XPS 9000 and XPS 8000 delivery delay issues

Well, ResignedToWait will be changing his screen name to GaveUpandCancelled.

After the last delay to 12/29 via the website i decided to cancel.  (so someone who is getting an XPS8000 system earlier owes me a beer).

Note that i NEVER received a delay email from Dell even tho i made sure to register my email with them.

I called the number mentioned earlier in this forum to cancel and only had to hold about 10 minutes (at around 1PM).  "Daneille" was very nice and told me the system was delayed, had an expected delivery date of 12/29 but they could not guarantee it, and did i want to keep the order.  I canceled and got the confirmation email a couple of hours later.

To Chris form Dell-  your message is appreciated but you or someone else from Dell should have been on this forum at about the fifth message.  Your company has handled this very poorly.  (I mean, this forum IS on your own website, right?  NO excuse for missing it)  I only buy a new PC about once every five years, and so you have lost my money on this buying cycle.  And you have missed a lot of other's money as well.  And you have no way to calculate how many sales lost due to the bad feelings you have generated.  (for example the PCs that i might have bought next year for our engineering group at work.  Now assured to NotBeDell (tm) )  I'm glad that you are overwhelmed with orders; maybe the Dell stock i stupidly bought years ago might regain some of its lost value. 

Meanwhile i am off to order parts from NewEgg and build my own.

The next whiff of smoke you smell will be my overclocked home built I7-860 system.  Good luck to all.

I am still waiting for my xps 8000 that i ordered from 11/20/2009. I received an delay of order  e-mail on 12/3 with EDD of 12/23. From reading all the posts I am not hopeful my present to my son will get here in time for the Christmas. Especially that it is still sitting in "In Production" mode,

I will be waiting for another delay e-mail and will cancel my order.

Here are the specs:

XPS 8000, 8GB RAM, SATA RAID 1 with dual 640 GB HardDrive, GEFORCE GT220. 

I will post an update if my status changes.

I've tried to cancel my order through the website but no confirmation of cancellation yet.  I will try the email address you provided.

I also tried the web site, and received no response for 3 days, so I used that email address which was listed at the bottom of the Order Delayed email I received from Dell.  I still had to wait 2 days for that email to get processed, though.

I did so on 12/15 and is route to me as we speak and will have it here on Monday the 21st.

Sheesh.  Rediculously slow!  ;-)

To recap, I ordered my XPS 9000 on 11/27, was given an EDD of 12/16 and then last week that slipped to January 12th.  Nothing special about my config. I run the IT department at a medium sized company and all of our desktop machines are Dells, and we buy a lot of software through them too.  We're not a big account for Dell, but we're big enough that I have a Dell sales rep who knows us and knows who I am.  So I called him last week to see if he could do anything about the order for my 9000.  Consumer and commercial sales are completely different organizations at Dell, so he said probably not, but he'd try. I got an email from him this morning saying that my machine was 2-3 days away from shipping.  My order status page still shows an EDD of 1/12, but I'd guess he has access to better information than I do.   So it might just be coincidence that I'll be getting it soon, or he might have been able to move me to the front of the line somehow, or he might be wrong and I won't see the machine until the middle of January.  I hope he's right, but I won't believe it until I have a tracking number.

My sales rep was right.  Fedex picked up my order yesterday and I should have it by 12/22, only 6 days later than the original EDD.  I don't think he had any success getting my order expedited.    I think it was held up for lack of a part, like the i7-920, and when it came in they built the box.  Hopefully this mean other peoples orders are getting filled now too.

Good luck and Merry Christmas!

Surprise.Surprise. I just got another delay notification this morning that my EDD will now be 1/4/2010. I am in the process of cancelling the order.

I own 4 systems from Dell and all of my previous experiences were very good. This experience changed my perception about this company and will be taking my business somewhere else from now on.

Thanks Dell. You've lost another customer.

Well, Dell is so mixed up at this point they do not know what they are doing any more.

I ordered a XPS 9000 on 11-27, EDD was 12-15. I got a delay of e-mail on 12-13 saying it won't ship until 1-15 next year.

So i call up and cancel the order. No problem, later that day i get the e-mail the order has been canceled on 12-14 and i check the order status page for this order and it shows canceled.

I go out to a local store and purchase a PC for my son for Christmas.
Today FED-X shows up at my door 12-18 with the PC from Dell. It the one that they were not able to ship until next year, the one that i had canceled, it came FED-X and i took the free 5-7 day method when i ordered this PC.

Dell your order system  and shipping system is a mess.

I sent it back and refused the PC as i have canceled this order.

:P

It's especially frustrating to see people with order dates in November having their systems shipped already.

I placed an order for the XPS 8000 on 10/31.  EDD was 11/16.  It has been pushed back multiple times.  The last 2 emails (of 4-5) I got pushed it to 12/9, which I approved, and then 12/10, respectively.  I approved 12/10 as well, assuming that meant it was about to ship.

I checked up on it online and it showed 12/10 as my new revised date.  About 48 hours later that date had magically slipped to 12/28.  There was no notice given, nor did they ask for approval.

A couple of days ago I spent a couple of hours on the phone (mostly on hold) with Dell trying to get this sorted out and get in contact with a supervisor, which was like pulling teeth. 

The CSR, of course, claimed they shipped systems in the order in which the order was receieved, but clearly, that's not the case, and I mentioned that.  They stuck to the line about it being company policy that they ship first come, first served. 

They claimed there was especially high demand for the XPS 8000, at which point I asked the supervisor if that was the case, why did they just add to the pile by running it as a special during the "8 Days of Dell" promotion, and if they know the delays are greater than 7 weeks at this point, why the website was still projecting 2 weeks to build and ship a system that was configured that day?  The best he said he could do for me is an upgrade to  2 day shipping and a promise to tell the production dept to put a priority on my build.

I am beyond frustrated with Dell at this point.  I'm by no means their largest customer, but I've spent the last 5-6 years ordering systems from them for myself,  friends, family and the occasional client and referring multiple people to them when asked what they should do for a new computer.

I can't say I'm inclined to do so ever again after this experience, unless Dell does something significant to earn my trust.  If this system isn't here on or before the 28th, the order is getting cancelled and Dell can kiss all future business from me and my contacts goodbye.  Up to this point I've been more than pleased with the machines and the prices Dell has offered, but they're not worth this - especially when I'm more than capable of "rolling my own".

At this point I regret not doing that this time around.

I woke up this morning, and got two FedEx tracking numbers for my order. Presumably one is for the monitor and the other is for the computer. Both are scheduled to be delivered on 12/24, which means my Christmas is saved.

I am still waiting for my xps 8000 that i ordered from 11/20/2009. I received an delay of order  e-mail on 12/3 with EDD of 12/23. From reading all the posts I am not hopeful my present to my son will get here in time for the Christmas. Especially that it is still sitting in "In Production" mode,   I will be waiting for another delay e-mail and will cancel my order. Here are the specs: XPS 8000, 8GB RAM, SATA RAID 1 with dual 640 GB HardDrive, GEFORCE GT220.  I will post an update if my status changes.

Of course, given the problems you've had with Dell on your online order, I can understand if you don't want to give the company any more of your business.

And, perhaps the saddest commentary on this whole issue is this:  I received my XPS9000 yesterday.  It is a slick machine.  Dell can still turn out some  of the better hardware on the market today.  Fit and finish are good, everything works fine out of the box.  Dell was correct to offer me this computer as a warranty exchange, and I'm pleased with the computer.  BUT.....the fact that I had to "raise a stink" (as another poster said) and waste hours of my time on the phone to get basic and accurate information about shipping dates, and the terrible communication that Dell's outsourced customer support provides still leave me with a bad taste in  my mouth and a bad overall impression of Dell's way of doing business with consumers.  Maybe it's different if you're an enterprise customer spending hundreds of thousands of dollars with Dell but if you're a Joe Average who's buying a computer for home or small business use, the outsourced support is terrible.  Because of this experience, I'd have to think long and hard about whether or not I'd buy from Dell in the future.  Chris, I hope you and your colleagues are reading these messages and taking them to heart.  I've been a customer of Dell's, both as an enterprise buyer and now as an average consumer for more than 20 years and, while I'd like to keep buying Dell products, unless customer service changes hugely for the better, I'm on the fence for now.

[snip] The CSR, of course, claimed they shipped systems in the order in which the order was receieved, but clearly, that's not the case, and I mentioned that.  They stuck to the line about it being company policy that they ship first come, first served.  They claimed there was especially high demand for the XPS 8000, at which point I asked the supervisor if that was the case, why did they just add to the pile by running it as a special during the "8 Days of Dell" promotion, and if they know the delays are greater than 7 weeks at this point, why the website was still projecting 2 weeks to build and ship a system that was configured that day?  The best he said he could do for me is an upgrade to  2 day shipping and a promise to tell the production dept to put a priority on my build.

When they say they build them first come, first served, it's true in a way but an oversimplification.   They maximize throughput based on parts availability and assembly capacity.  If you ordered before me and your machine is waiting for an i5 processor and mine is waiting for a video card, and they get a pallet of video cards, they're going to build and ship my machine even though yours is still waiting.  If we're both waiting for an i5 they'll build and ship yours first.

I don't see delays like this when ordering business PC's from Dell but that's a different situation because those machines aren't using top of the line processors and video cards, so running out of those components is very unusual.   Gamers and geeks always want the latest, hottest, fastest components so you have to accept that there will be shortages from time to time.

I don't fault Dell's manufacturing, I fault sales for giving people unrealistic delivery dates when they order and making it so hard to cancel orders machines that aren't even scheduled for assembly yet.  I don't get treated like this when I order Optiplex machines for the company I work for.  Dell needs to have one standard of integrity and transparency for dealing with all their customers.  As someone else pointed out, their business customers are also buying personal machines for home use.

I too am a delayed XPS 8000 victim.  Here is my story: on December 10th I ordered an XPS 8000 system and monitor from DELL using their Web site.  At that time the EDD was showing as 12/24/09.  My order was accepted and my first hint of trouble was when I received the confirming e-mail notify.  The EDD in that message had been pushed back until 12/31/09!  I thought that was a little strange (I hadn't discovered this Forum or Thread yet.)  I was curious why, through the whole ordering process, the date shown was 12/24/09, and then in the e-mail received right after the order was placed it had changed already to 12/31/09.  More surpises were to come; once I navigated to My Order Status page, the EDD date shown was now (I believe) 1/11/10.

A day or so later, on the Order Status page, the date of 1/11/10 was gone and it now showed "NA".)  I surfed around a bit and did some Forum reading and discovered all of the discontentment at the way DELL has handled these orders.  I noticed several posters had gone over to HP and thought I would take a look there for relief.  While I was a bit wary of their shipping dates there was some anectdotal evidence from fellow posters that the HP machines were in fact being shipped in a week or so.  One caught my eye, their equivalent to the XPS 8000, a HP Pavilion Elite e9270f which was available in either a custom configuration or a "Quick Ship" model.  The Quick Ship version was almost identical to my original order from DELL, i.e., an i7-860, 8 GB of RAM, a 1 TB HD, ATI 1 MB video card, Win7 64-bit, 2-yr warranty and even included a second DVD drive, a Blu-Ray player (free).  It was on sale for $1039.99, without monitor.  They claimed it would ship same day and also had free 2nd Day Shipping via Fed-Ex.  I decided to take a chance, added a huge 25" hi-def monitor and placed the order online.

Here are the results: I ordered online at 10:45 am, received an Order Confirmation right away and then, surprise, received a Shipping Confirmation less than 30 minutes later!  It included the two Tracking Numbers for Fed-Ex and I could tell they had already picked it up at a warehouse in Memphis TN.  I followed the progress throughout the day, it came by plane overnight to the city near me and was on a local Fed-Ex truck for delivery early the next morning.  Shortly after noon that day the friendly F-E guy was on my doorstep with  the two packages.  Total time from online order to my house= 26 HOURS!  (An aside, my buddy in PA was so impressed he ordred the same system last evening around 7:00 pm and his arrived today at lunch... his total was 17 hours and also free shipping)

I submitted my second e-mail to DELL notifying them of the order cancellation and the reason.  No response as of yet and I have no intention of hanging on the phone for hours, waiting for some person in Bangalore to try and jack me around.  I place the order online and I will cancel it online.  It is the week before Christmas and I don't have the time to play the runaround game with the lack of customer support.  Just to be sure I have contacted my credit union and blocked the charge from appearing.

Like others on here, I am not really angry, more like disgusted as to what has happened to a formerly good company.  I have always dealt with the Small Business side of the house and had really good experiences.  But the Consumer side definitely needs some work and I am amazed no one has addressed these issues?  After reading hundreds of posts on this Forum I decided to cut my losses and bail now.  If others are on the fence, I suggest you cruise over to HP-Direct and prowl around a bit.  You will like what you see and you will love their shipping!

Finally, my local paper had an article today in their business page, credited to the Motley Fool Web site.  They claim HP computer sales are up 13% and all at the expense of DELL.  Read this Forum thread and not hard to imagine, is it?

Good luck to all and Merry Christmas!

While it sounds like HP has a far better handle on shipping their similar range machines. If you go to the HP boards, you'll find complaints of the e9290 (along with other i7-920 models in the series) being plagued by faulty motherboard issues. The people complaining in those forums are having very similar issues with HP customer support when it comes to get straight answers about the motherboard issues. I had initially planned on buying the e9290, but after reading several complaints on the HP message and in some user reviews on Best Buy, I jumped shipped and decided on the XPS 9000. It would seem that customers of both companies are having major customer support issues. I'm thinking that their are a lot Apple customers that aren't to thrilled right about now either, with the i-Mac issues. To Apple's credit, they have at least released a public apology. The last I read, HP was still trying to pretend there was no motherboard problem with i7-920 Elite series (despite claims from customers that the motherboard manufacturer even said the motherboards were faulty), and obviously plenty of people on here still can't get a straight answer about when they're actually going to see their machines. It seems that customer support with the "big" companies has fallen by the wayside for some of these issues.

While I don't have anything to complain about (my machine shipped this week, and the estimated delivery date is actually EARLIER than the initial date given to me when I ordered), I feel for the people who are in the dark about when they will receive their machines, especially since it sounds like several people were hoping to have them in time for Christmas. I also feel for the customers with the BSOD problem that seems to be standard on some of the comparable HP models. Hopefully, both companies will realize that they are losing customers, as a result of poor communication about these issues.

Updated: Actually, it seems Dell has issued a general apology for delays, as well. There is an article about the apology at PC Mag's site.

And, perhaps the saddest commentary on this whole issue is this:  I received my XPS9000 yesterday.  It is a slick machine.  Dell can still turn out some  of the better hardware on the market today.  Fit and finish are good, everything works fine out of the box. ......

And your still complaining? Pleease.  Have some respect for the less fortunate!!!

While it sounds like HP has a far better handle on shipping their similar range machines. If you go to the HP boards, you'll find complaints of the e9290 (along with other i7-920 models in the series) being plagued by faulty motherboard issues. The people complaining in those forums are having very similar issues with HP customer support when it comes to get straight answers about the motherboard issues. I had initially planned on buying the e9290, but after reading several complaints on the HP message and in some user reviews on Best Buy, I jumped shipped and decided on the XPS 9000.

Dell has generally awful support. That's been the case for technical support for years. My experience with the hardware, however, had been positive enough that I've have few occasions where it was necessary. The poor order support was extremely disappointing, but neither particularly shocking nor a dealbreaker for me -- as long as the hardware remains solid, I'd have a tough time dismissing the company out of hand.

But then again, there are plenty of people in this thread with experiences far worse than my own. If I'd been delayed four or five times, I probably would have bailed too.