Funny Dell story today

[ToddW]

So today I have a pretty good experience about Dell. I currently work on a project that analyzes and processes a bunch of data. It currenlty has several servers and roughly thirty Dell workstations. These are supped up dual xeons, with the works, pretty pricey. Well about a month ago, we started have some motherboard failures occur, which involved a motherboard replacement. It turns out that this was due to bad capacitors on the motherboars, well after a bit of research and four failures later, I told Dell to come replace all of the motherboards for the remaining workstations. I gave Dell a list of all the workstations that we had, and told them a few of them had already been repaired to double check the records. Dell of course agreed to replace the motherboards. After setting a time, which was suppose to be this morning, two technicians were to arrive with the parts and start repairing the workstations. Well, it turns out that they shipped the parts and failed to inform me so that I may make special arrangements. After learning about this, I told the technicians that they really didn't need to be here, since in this huge place I work, it would take all day to locate the lost shipment.

So, my search continued. I found the shipment of motherboards and had that shipment routed to my facility. It turns out Dell only shipped 1 motherboard. The bill of laiding and everything indicateda a large shipment of large weight, but one motherboard was shipped. So, here I am talking with Dell for the fifth time today and am back to square one, no repaired workstations and an inoperable facility. What a day, so now, more motherboards will need to be ordered, and more shipments will need to be tracked. What a day!

Just thought I would share, I can't wait to get home and do some work on my iMac. I cannot believe Dell functions that way. I mean hardly anyone knew what was going on.

 

[mkrishnan]

It is a funny story, but I wonder if anyone would've done you much better? Just sounds more emblematic of corporate bureaucracy on both ends -- both you and them (I'm assuming you have a specific person as an account rep at Dell who always deals with you, since it sounds like you do a lot of business) have a person holding out a hand, and yet the hands don't shake.

When I was at Ford, there were always crazy things like this happening. People would send packages to a building where 3000 people work without clearly indicating the intended recipient, department, etc.... Heh.

 

[ToddW]

yeah it is pretty much the staple around here. the big thing, is i wanted to eliminate the hassle on my end, but just having the techs bring the motherboards out. To give Dell some credit, they are pretty responsive.

 

[mkrishnan]

yeah it is pretty much the staple around here. the big thing, is i wanted to eliminate the hassle on my end, but just having the techs bring the motherboards out.

I know EXACTLY that thought... actually, I've been on the other end too, carrying all kinds of random engineered prototypes on planes and in cars to build sites and that kind of stuff. Definitely much better if they'd done it the way you had planned....

 

[macEfan]

A dell laptop that I use had to get its motherboard replaced like 4 times also.. One time they sent the wrong part, and twice they were late to come and fix the problem. Thirdly, they make it really hard to find out their support telephone number on their website. However, they were genererally buisness like, and at least came and completed the work, apologized, etc.. If the motherboard breaks one more time, they said the'd just replace the computer...

 

[adk]

Dell's shipping department is pretty horrible. 6 months ago my mom's dell laptop had a hard drive failure, so dell said they would overnight the hard drive and windows software. Well, next day, sure enough, there's a hard drive but no cd, even though it's on the packing slip. I can't imagine it's that difficult to look on the packing slip where it says Total Items: 2 and count only one in the box... but the best part of this story is that I called dell again and complained, and the next day another hard drive arrived, still no windows CD!!

 

[Boggle]

Yep. routine screwups like that are the reason I switched. I'd been a dell user since '92. In once incident last year, I lost 3 motherboards all fried on installation by 2 different repair techs on 2 days. Then they charged my account for ALL THREE motherboards. And I was under full warranty and accidental damage coverage for the motherboards for another 2 years. Finally they sent me a replacement laptop, and instructed me to mail back all my old software. I did so, only to discover 3 weeks later when MS Office crashed that they didn't include CD-ROMS for "most" of the software for the new computer. Dell then denied responsibility for the missing CDs and directed me to Microsoft. --Oh, confession. I staffed out all the holding for techs-- Anyway, you can guess how effective talking to Microsoft was. Anyway, I was so win-slaved that even then I couldn't make the switch. That is until I had a complete system failure. Then I hit bottom, and was given salvation by Grand High Puba Jobs.