We usually get premium support, so I deal with people who know what's going on.
A customer brought in a laptop with a bad hard drive, covered by Dell's warranty.
I'm not even going to complain about the long line of "say this," "press that" crap I had to go through, nor the long wait before a human picks up.
I talk to a guy explain the SMART error that says the drive is bad. After 15 minutes, while he's talking, I get transferred to their conference call line. It asks me to enter the code, and then hangs up on me when I fail to enter anything.
I call back, and eventually get a woman who is much easier to understand (only a mild Indian accent). After going through everything, she puts me on hold to get some advice from whoever....
After 10 minutes I notice there is no music. So I say "Hello? No music?" Immediatly the music starts playing. I say, "music!" and the music turns off. I say "music" again and it comes back on. Hey, I discovered a neat trick.
Then a guy answers the phone, "Dell Tech support how can I help you?" Aaaaaaaaaaargh!
So I give techie #3 all the info I had to give the previous two techs, the case #, name, phone, system number, problem, steps taken, blah blah blah. At the end of all that he says that he doesn't work with laptops and can't help me, but he'll transfer me to someone who can.
Techie #4 is a woman. I have to repeat everything. Eventually she authorizes the new hard drive. and promises that a replacement will arrive shortly.
Ok... now... as I type this, Techie #5 calls me and tells me that they can't ship out a hard drive. They'll send an empty box, and we have to give them the computer, then they'll ship it back.
...
I bet this is all a trick they do. They want me to smash the computer so they won't have to replace it.
Edited By Paul on 1143148288
Dell tech support
Gotta love Dell Premium Support. English speaking people answer the phone and you can pretty much have this conversation:
"Yeah, the hard drive on this machine (service tag #) is shot. I've run through all the tests and diagnostics and they all point to this drive. Can you send me out a new one?"
"It'll be there tomorrow."
I've had that conversation over dozens of times in my career now and only one guy ever tried to make me walk through the diagnostics with him on the phone. (I refused and he shipped it out anyway.)
Dell knows where their bread is buttered.
I'll bet if HP, Gateway, and/or anyone else start to really dig into Dell's market share, the great Indian tech support experiment will end rather quickly.
"Yeah, the hard drive on this machine (service tag #) is shot. I've run through all the tests and diagnostics and they all point to this drive. Can you send me out a new one?"
"It'll be there tomorrow."
I've had that conversation over dozens of times in my career now and only one guy ever tried to make me walk through the diagnostics with him on the phone. (I refused and he shipped it out anyway.)
Dell knows where their bread is buttered.
I'll bet if HP, Gateway, and/or anyone else start to really dig into Dell's market share, the great Indian tech support experiment will end rather quickly.
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
IBM has always given me good support, but I hate their process. You have to call a dispatcher who asks you the model, serial number, and problem. Then you get transfered to a level 1 person who asks the same questions. Finally, the tech who will work on it calls you and asks the questions a third time.
Problems always get fixed quickly, but the process could be streamlined.
Problems always get fixed quickly, but the process could be streamlined.
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
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Mommy Dearest
- Posts: 1393
- Joined: Tue May 25, 2004 12:59 pm
Had the same type thing trying to pay my Dell Bill by phone. Got transfered at least a dozen times to the same department when they insisted they were tranfering me to the business department. A company like Dell and you can not pay your bill online. Emailed them and complained about the process and got a canned answer. Emailed them back and told them they were stupid, I have purcased 7 Dells plus other peripherals from them in the last two years. I got a little better answer that time.
My PC didn't come with the reinstallation CD's. All the restore stuff is on a hidden partition.
To me, that seems like a way for companies to save a precious dollar on CD production, while boning the consumer out of hard drive space.
Dell included a "To learn about obtaining a copy of your operating system CD or drivers... visit <link>." So I went to that website The problem is, that website doesn't mention how to obtain a copy of those CD's. It says that certain models (not my model) purchased in a two month period in 2005 contain software that lets you burn copies of the operating system and drivers, and it tells me how to restore from the hard drive. It also lists ways to use Norton Ghost if it was included on the machine.
So I email tech support, giving all my data, and asking for information on how to obtain the software.
Today they wrote back. They said my computer was purchased through QVC so they can't handle it. I have to got through QVC.
I talked to my boss, who got something called a "TV special" from her Dell representative, not QVC.
What a pain.
The boss is going to try to get the software through the Dell representative who gave us the offer.
To me, that seems like a way for companies to save a precious dollar on CD production, while boning the consumer out of hard drive space.
Dell included a "To learn about obtaining a copy of your operating system CD or drivers... visit <link>." So I went to that website The problem is, that website doesn't mention how to obtain a copy of those CD's. It says that certain models (not my model) purchased in a two month period in 2005 contain software that lets you burn copies of the operating system and drivers, and it tells me how to restore from the hard drive. It also lists ways to use Norton Ghost if it was included on the machine.
So I email tech support, giving all my data, and asking for information on how to obtain the software.
Today they wrote back. They said my computer was purchased through QVC so they can't handle it. I have to got through QVC.
I talked to my boss, who got something called a "TV special" from her Dell representative, not QVC.
What a pain.
The boss is going to try to get the software through the Dell representative who gave us the offer.
A system we bought had a hard drive crash.
I called the Dell business support line, and got a friendly guy who spoke clearly.
I told the guy that the BIOS doesn't detect the hard drive and that CRTL+ALT+D (Dell's code for a hard rive test) said that Drive 0 was missing.
He asked if I replace the SATA cable, so I tried it. Nope.
Poof! Like magic I'm getting a replacement drive. He could have someone drive over and install it tomorrow for free, but I opted to just get the replacement drive and redo it myself.
That is how support calls should go.
He said I didn't need to replace the SATA cable, but I wanted to try it anyway.
I wonder how much time using competant IT staff saves them? Last time I called it took 4-5 times as long, and I talked to 4 people. Plus I left feeling pissed off at Dell when it was over.
I called the Dell business support line, and got a friendly guy who spoke clearly.
I told the guy that the BIOS doesn't detect the hard drive and that CRTL+ALT+D (Dell's code for a hard rive test) said that Drive 0 was missing.
He asked if I replace the SATA cable, so I tried it. Nope.
Poof! Like magic I'm getting a replacement drive. He could have someone drive over and install it tomorrow for free, but I opted to just get the replacement drive and redo it myself.
That is how support calls should go.
He said I didn't need to replace the SATA cable, but I wanted to try it anyway.
I wonder how much time using competant IT staff saves them? Last time I called it took 4-5 times as long, and I talked to 4 people. Plus I left feeling pissed off at Dell when it was over.
I called the medium business line. 877-671-3355
I'm not sure what it takes to call that line. I think Optiplex models are considered business, and Dimension models are home. But I'm not sure if you have to buy the special support when you get the computer or not.
I'm not sure if they'd bump you down to lower quality service if you called for a Dimension.
We used to have a preferred line, which was *extra* special. You dialed the number, then you put your code # in. When we had that service and I was away fixing one of our computers, sometimes I called our regular tech support and waited 15 minutes to talk to someone. They'd tell me they couldn't work on it because I had to talk to competant people (my words, not theirs), so they gave me the proper number to call. Which is better anyway, because there was no wait and I got to talk to someone who knew what they were doing.
When I had a Dell tech support guy come down to replace a power supply (because it was free) he had trouble and called a Dell service that I can only dream about. Whatever he asked for/wanted the bent over backwards to comply with. I'm pretty sure the technician support line is capable of giving you a handjob while you work. It's that good.
Edited By Paul on 1145306254
I'm not sure what it takes to call that line. I think Optiplex models are considered business, and Dimension models are home. But I'm not sure if you have to buy the special support when you get the computer or not.
I'm not sure if they'd bump you down to lower quality service if you called for a Dimension.
We used to have a preferred line, which was *extra* special. You dialed the number, then you put your code # in. When we had that service and I was away fixing one of our computers, sometimes I called our regular tech support and waited 15 minutes to talk to someone. They'd tell me they couldn't work on it because I had to talk to competant people (my words, not theirs), so they gave me the proper number to call. Which is better anyway, because there was no wait and I got to talk to someone who knew what they were doing.
When I had a Dell tech support guy come down to replace a power supply (because it was free) he had trouble and called a Dell service that I can only dream about. Whatever he asked for/wanted the bent over backwards to comply with. I'm pretty sure the technician support line is capable of giving you a handjob while you work. It's that good.
Edited By Paul on 1145306254