Does dell even care about customer satisfaction???

Are dell's execs totally out of touch with where quality and service in the company has gone, or do they just not care anymore? It certainly seems that customer satisfaction has ultimately lost its importance. If the execs do know, they aught to be ashamed.

In my search for answers to the issues I'm experiencing I have learned one thing: I'm DEFINITELY NOT alone in my frustration and dissatisfaction with dell. I too have been a long-time customer of dell's and have bought several computers from them over the years. This last one may be THE last.

I have now spent more than a month trying to get dell support to properly diagnose and repair my Inspiron laptop (which was purchased last year and still in warranty) via email, support chat, and the repair depot. Not only is my laptop NOT FIXED, it is now WORSE than before I contacted them.

In the original support request i sent, I described how sometimes when I take the laptop out of my backpack, I notice that it has turned completely off. When I push the power button, a blue screen come us that says the system experienced an unexpected shutdown, and restarts. I also explained that I had experienced what seemed like random power loss on two occasions while using the laptop on battery power. The same blue screen appeared both times after powering it back on. (all of these times the battery was at least 25% charged)

Apparently using the words "blue screen" was a mistake, because every rep that looks up my history gets totally stuck on this point, and then automatically assumes it is either BIOS related, or driver related. At first I played along with their requests for me to run system diagnostics (which did not find a single issue), update the BIOS and different drivers (which went fine but changed nothing).

It started getting frustrating when they would email me to see if "the issues were resolved".. I kept replying asking them at what point they thought they had accurately diagnosed the issues, and how it would even be possible to know if they had been resolved since we still hadn't confirmed what conditions were causing them. In light of their inability to do anything useful I began asking more specific questions to try to get to the bottom of it myself. I asked why they weren't interested in viewing system event logs, or possible bug reports that might be available in windows. I have dabbled in android dev for a few years, so it seemed logical to me that windows would have logged something relating to the problem, before displaying an error screen.. The support reps could have cared less and never did respond to those questions. They were bent on having me restore the computer to the factory image, and continued to tell me that was the next step. So I dug deeper on my own. I finally figured out where to find the system even log in windows, and here's what I found: "Critical error 41: Kernel power loss" logged each and every time I could remember experiencing the symptoms.

Do you think the support reps cared anything about it? They sure didn't!! They continued to tell me it was an OS issue, and that I needed to reinstall windows. I kept telling them that they hadn't even successfully diagnosed anything, and that I wanted to be sure we knew what was causing the issue before taking drastic measures. Again they didn't really care.

So I started trying to figure out (again on my own) why the system would be losing power from the battery.. I took the battery out and it seemed ok.. I noticed that one of the screws was missing from the bottom of the laptop (not a big deal, but speaks to quality in my opinion) and I noticed that the way the battery attaches to the laptop seems poorly designed. The clips along the back edge where the battery kinda rolls into its place are tiny. using your fingernail you can completely separate the battery from the laptop. The side clips are also a little flimsy. All of this suggests to me that the battery could just not be "in there" tight enough to maintain connection to the computer 100% of the time. It would seem reasonable that if this was the case, a little jostle in a backpack could cause it to lose power momentarily.

Anyway, I chatted for more than two hours with a support supervisor, who FINALLY said they would have me send it in to the repair depot, and they would replace the motherboard and then thoroughly test the whole thing to be sure the problem was resolved before sending it back to me. They sent me a box with a fedex label prepaid and I sent it in.

A week later I get it back, and the repair ticket says "replaced battery"   .....Wait, WHAT?!?!

yep. That's it.

So of course I start it up... aaand... BLUE SCREEN!!!!!! right out of the box from the repair depot. I check the system event log, and sure enough it's the same error 41. But wait, what time was it logged?? Right about the same time the fedex guy left it on my porch!  That's right, it was logged while it was still in the sealed box, right before I brought it in the house.

I know that this is getting long, but let me get to the NEW PROBLEMS. Right out of the box from the repair depot, the touchpad drivers were no longer working. When I boxed it up to send it in, two finger scrolling, two finger secondary click, etc were all working perfectly. NOT ANY MORE! UGH!!! so I get back on chat with support... I SPENT ALL NIGHT (4hrs+) on chat with a rep and then his supervisor trying to figure out (1.) why the repair team decided to only replace the battery, and (2.) why the touchpad drivers were now broken. WE GOT NOWHERE! Neither of those questions was ever answered, and the problems are still completely unresolved.

So, the next day I finally gave in. I no longer had anything else to lose, since the computer was now quickly becoming useless.. So I started the factory system image restoration. ...And of course it didn't resolve a single issue. Touchpad drivers still won't work, and it even experienced the random power loss while moving it around the house.

Well I have tried everything in my power to let dell take care of this. I have wasted dozens of hours trying to get it fixed. I have done my own diagnostics (which the support reps just ignore) and even sent it to the repair depot, which was probably the BIGGEST waste of all!!!!!

They are now sending me ANOTHER box and shipping label (which I told them was a waste since I still have the first box..  -they don't care.) to send it to the repair center again.

At this point I'm not even sure I want the computer back (i've told them this too). I have already switched back to my old Acer notebook, as it has been nothing but reliable compared to the *piece* dell sold me.

I just can't believe that the management and execs at dell would be OK with this kind of customer experience. I'm convinced that they either don't know about it, don't care, or both. Since I find no direct way to contact any kind of customer satisfaction team, it seems the latter may unfortunately be more true than I hoped. Like many other long time dell customers, I will likely NOT be buying another dell product. It is simply not worth my time dealing with this kind of disregard for customer satisfaction. Every correspondence with support reps has included a canned statement about how taking care of me is their priority, yet they have repeatedly ignored direct requests and questions I ask them. The measures they have taken have been almost nothing but a waste of my time as well as theirs, and also a waste of the company's resources. If this were going on in MY company, I'd be "letting go" of not only a few reps, but their managers as well. STEP IT UP DELL, or I won't be surprised to one day see your name added to the list of once big players in the tech market that went under.