Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Followup to previous Dell customer service snafu...


The State of Things:


Although I'm still smarting from almost a months worth of ridiculous customer/technical service fubars, Dell has smoothed some salve on the issue.

Keep in mind, I like my Dell products. It's a major reason why I didn't publish the anti-Dell/pro-Apple rhetoric replies that were posted to my previous entry. Even though I believe in free speech, my purpose in these blog posts isn't to bash Dell, but to poke at them to fix the support issues I encountered, which do affect my purchasing decisions and recommendations.

So, earlier today, an overnight package was delivered with the replacement components for my notebook pc. YAY! It will be very nice to have a fully functional screen on the laptop again.

This occurred because, after finishing my previous post, which detailed the problems I encountered, I sent an e-mail to a few people at Dell that have helped resolve issues for myself and many other people in the past. The supportive and immediate response from them was heartening. My thanks to all of them.

However, this issue persisted for almost a month. And, I still have mixed feelings about the state of Dell's support services.

That being said, I wish I could say Dell is alone in exhibiting poor customer service. At one time or another, many of the companies I've purchased from have done so. For example, I will never purchase from Averatec ever again. Averatec wanted to charge me $80 plus shipping to fix a 7 month old in-warranty laptop, suffering from a known manufacturer defect. Anything that brings them to mind, makes me want to tell every person within earshot to avoid Averatec like the plague. Averatec didn't honor their warranty with me. Think about how stupendously inept, offensive and all around lousy Averatec must have been, to make me feel it was worse than what I went through with Dell recently.

Sorry, Averatec makes me want to rant, and I hope they go out of business.

Dell doesn't make me feel that way. I just wish they'd fix the customer service issues, which last year had been much improved. I sincerely hope they get back on track, so no one else has to go through what I experienced. Knowing the people I communicated with yesterday, I have hope something will be done about it. After all, not everyone knows how to blog, or how to get the attention of the good people within Dell.