Problem(s) with purchasing in the EU

Question

Hi, here I am to report again problems with the purchase of Dell laptops (specifically an XPS13), in Europe. And to ask for some help. My girlfriend wanted to purchase a new laptop, and I recommended an XPS13. She lives in Germany, but will move to France from September 19. On August 31 she order an XPS13 (using my credit card). We got an email from Dell saying that the delivery address was did not match the one of the credit card. I sorted this out with American Express. Then, a few days went by and nothing happened. Then she called, and was told that it is impossible to use a credit card registered to another person to buy a laptop, and that the order was never executed (nobody thought of notifying her of this). At this point two weeks had gone by; it was presumably too late to place an order in Germany: the laptop would likely arrive after she left. Now we place an order on the French website (in order to have the laptop delivered in France), where one can only get a french (AZERTY) keyboard. We are told on the phone to place the order, and modify it afterwards asking for an international (or German) keyboard. The order is placed, and we get an 'internet receipt number' (that looks like 'FR0135-3029-xxxxx'). But to modify the order we need to send a form which requires a customer number and order number (which we do not have (yet), as the order has not been processed. We do not have any way to say in writing that we wanted a different keyboard from the very beginning, and we risk being stuck with a laptop with the wrong keyboard. Any help to resolve this situation would be greatly appreciated (eg the contact of anyone in Dell Europe that can actually do something about this). I should add the it's the third time that I buy from Dell Europe (first an XPS13 in 2013, then a Precision 5510 a few months back, now the new XPS13 for my girlfirend), and every time I had problems. It is unbelievable that purchasing a computer should take 3 week and many emails and phone calls. This really undermines the great work that Barton and his team (as well as many engineers at Dell, I am sure) do.

DELL-Barton George · Answer

@alesfo

I apologize for your experience, its not the type of customer service we ever want to provide.

I will forward it to our European team and let you know what I hear back.

thanks for your understanding,

Barton

xps_ubuntu16 · Answer

Hi alesfo,

I feel with you. I had a similar problem when wanting to purchase the Dell XPS 13 here in Austria.

At the end of July, after a thorough research on what would be the ideal laptop for me, I wanted to buy the XPS 13 developer edition with 16GB and 512GB ssd.

Sadly I had to wait another week until my next salary came in to be able to purchase the laptop. After waiting that week I was told by Dell Support that the developer edition with 16GB/512GB ssd was sold out and that they cannot tell me when we they will be back in Stock. It was impossible to get that information and was just told "to frequently check the website again, then it may be available again."
Wow!! One would think that Sales people would actually know when their products might be available again.

I didn't want to buy the "old" version, with i5, 8GB RAM and 128GB ssd, because that absolutely doesn't meet my requirements :(

Now a couple of weeks have gone, the laptop still isn't available AND the "old" version has now completely sold out as well. *sigh*

I explicitly didn't want to get the "windows" model, because it has the broadcom chip which is known to make troubles on Linux systems with connectivity.

Long story short: I'm pretty disappointed by the Dell Sales people, I would have expected more support and information coming from the sales people. it actually looks like that they don't want to sell their products to me ;)

@barton: thanks for the hard work you put into this product and please keep it up :)

sorry for the rant and for hijacking your thread,

best,
theresa

DELL-Barton George · Answer

Hi Theresa,

Thanks for the support and I apologize for your experience. I will fwd your post to our European team so hopefully another customer doesnt have to have the same experience.

With regards to availability, the next gen of the developer edition is on the horizon. Unfortunately i cant be more specific than "soon"

thanks again for the support

xps_ubuntu16 · Answer

Hi Barton,

thanks a lot for all the hard work and dedication that you (and your colleagues) put into this project. It means a lot to the Linux community and it's very appreciated. I have it on good authority that Linus (Torvalds) himself recently got himself a XPS 13 Developer Edition due to the good specs and good reputation!! That must be quite an honor ;))))

Thanks also for forwarding my feedback to the european team! It's really appreciated! I got a call from a local Dell Business Partner today and I wanted to order the laptop (the one with: i7-6560U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and Ubuntu Linux) but it seems they only have the Windows Model with the Broadcom Chip and the i7-6500U. This is known to be problematic, right?

I'm happy to wait a few more couple of weeks, but waiting till next year (March 2017) would be too long for me :(

Best,
theresa

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