleshooting doesn't have to happen over the phone...and so that people that know what they're doing can establish personal relationship which will vastly speed up the process.

I've dealt with Dell customer service enough times that I've got a hotline to some woman in California that knows I'm not an idiot and we get things resolved much quicker.

[colterphoto1]

Kinda makes you glad that Klipsch Customer Service and Technical Support is still staffed by good 'ol boys right here in the U S of A, eh?[]

[Marvel]

That's a good one. "In the U.S.A." Actually, the last time I called Dell, the tech was in Edmonton, in Canada. Sounded like he was form Brooklyn, though. They are still pretty good for business, although the newer small units do have more proprietary parts in them, like CD drives that are made for laptops, etc. For the large number of Dell PCs that we have purchased, we really have a pretty low failure rate. Had good luck with IBMs, even thought they are now totally Chinese, since they sold everything to Lenovo. Their service is still great though.

[NastyHabits]

Had good luck with IBMs, even thought they are now totally Chinese, since they sold everything to Lenovo. Their service is still great though.

Funny thing, the ThinkPad laptops were made by Lenovo for IBM. Then IBM sold the business to Lenovo, In and odd twist on outsourcing/globalization, outsourced the executive functions back to IBM!

They're still good laptops.

[Marvel]

I have one of the IBM laptops, purchased while the change was taking place. I love it.

Bruce