The post is going to be long, so I apologize to whosoever is reading it in advance.

I recently bought a new Dell system (Dell Inspiron 13 7306 2-in-1 SILVER). I chose Dell as I had pleasant customer care experience in the past. I never expected the customer service to be deteriorated to this extent! The customer online customer care representatives have absolutely no knowledge about the product(s) or on how to handle a order request. I will break this down in two parts.

1. Getting a wrong product

The order placing experience was nothing out of ordinary, or that's what I thought at least. I had gotten in touch with a sales representative as I wanted some information about the computer I was interested in buying. I bought the computer on October 1, and on that very day, the product information page only showed the black variant (which is also sold as Inspiron 13 2-in-1), however, in the product details, it was mentioned that the system I was buying was available on in silver color. A little context, the black variant comes with a magnetic pen holder and host of other features, whereas the silver variant does not. Since there was no information about the silver product on the information page, I decided to ask if the silver variant comes with a magnetic pen holder as well (assuming the design would be similar). To my delight, I was informed by the sales representative that the silver variant too comes with a magnetic pen holder. The order was placed, with an estimated delivery date of October 22 (more on this later). As I was eagerly waiting for my order, I ended up checking it out again. The product information page now featured the silver variant (brief introduction), however, did not mention anything about presence (or absence) of the magnetic pen holder. Which is when I ended up digging up product manual for the model. There happened to be two distinct product manual. Links are:

• Link to manual for the silver variant
•  Link to manual for black variant 

This is where I noticed that the manual for silver variant does not mention anything about a pen holder. So I decided to get in touch with a representative. I asked them to confirm about this feature in different ways so as to avoid any sort of confusion from my end. They responded positively about the feature being present. However, when I received my order, I did not find a magnetic pen holder. On contacting the CARES team, all they had to say was that the representative would have been confused, and they offered be a full refund and return of the product. What they fail to understand is that it is not about me wanting to return the product, but it is about how cheated I feel as a consumer. I feel like I did not receive the product that I was promised. Moreover, the product that I was promised does not exist to begin with (in the specifications that I was looking for). . I was tempted to do so initially but then thought that it is pointless.

2. Order Status confusion

As the expected delivery date was approaching, I was getting anxious as there was no update regarding the order status on the website. I ended up contacting the order status representatives several times, getting a different answer every single time. One of the representatives told me that they are out of parts and that it's going to take indefinite time. They asked me to get in touch with the order representatives over phone who then will substitute the missing parts to fulfill the order in a timely manner (as if that is even possible). The other representative mentioned that the computer is ready for shipping and is at their Chicago manufacturing facility. Dell does not even have a manufacturing facility in Chicago! The computer is made in China. How hard is it to just tell that it is in transit and is coming from overseas (China in this case)! Does Dell really think that their consumers were born yesterday and can be fooled? On contacting Dell CARES on here is when I got accurate order status. I wish I had known of this community before talking to misinformed representatives. But then, why do they even have their jobs to begin with if all they do is straight up lie about every thing!

On this note, I will end my rant. I hope Dell learns from this experience and stops playing games with their customers. I'm certain a lot of customers would have had the misfortune of dealing with them. And I hope this post helps other people out there to do their homework before getting in touch with someone. More likely you will be teaching them about products than them informing you anything, but oh well!

END