Never, ever trust Dell

Here's the experience that my father and I have had since Sunday dealing with Dell tech support.

We have a next-day service contract with Dell, and since my dad runs tech support for GPOA, he has a Dell rep. This is important context for the terrible, terrible, terrible job that has followed.

My poor laptop, under warranty, has developed several vertical lines on the monitor. Its keyboard is missing left shift, and its hinges are broken so the screen doesn't stay up on its own. It's got some other problems, sure, but those are the problems that make my laptop far less usable than it ought to be.

On Sunday, we called in and described the problems. We were given a case number and told that the parts would ship that day and a tech would arrive the next day. We received no dispatch code. The next day, my father called about this. We were told that no dispatch had been created. We created a dispatch. The tech would be there the next day, and the parts would be shipped that day. Promises were made about some things that would happen later that day. When those didn't happen, my dad called in. The tech that picked up wouldn't help us because his server had crashed. He had to be convinced to transfer us to anyone else. No motion.

The following day (this is Tuesday, mind) the exact same thing happens. The next morning, we discover that our dispatch had been cancelled for a reason unspecified, and no parts have been shipped. I'm leaving town at 3:30pm tomorrow, and, in today's call--despite the fact that this situation has been explained to my dad's Dell rep--Dell refuses to promise that anything will happen before 3:30pm tomorrow.

If I were at any managerial level of Dell and I found out about this, I would be weeping that my organization was so embarrassing. I would be frightened that I worked for a company that isn't bending over backwards to compensate its customers who are paying for a next-day service contract and made decisions based on the terms of the next-day service contract and hire support personnel who actively attempt to prevent appropriate service from being rendered (our call was just transferred to "core support," which is code for "someone who will recite the same spiel the last guy did to frustrate you off the line").

I am horrified at what Dell is trying to pull. I had been considering getting myself a high-end Alienware desktop as a graduation present, seeing as my laptop's old and I have a netbook for things like class notes and use in lab. I can promise you that I will never, ever buy a Dell again (and that I will try to convince everyone else not to). You've crossed the wrong asshole, Dell.