Hello,
two years ago, we decided to give Dell a try. We're generally happy with the products, our servers and switchs work well. But if there's one thing that we could easily do without is your support. I don't know how it is in the rest of the world but in Canada, Dell has easily the worst possible kind of support we've ever experienced. Here's our story:
A year ago, when we had to order our servers and main switch, we spent weeks speaking to different people in order to get the hardware we needed. Nobody seemed to be interested in giving us some real support. The situation become so ridiculous that people working at Dell in the US apologized to us and assured us this was a one time problem.
Fast forward to this year, we now need to upgrade one of our server's memory. We requested to buy the additional RAM at Dell and got a quick reply from somebody from so-and-so in the sales department. He confirmed the kind of memory we needed, twice, and proceeded with the order. Within a day, several emails were exchanged with several people, the credit card charged and the memory on its way. Buying experience: great.
A couple of days later, we get the memory, install it but the server simply does not detect it, at all. We email him, wait a bit, nothing. We email again, still nothing except for a message saying he's not available right now and that we should contact someone else instead. We send another email (again, simple request: "the memory you selected for us and sold us just not work, please advise"), wait, nothing. This time, we send a copy of the email, in high priority, to everyone who was part of the original transaction, including someone else and... nothing. Not a single reply
As of this day, it's been almost 4 weeks that we've tried to contact Dell for this simple issue and as I had some more time this afternoon, I decided to call support directly. This is what happened:
- First call: enter different options to reach "server support", the guy there tells me he can't help me, then he connects me to a second guy who tells me we don't have the kind of server he supports and wants to transfer us again. He tries several times, apologizes saying that the internal system is just not working and tells me to call again and select "server support"....
- Second call: same messages, but when prompted for our express service code, I enter it. Upon confirmation, the system says that the number we're trying to reach is not valid anymore (?!) and that we need to call 800-289-3355 which seemed to be a phone number for Dell USA.
- Third call: I reach "server support" again, the guy there seems to be a bad mood and greets me with his barely more polite version of "what do you want?". At this point, I'm still calm. I tell him about my problem, again, he asks me for my service tag, again, and tells me he needs to transfer me. While he explains me that, I ask him if he's sure about where's he's going to transfer me to, that I'm tired to call again and again and be transferred to different people, to which he replies "will you let me finish? don't interrupt me". That's where I lose my cool, tell him that I certainly don't need this kind of attitude after everything I've went through to try and get some basic support on a simple order and he immediately hangs up.
So... that's about it. At this point, the only thing I felt I could do was write this message. I can't call again, I feel I won't be patient enough and people at the customer support center for Canadian customers just seem to be plain incompetent. A shame really, because your products would be so much better without this kind of experience.
Cyril