Today’s rant is sponsored by Dell Computers
March 8, 2005
Amanda got her laptop back from Dell today, she has been having issues with the AC adaptor dying. When it happened the first 2 times we thought we had a power issue in the apartment. But we ruled that out because everything else in the apartment was fine. Then we got the third adaptor in and it died again within a week. At this point we started thinking that there is an issue with the laptop. Amanda calls Dell support and ends up on hold waiting to talk to someone for a stupid amount of time. While she was on the phone she jumped on to their “chat” application and spoke with a tech while still on hold. Amanda told him what happened and that this would be the fourth replacement. He came back and said that it was wear and tear, and he would send out a new one. She starting asking him that how can it be wear and tear when we had the adaptor for less then a week. Then he gives her the case number and boots her off the chat. Finally she gets on the phone with a live person after another half hour of waiting. So she explains to the tech the whole story of what has happened before and they finally said ok ship it in we will take a look at it. We get the box to ship the laptop in, plus the replacement adaptor from the tech she talked to in the chat app. We packed up the laptop and we put in the new adaptor in with it that worked (make a note of this) and shipped it back out. So today we get it in and she is happy that we got it back and hopefully they fixed the problem. We open it up the box and check the sheet for the work they did on it. According to the sheet they replaced the system board, then we saw a note on the bottom that the AC cord was the wrong one (?!?)….WHAT THE FUCK. I dont know what the hell happened down at the repair center but they shipped us back the laptop with the wrong AC adaptor and even made a note of it in the repair sheet…umm hello if you knew it was the wrong adaptor then why the fuck did you send it back with the laptop.
So I had to make yet another call to Dell today and screamed at the poor non-english speaking sap on the other end. This is of course waiting on hold again for over 30 minutes. After the call she transfers me to her manager who also could barely speak/understand english. The starts asking me about how the call was, which of course i told him about how pissed off i was with their stupidity in a calm manor. The says something about filling out a survey and ends the call.
After this experience this really left a bad impression with Dell. It just seems its a friggin hassle to get anything taken care of when you need to call their support, even their corporate support. I never had this much problems when i call IBM.
