Sunday, March 16, 2008

Why I'll never order from Dell again

I've had an account with Dell.com for several years. In that time I've bought a desktop computer, two laptops, various printing supplies such as ink and paper, all adding up to several thousand dollars. Last night I ordered a camera and a memory card. My order confirmation comes in my email. Oops, no memory card. I go back and re-order the memory card and send off an email explaining that I'd like my order combined into one please since I got free shipping and didn't want to have to pay it for the memory card.

Guess what? It can't be done. I was told I had to re-order. Ordinarily I'd say sure, go ahead and re-order it. But doing so would have invalidated the 70 dollar discount I got on the camera last night. That makes for a very expensive memory card, don't you think?

So I cancelled the memory card order and will buy it at K-mart or some other place where it will certainly be cheaper and won't have a huge shipping cost associated with it.

And Dell has permanently lost me as a customer over a memory card that was under 25 dollars. No wonder they're going broke.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad I saw this. I was getting ready to order a laptop from them. Pretty shitty way to treat a customer. They must not need the business so they ain't getting mine.

A. Steyr

Anonymous said...

While it must have been frustrating, not ordering from Dell ever again does seem like a bit of an overreaction. I'm pretty sure if you'd told them that, hey, I'm never going to buy another Dell product over this $25 card, they would have just given you free shipping for it.

mishkabear said...

Dell support and I exchanged numerous emails where I explained how unhappy I was that first of all they could not get the order right, and then that they wanted to charge me 4.99 shipping for a 24.00 card THEY didn't get on the order of nearly 500 dollars. I asked for them to drop the shipping on the card. They refused. In fact, I ordered early this am, talked to them late morning, emailed afternoon, and by afternoon they had already shipped the card...after I talked to them! Oh, and they shipped one of the inks minutes later from my order but not the other one.

And no I'm not done with them yet. This is more than a matter of principle at this point. This is a matter of corporate shitting on customers because they know nothing and care nothing about customer service. It's part of a trend where rebates are not honored by companies, problems are ignored, and customer service is paid by how quickly they can get rid of you. I have simply decided to fight back each time I am treated with lack of respect and appreciation for spending my hard-earned dollars. Dell is not the only company that has experienced my wrath. I hope to start a trend until we as consumers are treated with the respect we deserve.

I have my own business. I treat my customers as precious and special and worthy because they buy from me in this crappy economy. If I can do this, then dell can certainly do it but choose not to.

We are talking five bucks here on an order of 500 that they gave me free shipping on already. And it was their mistake to begin with, not mine!

Stay tuned for the youtube video I'll be putting up later this evening. ;-)

sleekit said...

I totally agree with what you did. Once Dell has your money you become just another number. Dell's customer satisfaction just plain sucks. Employees are treated as liabilities and not assets. So why should they go out of there way to help you?
Check out the ihatedell.net website to get the inside truth on Dell.
If more people were like you maybe, just maybe Dell would listen.