Dell Technical Support Review December 2007
**I updated this post in April 2008 to remove the names of the people involved**
I have now created a category called Dell Technical Support Review
Every time I use Dell Technical support I write up my experience both good and bad. Hopefully this will help potential customers of Dell’s equipment get a feeling for the aftercare that is on offer.
Yesterday I was dealing with a Dell Optiplex GX280 Desktop that would not POST.
POST = Power On Self Test
There is not a lot you can do with a computer that wont POST.
So I travelled 23 miles to my customers site to investigate for myself this problem PC.
On arrival as the user described the PC would not POST. Optiplexes have an inbuilt mechanism that spins the fan super fast because if It cant POST it cant tell the temperature.
The noise of the Fan spinning so fast, loud and hard is to be almost frightening and not behaviour suitable for the call centre environment where I carried out the inspection.
My inspection consisted of looking at the motherboard for signs of loose cables, faulty capacitors and to pinpoint which fan was causing the noise.
After this it was time to call Dell Technical Support.
My first tech was called **** (extension *****) I explained the symptoms and explained I had carried out an inspection. I asked **** to send me an engineer to site (under the terms of our next day on-site warranty).
Bare in mind we have a PC that will not boot up and when powered up causes an audible disruption as well as sounding like an appliance that is going to explode.
**** said unless I was prepared to start removing cables he wasn’t going to escalate this to an engineer.
Well based on the fact I clearly had a faulty machine I wasn’t prepared to start unplugging components on the motherboard and switching on the device.
My primary concern was the safety of those working near this device, as well as maintaining a sensible db level, after all this was a call centre.
**** and I could not come to an agreement, so I asked for this to be escalated to his manager.
About 10 mins later ****** *******, *****’ manager called me on-site. We have another 25 mins of debate about me carrying out more problem solving on what I consider an un-safe machine on their behalf.
****** made two crucial mistakes he said “If you were an end user, I wouldn’t ask you to do this”. Next, I asked ****** the crucial question “Is this computer safe” his response was “well I wouldn’t leave it switched on”.
Now I am glad this web site gets lots of attention from Dell, so I know your listening (see above).
First of all that is clearly discrimination by class of user.
To explain that in context, I visited site on behalf on my Client, not Dell.
Dell don’t pay my fees to stick my hands into faulty electrical appliances.
What I did to help?
I travelled 23miles to the clients site.
I observed the fault for myself.
I carried out an an initial examination to ensure we would not be wasting Dell’s time.
The computer was dead, It’s now Dell’s Problem.
I ultimately decide what I am prepared to do with my skills not Dell.
After four phone calls over the space of an hour, ****** eventually conceded and agreed to send an engineer to site, as per my original request.
He wasn’t happy about it and neither am I.
The kicker is Dell offer two levels of support, normal next business day on-site, and Gold Technical support.
This problem PC was covered by Gold Technical Support, the enhanced support offering from Dell.
I am in a one word….disappointed.
If anyone from Dell wants to comment please do so in the comments.
December 4th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
and in case Dell wonders whether or not your experience impacts other people (i.e. consumers) – this story probably just made my decision between xps 1330 and sony vaio TZ a lot easier. If dell can’t provide serive to gold customers in business environment, i have little confidence that me as a sole proprietor and single entity would receive the kind of care i’m looking for in basic warranty support. I don’t know that Sony gives me that either (and doubt that it does), but then my list of pro’s con’s gets shorter on the pro side for Dell.
December 4th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Hi Terry
Well I just tell it like it is.
In recent times I have had 3 positive experiences and 2 negative.
Not the best ratio a service oriented company should be aiming for.
Let me know how you get on with the Sony.
Colin
December 5th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Colin,
Firstly I’d like to apologise for the disappointment you experienced in resolving POST failure with our support team this week. Thank you for sharing your experiences in detail. We find this level of feedback useful as well as tough/challenging. It’s helpful to connect with you and to share our perspective and hear others.
I had a very candid conversation with ****** today about the above case and there were three key things that came out of this conversation.
1. In this case we agree, we should have just sent out an engineer without pushing the conversation into a debate.
2. Whilst this fault was resolved quickly, with the engineer fixing the fault yesterday, both parties felt frustrated by the experience (as you detail above). WE need to work harder with customers to ensure every case is a win-win scenario in terms of results as well as overall experience. It is interesting when I read though the other posts in your review section that there three positive experiences and where there is a negative experience it is similar to the above one where there it is both negative and positive on tone (thank you for being balanced with your feedback).
3. The support team always try to do as much diagnosis with customers as possible to ensure that the correct parts are brought to site by our engineer. This is in the best interest of Dell in terms of making our support teams as productive as possible and also in the best interest of the customer in terms of getting equipment fixed first time and on time. The reason I am stressing this is so that you and others have the right expectations from the start when calling in a fault.
I appreciate you acknowledging that we at Dell do listen – we are working hard to get our support right and part of this is continuing to have direct and real conversations with our customers.
Terry – thank you also for your comments. I agree with you that peer to peer reviews are very powerful in decision making. I know it’s a little different, but I myself chose a holiday recently based on positive feedback on a review site. I hope this scenario does not put anyone off choosing Dell, since we do take customer experience very seriously indeed.
Kerry
December 5th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Hi Kerry.
Thanks for taking the time to respond and get involved.
Stuart has called me today to check the PC has been repaired, It has.
As I said to Terry “I just tell it like it is”. I am glad to see you read the other reviews also.
I hope to provide not only my opinion but also a balanced picture and the beauty of communicating out in the open is that the readers get to decide.
Kind Regards
Colin
December 6th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Thanks Kerry. I will take your feedback into consideration — i haven’t purchased yet! But with so much parity regarding product quality, its the service side that’s winning these days. good to know its important to Dell to make corrections when appropriate.
April 28th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Hello all and Mr. Dell,
I have an SX280 – warranty ran out jan. 8, 2008. MB dies 2 weeks ago – bulged caps.
And absolutely no help from Dell. Their extended warranty ran out on Jan 31, 2008.
This computer is not THAT old. It is experiencing a KNOWN capacitor problem. And absolutely no help from Dell.
I am probably able to replace the bac cap, but from the hundreds of articles, it appears many may be bad – and may not show bulging. Does anyone have a list or sketch of which caps may be bad? It appears the 2200 @ 6.3 volt are all suspect. Similar for the 820 @ 6.3 volt. Others?
Thank you!
Bill
April 29th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Hi Bill
Sorry to hear you have also experienced this problem.
I think a motherboard replacement would be better as in the cases I saw multiple affected capacitors. You could fix one and another would pop etc
Colin