2009/10/21 esmie moo <esmie_...@yahoo.ca>: > Good Morning Gentle Readers, > > Please forgive me for my post but I didn't know who or where to turn to. > Recently I bought a laptop from Dell. All is well however, they keep sending > me the paper work (including the warranty) in French. Despite my numerous > calls to their not so attentive Customer support this problem continues. > Since there is no Customer Support in Canada, the call is routed to India. > They told me that if I want an English document (in this case the warranty) I > have to download it. I tried the U.S. Customer Support (call routed to > India) and they told me to call the Customer Support for Canada. I checked > the DELL website to see if there is a complaints department in the U.S. to my > disbelief there is none. Would anybody know if there is an e-mail address > where I can register my complaint? Does DELL send their correspondance in > Spanish? Thanks.
Ah, Dell's Indian "support". Lots of experience with that. A couple of approaches: 1) When dealing with the Indian support people, don't allow them to waste your time - something they seem to be trained to do. Tell them right up front that your time is limited, and this call needs to be handled completely in five minutes. When it's not dealt with in that time, insist firmly that you must speak with a supervisor. No need to shout or whine, just firmly demand. Don't talk about anything else except transferring your call to the supervisor or manager. Generally I've dealt with them on technical issues (broken hardware), and until I got smart, the call would go something like: [establish machine type and service tag] Me: I have a DVD drive with a failure code xxxx:yyyy, and I need to get it replaced. Them: OK - please <perform useless procedure x with Windows> Me: But it's a hardware problem, and I already have the failure code from the standalone Dell diagnostic program. [iterate 5 or 6 times] Them: You will have to reinstall Windows. Do you have the CDs? Me: How will reinstalling Windows fix this hardware problem? Them: Well maybe you are right, but we have to be sure, so please <do more useless stuff and then> reinstall Windows Me: There is no reason I should wipe out my perfectly good Windows installation when the problem is a defective DVD drive! Why can't you just send me a new drive? Them: Yes sir, but I have my procedures I must go through, and <reinstall Windows> [iterate some more - generally takes 1 to 1.5 hours in total] Them: OK - we have determined that this is a hardware problem with your DVD drive. Me: @#$! Them: Now you have next business day coverage, so we will be sending this out on Tuesday, and it should arrive by Thursday at the latest. Me: Thursday? But it's Friday today! Them: No sir, it is Saturday, and weekend is not business days. We are shipping on next business day, but we cannot control when it will arrive. Me: It may be Saturday in Bangalore, but it's Friday here in Toronto. I want the drive on Monday. And even if it was Saturday, why wouldn't you ship on Monday? Why Tuesday? Them: long content-free non-answer about shipping and couriers and such. [etc. etc.] Drive eventually arrives on Wednesday. Now I just refuse to engage with them on the silly stuff. There's no point arguing over the ship date and such, and I start right off by telling them politely but firmly that I have a strictly hardware problem, I will not be performing any experiments with Windows, I am an IT professional - not a home user, my time is very limited and the call should take no longer than 5 minutes to resolve. Of course it goes over, and I again refuse to engage on the details, but insist on going up a level. Usually the next guy is sufficiently anxious to get himself out of the loop that he tells the first guy to just send the replacement hardware. OK - even better than all this is to avoid India completely. It's not true that there is no local support; do you think that a Big 5 bank who's just bought 1000 laptops gets their calls routed to Bangalore, and gets told to reinstall Windows? No - they get local support. Unfortunately they know from your service tag that you aren't RBC or TD, and off to India you go. So two ways to avoid that: 2) For administrative stuff, you may be able to do it all online. When it works, it works fairly well, and you can get both tech doc, and warranty info online. You can even transfer ownership of a machine if you sell it to someone. It beats talking to any of their people at all. 3) Go through sales rather than support. If you bought a machine online, there still seems to be a sales person in the loop - the trick is getting his or her name. It should be on the invoice, or at least there will be a sales contact number on it. Once you get the sale person, no matter how much of a junior order-taker on the line, don't let them fob you off to support. Insist that this is a sales problem, not a support issue. If you bought over the phone in the first place, you should already know who sold it to you. If you bought from a retail store (I'm not sure if Staples and such are still selling Dells), go in there and complain to them. Don't let *them* try to tell you to call Dell support, because you know where that'll get you... 4) If your employer buys Dells, find out who deals with Dell there, and have a chat with them, and *their* sales guy. Make it in their interest to scratch the itch - make them very itchy! Unsatisfying generalities that could apply to any vendor? Sure, but you need to pick your battles, and not let them set the agenda. It's your machine and your money. Good luck... Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
