Dell: Where is mine?

A bad experience drives you like no other. My experience with DELL drove me out of my procastrination to write on the blog again.

I was considering buying a laptop and called the Dell helpline to ask a few questions. I was put through to a “Sales Account Manager”. He answered all my questions well and was quite helpful, but insisted that I place an order on that very call. I said I wanted to consider other options and would get back to him. So he requested me not to call the helpline again, but to call him directly so that the sale would be through him. He sent me his mobile number on SMS. The next day he called me to check if I had decided. The day after that I had five missed calls from him. I called him and told him not to call me. I’d call him and place the order when I made up my mind. Which I did last thursday. The payment, order and address confirmation went smoothly and I was quite pleased with the simplicity of the whole process. I was promised that I would get the notebook in courier by Tuesday, February 23rd, or latest by February 24th.

My current notebook is not brink of dying with only half the screen working, the other half blank. I was quite anxious to get the new one. I was provided a Blue Dart tracking number to check on the status of my shipment. On Tuesday (the due date) I checked online and was shocked to see that the destination was mentioned as Mumbai and the estimated delivery date was March 1. I immediately tried calling Varun (Sales Account Manager) whom I had placed the order with. No response. A few rings and he would disconnect my call. I called about ten times and finally wrote an email asking him to call me ASAP. No response.

Today morning, I spent 2 hours calling the Dell helpline. I spoke to about 12 different people. Narrated my problem and gave my order number to each one of them. Each one would transfer my call to the “relevant people” and then I would be on hold for about 5 minutes listening a female voice advertising their “premium care package” and monitors. Even when I specifically requested them not to transfer my call, they would. “All our customer care representatives are busy”, I heard that about 50 times today morning. If I chose the “Buy a new computer” option on the IVRS, I was immediately connected to a “real person”, but soon lost his interest when I told him I had a problem with an order I had already placed.

Finally, I called up BlueDart to see if I could get some clarity on what was happening. My phone was picked up on the second ring by a very helpful, live human being. He took my details and within 2 minutes told me what the problem was. Despite my giving the address in writing, Dell had screwed up and given them the wrong pincode. This pincode was apparently out of BlueDart’s “Service Area” and therefore they brought the parcel to Mumbai from Chennai and were going to arrange for a special delivery to that pincode, which would take an additional 3 days from the date promised to me by Dell. I told him that my address was 2 km away from BlueDart’s Goa HQ and there was no way it was “out of service area”. He quickly corrected the pincode but said my parcel would still arrive three days later because it was being held at Bhiwandi for the ’special delivery’.

All this, without a single person from Dell being helpful. All of the ten people I spoke to sounded like they were doing me a favor by listening to my problem. The only helpful people at Dell seemed to be the sales people who expected you to place an order. Once you place your order, you are on your own.

While it is understandable that mistakes happen, a company that does not move quickly to acknowledge and correct it, is going to leave the customer with a terrible experience. In this case, ”my Dell representative” simply ignored my calls and no one else in their customer care department was any help.  I had to myself correct Dell’s mistake with BlueDart and make sure I got the notebook. If I hadn’t done this myself, I wonder when Dell would have woken up to the fact that they had shipped to the wrong address.

Ofcourse, Dell is by no means an exception. There are companies in every industry who offer the most shabby after-sales experience and have a unresponsive, irritating and useless customer care operation. However, in my experience, Dell topped every other “bad experience” I’ve had. It was like they were behind a screen and there was no way to reach anyone who could help.

It is shocking how  companies will spend millions on advertising and marketing, but won’t fix these simple problems. None of the problems arising out of this experience are difficult or expensive to fix. But I am quite sure if I order a laptop from Dell next year, I could have the same experience. Ofcourse, I won’t order from Dell again.

With experiences like this, Dell still has the cheek to say “Yours is here”.