Dell.... The next Compaq?

For reasons beyond my comprehension the leaders of Dell  have decided to wall themselves off from the customer, why?

Since 13 Jan 2010 I have logged over 50 hours on the phone with both customer care and dell financial trying to get some sort of resolution to my recent purchase, to no avail. Ended up returning all products and changing brands all because there don't seem to be any checks and balances in place to allow the general public access to anyone at Dell when they have problems involving customer care or dell financial. The move to outsource to India and the Philippines seems to have been a big mistake to me. 

I used to be loyal until the changes implemented in early 2009, since then it's been a nightmare to deal with customer care. In the time described above I was hung up on 8 times, 3 by so called managers, for one reason or another. the last couple of  times were because I had had enough and wanted to speak with someone in charge, aside from another manager who was going to hang up on me or give me the excuse "my supervisor doesn't feel like talking to anyone right now".

I had this same experience with Compaq years ago, Is this truly how Dell wishes to be viewed by the general public?

The rest is my experience with Dell since Nov 8, 2009

Well my story is a little different than most of the others, I ordered an XPS suite 9000 on Nov 8, using dell finance because they had a special of 12 mo. same as cash. Received it DEC 15, only to discover that voice communication wasn't possible due to electrical interference at the remote hook ups for a headset, a constant melting plastic smell when the unit was on, and the usb ports were on at full power at all times. called my tech team ( Yellow, great team by the way) and they diagnosed it as possibly a faulty power supply. So they set up a repair order but was informed it would be at least 3 weeks before the repair would happen. 

Per Dell return policy you have 21 days from shipping date to return an item if you don't like it. That being said I didn't fully believe the power supply to be the issue, (electronics background). So i went through the process of doing the whole exchange thing. The new unit arrived Jan 13, and no surprise it had the same issue.  I then went back to the tech team and they had me chasing wires only to find out that it was wired incorrectly based on their blueprints.

Sounds pretty cut and dry right? Not the case, the return department was supposed to include a label so I could return just the tower, no label. In addition i received a second monitor. This complicated the return. Was forced to call Dell customer CARE in India to get them to set up the return of both systems, after 9 hours of trying to get this done not to mention the 3 times I was hung up on, I finally got the returns arranged. UPS showed up with only 3 labels, leaving me stuck with the monitor I wasn't supposed to receive in the first place.

Had to call customer CARE again to set up the second pick up, only got hung up on 2 times this time, once by a manager! After all of this, mind you this took 4 days to accomplish and upwards of 25 hours on the phone, it was done. 

At this point I'm ready to give up on Dell but decide to give them one last chance. Called sales to check on getting an alienware instead, but found out that I had to talk to customer care again first. They told me it would be 10 to 15 days from the date of receipt of the returns before the could post them as returned, and to call Dell finance. Called them and found out they would need 30 to 45 days after customer care posted each return before they could credit my preferred account totaling 60 to 90 days before I could place another order. An absurd  amount of time and no way to do business.

  6 days and 8 hang ups from customer care (3 by managers who refused to transfer me to their superior because "he doesn't feel like talking to anyone") later, I gave up. (over 50 hours on the phone, the last 10 to file a complaint about the behavior of customer care and their constant flipping back and forth between being insulting and obtuse).

 Dell! you are now dead to me.                                                                                              

   You're outsourcing to India and the Philippines will be the death of you. The fact that you allow customer care to be self governing, and that they refuse to help the customer in any way has caused everyone who has posted here to have the same regrets for ever dealing with you.

  I for one will never recommend your product again. I was a loyal Dell user, But beginning in early 2009 you changed your system isolating the public from you, making it impossible to bring issues to your attention in a timely manner. You have become the new Compaq. 

 I have moved on, spent 4k with mac, which you would have had instead but refused to heed the warnings and frustrations of mine and of your other customers. Aside from the assistance from tech team yellow"s wonderful and consistent help  I have nothing positive to say about Dell anymore.