Dealing w Customer Support

Just the Facts:

Note: I will have a different take than complaining about Dell service in a followup post. Mainly I list a few things that are helpful in a situation like this.

I placed an order online. That order did not ship until last night.

I needed a modification to my web order, so someone in sales (Mathew Stewart) did that for me last week (and charged me $24 for it) and it was buttigned a different order number.

All was fine in computer land.

Then, on Thursday I decided to change my order to have 3 years of warranty service instead of 1 because I plan on keeping it fo 3 years.

On Thursday they said the original sales person is only one who could change my warranty so I would have to go through him.

Every day since then I have sent an e-mail and have left a voice mail. His voice mail says to leave a message and he will get back to me.

I called and e-mailed him over 5 tims on Thurs. and Fri. His voice mail said that he is in the office and will handle any calls promptly.

So, today I sent one more email and left one more voice message, after not being contacted all day, I decided to put on my disgruntled customer hat to try to get someone to take ownership of the problem.

I was bounced around about 5 times. On a few occasions they wanted to send me back to sales, but I said I didn't want that because sales bounce me to some other department previously.

Then I ended up in extended warranty service.. After talking to them for a significant time they could not handle it because it was for small business. so, I got bounced over to some area in Small Business.

When I talked to the person in Small Business, it was the wrong area. She gave me the number for another area.

At this time I told her how many times I have been bounced around, and I want to speak to a manager or supervisor who could take ownership of this problem. I was very persistent with this. She said she will take ownership.

She was the best person I talked to, and her taking ownership was to stay on the line to transfer me to yet another area. She stayed on the line until I was connected to another area.

I knew the area at the time but I forgot it. The main thing is that the person who was supposed to be able to help said Hi my name is Ron and I will help you. Sounded like a real dufus. Then the line went dead. I buttume he didn't know how to hande a transferred call and pushed the wrong button.

I got transferred to another area. My head was spinning. He sais that I need to talk to customer care and that he would transfer me there. He transferred me to the first phone area of Dell support, just as if I had dialed 1 800 WWW DELL,

By this time I think I had talked to all the relevant areas.

I did try to get someone to take full ownership of the problem this whole time and to tal to a supervisor but they never did that.

I navigated to through the phone system to customer care because it would be most likely to enable me to escalte. The person said that he was going to transfer me to sales. Instead the line back again. Back to sales, the beinning. He couldn't help me and he said it's the wrong area to escalate in so he transferred me to to the warranty department. She said that I was in the wrong area so got transferred to customer care.

At this point I wa ready to give up almost.

I talked to Customer Care. She says that they don't handle it so she needed to transfer me to the warranty department. She will talk to Warranty Department.

I had already talked to the warranty department.

The person in the warranty department is taking ownership of the problem. She is very competant and helpful, so I asked for her direct extension. Right now she is transferring me back to customer care.

She is talking to Customer Care now explaining the situation. I think she is going to take more ownership of the problem.

I'm on hold now but this is enough to understand what happens to some Dell calls.

I will have a different take than complaining about Dell service rather than complaining in a followup post.

Journey