3+ years ago, world class journalist/blogger Jeff Jarvis was in a serious war with Dell computer. Reading Jeff's "Dell Hell" became almost a national obsession. In fact if you 'Google' Jeff, before you even get done typing his name, you will get:
So, despite this, I figure 3 years, it can't still be that messed up. Here just the highlights of my side trip to Dell land.
I needed to get just a base desktop unit. No monitor or anything else for that matter, just a cheap box. After making my way through the Canadian web site, I managed to place an order for something around $450. It was with some decent hardware, memory, large hard drive, etc. It wasn't a bad price and despite the web site blowing up twice (it happens), I was good to go.
Email one comes in saying, your order is verified, life is good, let's rock -n- roll.
Email two comes in time stamped AFTER email one, 10 minutes or so later saying, just want to let you know we're thinking about this and we'll send you another email shortly verifying/confirming, etc, etc.
Hmmm.. This don't look good for moose and squirrel.
One day goes by and I get a phone call from, you guessed it, Dell. They leave voice mail telling me, yo dude, you ain't getting a dell just yet, call our order verification department. <sigh>
I call the 800 number and get this rather lame sequence:
1. Thank you for calling Dell, press one for english (in english) and two for french (in french). Note to French Canadians, this part wasn't lame, don't yell at me.
2. If you got an extension, press one. If you didn't get an extension press two. (huh? If I don't press one, can't you figure it out?)
3. You will here a series of tones while we transfer your call. Beep, Boop, Beep.
4. Elevator music. For 45 minutes but, duh, the call is important to them/us/you/him/her/it.
I hang up, of course.
That was yesterday. This morning, I have yet another voice mail from the Dude at Dell (a dudette actually) basically saying the same thing, give us a call.
Same sequence as above except when we get to item 4.
The new item 4: Elevator music for 7 minutes and then "We're sorry, the department you got transferred to is closed, call back on our next business day." <click>
Right. July 4th, silly me, Dell Canada, of course, July 4th, what was I thinking, Canadian arm of a company open on July 4th, how positively insane.
And it appears those crazy kids at Dell, while wanting to talk to me and show me the love, ran the credit card right on through.
Not that my trip to Dell should be a total loss, here is a great inspirational video from Steve Harvey, a super comedian, that was sponsored by Dell.
Automattic's Anti-Chaos Engineer Maya Desai doesn't have a nasty word to see about anyone, except "Dell is the most incompetent company I’ve ever dealt with and I’ve dealt with some wacky ones." http://mayadesai.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/dell/
Posted by: Lloyd Budd | July 04, 2008 at 14:20
Unfortunately, IVR hell is a fact of modern life. Fonolo to the rescue! (soon.)
Posted by: Shai Berger | July 07, 2008 at 08:10