Dell mysteriously cancels my order of broken part, then takes 1 hour 45 minutes on the phone to redo order

Almost two weeks ago my motherboard on my Dell Alienware Aurora R4 computer died. Since it is 1.5 years old, it's 6 months out of warranty, and was told I need to buy a replacement motherboard for $717 through the Dell Employee Purchase Program. I don't know why it's so much money, considering competitive motherboards are a lot cheaper. Anyway I was told that the replacement part would arrive in less than a week. However, I then received an email saying the shipment was delayed another week and is estimated to arrive August 27th.

Today (August 27th) I clicked the check status link to see if the motherboard had been delivered. I found out that the order was mysteriously cancelled. What happened next was I spent 1 hour and 45 minutes on the phone, being transferred at least 8 times, trying to get the part reordered. I was given three separate possible reasons for the order being cancelled:

1. Duplicate order

2. Part out of stock

3. Could not contact card holder

Whatever the real reason is, I'm not sure. I noticed that the person who initially placed the order didn't verify my billing and delivery address and phone numbers, so the phone number on the delivery address was incorrect, and the apartment number on the billing address was incorrect. Perhaps this could have affected possible reason #3, or perhaps the person took down the wrong credit card number. I don't know. It's ridiculous that they would cancel the order on you without notifying you whatsoever. I told the people that I'm speaking with that regardless of what happened, I need to get a replacement part. 

A person in X department would transfer me to Y department, and the person in Y department would try to transfer me back to X department, but would start me back at the automated voice system, which multiple times gave a technical problem error and hung up on me.

Eventually I was told I needed to speak with a parts replacement person. The parts replacement person tried to send me back to customer service, which would have been at least the 9th transfer, but I told him no. He told me that the price of the replacement motherboard had actually increased in price, but after arguing with him he managed to knock ten dollars off of the *increased* price. After much waiting he said that he redid the order. I forced him to listen as I restated my correct billing and delivery information with him. I'm not sure if he was actually double checking this information or just pretending to do it, as he didn't read anything back to me. I then asked if I would be receiving a confirmation email from him. He said he is not in control of the confirmation emails and refused to stay on the phone with me until I received one. Based on how terribly things are going, I'm worried I'm going to find more problems in the confirmation email I receive. Heck, at this point I'm not sure I'll receive a confirmation email at all. I hope he actually put an order in.

My coworker, overhearing much of the phone call, told me that I had amazing patience and that he would be livid.

I should also add that before calling, I had emailed the "Sales Professional" that had placed the original replacement order on the phone two weeks ago. He had ignored my email from last Friday, so I emailed him again asking him to respond. I then discovered myself that the order had been cancelled. I told him this and he said that the reason was reason #3, credit card. In the email thread I told him that I still want the motherboard and that my order shouldn't have been cancelled, and my final email to him was "So are you not going to do anything to help me then?" with no response.

Two weeks ago I was told by the original "Sales Professional" that once I receive the motherboard, I would call him to setup an appointment for a service tech to install the motherboard. Funny enough I called the "Sales Professional's" phone number and extension listed on his email and was unable to reach him. The person I spoke with on the phone today asked if I was going to install the motherboard myself. I said that previously I was told that a service tech would install it. The person I spoke with said I should instead call tech support once I received the motherboard to setup this appointment with the service tech. However I will not be the least bit surprised if this is not actually the case, and I get transferred multiple times and waste more time when I make this phone call.

Basically my experience today is that every Dell person does not want to actually help you, but to redirect any sort of work or responsibility to someone else. It's like workplace aikido. Many of the representatives seem annoyed to be talking to you. What started as being extremely unhappy with an expensive part breaking quickly and needing to be replaced turned into an absolute nightmare and waste of time on the phone. I would have thought that being a part of the "Employee Purchase Program" and purchasing the supposedly high end Alienware brand would have gotten me some sort of slightly higher priority service and help, but this couldn't have been further from the truth.

Dell has a lot of making up to do to me. I've been a loyal Dell customer, both for my personal home use and for the companies I've worked at, since the mid 90's, and I feel like a fool. I don't think things were ever this bad with them before. During that 1 hour and 45 minutes on the phone, I wondered if this was some sort of bizarre prank, because it was unreal how bad the service was.

Unfortunately the nightmare isn't over yet.