This comment baffles me. How is it relevant that they are "offshore"? What, do you think if they were Americans they would have bent over backwards to help you? Customer Service is strongly tied to a companies priorities and culture, not the location of its representatives. Dell probably (almost certainly) does not empower its representatives to actually do anything for a customer. If it is like most companies of this sort, a note from god is required to remedy a situation by giving the customer something. Most likely they have a "sequence" where the $75 coupon is the most they can offer. The rep is almost certainly unable to override the automated pricing that says the lower price can only be had in conjunction with a purchase. Having worked for a company which didn't have one iota of trust in its employees competence, I can take some pretty good guesses that Dell is firmly in that camp. Funny thing is, the place I worked would gladly pay its "better" people over 100,000 a year, but won't trust them to order something worth $100 without approval from the CFO (and it was a very large company).
Don't blame the poor "offshore", underpaid, overworked sucker. Blame Dell management. Your specific inclusion of offshore smacks of undertones.
In article , snipped-for-privacy@erehwon.com says... ... snip
Not sure if even that doesn't make them over-qualified.
In East Indian accent: "OK, I want you to remove the connector at the back of the modem, the one that goes between the transmit and receive modems. Now, run your fingers across the pins to make sure all static has been removed from the system. Wait 10 seconds, now plug re-attach it and check to see if the problem has gone away"
Yeah, but a little common sense might come into play.
me: "System keeps giving me a blue screen of death when I try running this command. Other commands in this set work fine"
help desk: "OK, first let's check, is the system console plugged into line power?"
me: "Forget it, I'll find the problem myself, you are obviously to flippin' stupid to be working a help desk" [in my mind] "Yeah, can you think of any way I could get a CPU execution halted message or the desired results on th other commands if the CPU were not getting AC power?" [in reality]
The two To$shiba laptops I've owned have been pretty good machines, but If I could reasonably build my own laptop, I would. I've built most of the 30+ machines my businesses use, and have another dozen or so Compaq's we bought off a mortgage company going out of business a few years ago at less than $100/ea ... the hell of it is that HCAD continues to try to _appreciate_ the damn things for their property tax valuations.
I don't seem to have access to the original message so I'm responding to yours...
I have purchased 4 computers from Dell. Two laptops and two desktops. One of the laptops is now over 4 years old. It is the machine that I practically live on. I am a professional software developer. My Inspiron 7500 may not be very fast any more but it is a work horse. I am using it 8 to 14 hours a day. I have had a few problems here and there that were covered under warranty without any problem at all. I called up, said something wasn't working and the next day the technician came to see me wherever I was. (I do consulting so they have visited me in different cities) There are features about my laptop that made it a no-brainer purchase and I have no regrets about it. As long as these same features are available I'll be purchasing another Dell.
I will agree with you that Dell's outsourced customer service is really bad. The language wasn't much of a barrier but some things were not clearly understood and this caused me to lose at least a couple days of billable work. This was after my laptop was out of warranty.
When the COM port on my laptop went out I just bought a port replicator for not more than about $80 and it works fine.
I build all my own desktop machines and I would never buy a laptop online, sight unseen, regardless of price. I want to be able to see the machine in person, make sure it's exactly what I want before I make a purchase.
If I can see it and then buy the identical machine online, fine. Otherwise, forget it.
Actually, I did benefit. This computer lives on the floor and I hadn't opened the case. He told me, sort of, how to open the suitcase style case. And I then checked the cables. And I next blew all the dust out. And then re-checked the cables, re-assembled and found no change.
Next up, re-install XP, with the notation, from Mr. Singsong, that the next step was a format of the hard drive, which is why I let the machine take his call. Yeah, I can back up my stuff. That's why I've got a removable hard drive. But I do NOT want to spend most of 2 days reinstalling stuff (for someone who commented: Dell also provides program disks) and then off and on time over the next month getting it into the shape I like. And I don't believe it will work, either, which means I would have nearly 3 days time and a huge amount of inconvenience invested in, essentially, nonsense.
Charlie Self "It is not strange... to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore
Yes. My deal was a non-working CD burner, not a non-working computer. But the whole horseshit sequence started with "is it plugged in," which is the kind of goofiness that tends to set me up for respnses like, "Well,no. It's been running off my tinfoil beanie for the past 10 months, so why the hell should I plug it in now?".
Charlie Self "It is not strange... to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore
Well, as a start, we might have been able to understand the accents.
Yeah, it does. It smacks of undertones of not liking an additional step that facilitates misunderstanding, instead of understanding. These people are presumably hired for their basic technical abilities, plus the ability to speak English. Every one I've ever talked to fails miserably on the latter requirement, unless the person listening has perfect hearing and a lot of experience listening to different accents and translating to themselves.
I've got plenty of experience with the latter, which is hard to avoid in today's world, but I do not have perfect hearing, unless "perfectly awful" is classed that way.
Even with my phone cranked all the way up, this latest guy drove me nuts.
So, yeah, there are undertones based on "offshore". The biggest one is shitty service. The others are based on the reasons for that shitty service that owuld NOT occur "onshore".
Charlie Self "It is not strange... to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore
And you won't find the 360 degree tour any longer, either. That is because that section of the Dell website was updated on April 1. I ordered my laptop on March 28. Fortunately I took a screen shot and saved it.
If you go to the section where you can download the manuals for the
8600, you will see that it comes in two flavors - one with the ports and one without.
Had you read my OP thoroughly, you would have found that I did call Dell and was not able to get a definitive answer from any of the three people that I was passed around to before giving up.
As to the usefullness of a product photo in determining what easily visible components might come with the unit in question - are you really that much of a doofus?
Given the acuity demonstrated in the above, the quality of your opinion is highly suspect.
Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker (ret) Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet Website:
I don't have anything against blind people - but I don't want them to be able to drive taxis.
I don't have anything aginst deaf people - but I don't want them tuning my piano.
I don't have anything against really tall people - but I don't think they make good jockeys.
And I don't have anything against people with Indian accents - but they should not have jobs whose very essence is clarity of communication - in English.
Just had my own first experience with "offshore" tech support. Oh boy. After the inevitable "Press 1 if youre totally hosed", "Press 2 if your hair is on fire" phone tree, I got the help of a very nice lady-who proceeded to run her script.
You know the one:
(start to explain problem, but no, first we have to get your vitals and a wallet biopsy)
What is your first name? Dale How do you spell that? Dee Ay El Ee (very slowly) Dee Aitch . . . ? D as in dog, A as in apple, L as in leader, E as in Egomaniacal.
And you last name? A as in apple . . . etc. (I'm a fast learner)
This continues through name, phone number, email, model, serial number (god help me), etc.
There were as many as three read-backs for each item.
Great, now we're done with that, I can explain the problem. Less than a minute into it, and it's "Oh, you need to talk to X, I'll transfer you."
"Hello, What is your first name?
(this guy has an even thicker accent-so I start by spelling it out with the whole "A as in apple" bit.)
Between the accent, the static filled connection, and my no longer perfect hearing, this is not going anywhere. I bail, which of course saves them the cost of actually having to deal with the problem.
But I'm a persistent bastard. So, check the company website for any phone number other than tech support. Call corporate headquarters and work my way to a live human being in customer relations. (While I'm on hold the recorded voice keeps intoning that I might get more immediate service by calling-you guessed it, the tech support number.)
You might say I roasted the guy-calmy I might add, but making it clear that this was one pissed off customer.
As a final irony, since the first support person had gone to such heroic lengths to get me entered into the system, I got the online custumer service satisfaction survey the next day . . . .
Some other things you might need to know-before all this:
1) I'd gone through the entire knowledge base of their website-no help there.
2) I'd downloaded the updated device driver for the older model of hardware-purporting to be compatible with the newer system.
3) I'd been in contact via email support system, advice from which amounted to reinstall the OS and all your software, and remove any third-party software. (only stuff on the system came from them) And it was from these emails that I was directed to the tech support phone number.
Did I ever get the problem fixed? Yes, on my own, after about 20 hours of screwing around running all possible variations, and at least a dozen complete re-installs of the OS and sofware. What was the problem? Turns out that the newer piece of hardware was incompatible with an older component from the same manufacturer.
Dale Austin Who loves his Palm Tungsten T3, but thinks the manager of customer support need a good old-fashioned horsewhippin'
I'm an Apple laptop user and scan mac headlines a couple times a week. It seems like every couple months or so, some mag or industry group rates customer service of PC companies and Dell and Apple go back and forth in the number one and two spots. At least if IIRC.
Maybe your experience is atypical or maybe customer service is a victim of price competition. I only bring it up for conversation.
Sorry for your problems. Dell CS has been fine with me. The last 4 computers I've bought are Dell.
I always go through the "Small Business" portal, not the "Consumer". Maybe that makes a difference.
Best wishes getting this resolved. Maybe you could get a member of the press to give 'em a call... Or a lawyer friend. My sister is a lawyer so I have occasional cheap access to letterheads from "Dewey Cheatham & Howe, Attorneys At Law" that get results.
Laptops come with and without - floppy drives, CD drives, PCMCI ports, speakers, mice, monitor outputs, yada, yada, yada. Furthermore, Dell is a custom shop. Do you really expect them to provide cute little 3D marketing photos of , literally, the millions of possible options they offer?
Did you blindly expect the last car you bought to come fully loaded like the one on the showroom floor? Do you also get as self righteous with the cook at a place like Denny's when the food doesn't come out looking like the picutre on the menu, or on a plate of the same design? I see Dewalt planers might come with a nice slab of hardwood, some sawdust and perhaps a woodshop to boot. Where's the line for you?
Given some time, I'm sure one could find thousands of products for sale with pictures that depict accessories and variations that are or are not included. Hence - I had to ask if you were born yesterday and perhaps have missed out on your fair share of some of these advertizing images and what they mean.
As to your comment about me reading the OP - of course I read it. You made no phonecall and seemingly didn't bother to read the clearly listed Tech Specs BEFORE you ordered. You earned what you got, IMO.
There is a guaranteed way to get to Tier 2 support, cite a HSE (Health, Safety, or Environmental) concern. This is an "Automatic escalation" on the Tier 1 flow chart.
For example, when the battery on my laptop was shorting out (3 month old battery, with 6 second battery life), I said that I was getting "sporadic" shocks from the exterior of the laptop.
Tier 2 was back to me in a few hours arranging service.
For your case, you could have told them that "Every time I try to plug in my printer, I get zapped" Once they forward you on, you can't talk like an intelligent person to the tier 2 people.
"Mark Jerde" wrote in news:2ZUcc.6676$ snipped-for-privacy@nwrddc03.gnilink.net:
One drawback is that when ordering from Small Business you pay sales tax in almost every state as Dell has service centers for business everywhere. When ordering through home, they only collect the tax in a couple of states
Paul Kierstead wrote in news:pmkierst- snipped-for-privacy@nntp.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com:
Dell apparently thinks it's both relevant and a failure. Business accounts now go to a US based customer service facility (it only took the loss of a couple of big accounts for Dell to see the problem). Individuals, like Tom, are still stuck with the offshore support.
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