"Ordered an IPS monitor(U2410). Was content w/ it for about a month and then it developed a stuck pixel(red) near the top bezel area. So I had to request RMA. 1st replacement that came in had an obvious green tint to the left bottom of the screen, so I returned it. 2nd replacement was tint-free but a stuck pixel near the bottom right. 3rd replacement was new which was nice of Dell but had a uniform red/pink tint across the bottom of the screen, so returned it. 4th replacement was a wrong model (2407WFP). 5th replacement was finally tint and defective pixel free. Their customer service is the finest I've seen but the quality control they exercise on their so called premium panels are utterly pathetic. Only 1 point on the centre of the screen is tested and calibrated for acceptable avg deltaE < 5, which is a good indicator of how transparent the green/pink issue can be. Googling will yield a myriad of hits on green/pink shade issue which is a result of the panel being a wide gamut screen. Top-notch customer service coupled w/ sorry quality assurance policy is overall a little better than average. "

"I am very disappointed with Dell's customer service and very shady business practices right now. On Cyber monday, I attempted to order a Microsoft Zune and a Dell external DVD RW optical drive. Due to online sales, I ordered the two for total savings of around $90. I received order confirmation via email, and figured everything was fine. A week goes by, and no order, so I check online, and my entire order had been cancelled. No email, no phone call to let me know, just cancelled. I get on the phone to their sales support, and after wading through about 3 departments and long bouts of phone-jazz, I finally get to a helpful rep. He informs me because it was a payment issue on my part, they can't give me the sale price any more. There was nothing wrong with my credit card. No holds, no errors in the address, and plenty of credit. The sales rep, while he appeared to be trying to get me the discount by going to his supervisor and customer service, was unable to help in the end."

"Dishonest sales practices.
Customer waited too long and missed to meet his timeline.
Customer's credit is illegally used by Dell to close their Financial Quarter as profit although Dell has no intention to satisfy the order.
False Sales Pitch "Bait"
Pathetic communication.
10 year long Customer is requesting publicly to close his accounts as he moved onto Amazon."

"This is my 3rd order in a row from Dell that has resulted in a defective product. Dealing with their support is a nightmare. This time the product was dead on arrival and they state explicitly that you must notify them within 21 days to return an item. I sent an RMA request the day I received the item, waited 5 days, no response. I submitted another one, no response. I tried to contact them on the phone and sat on hold for 35 minutes before being told that I would not get a return yet because one item had not yet been delivered. So basically I have to call back and wait on hold again for another ridiculous amount of time because a computer companies stupid computer system is so outdated that they cant process a return for an item on an order until the entire order is received. Last order from Dell from me, ever. "

"Horrible, horrible company. Terrible terrible customer service. No one has a clue, no one cares. The stupidest person is me however, that I ordered 5 times from them. Each order was a big pain. Spent hours with customer service to get it right. The only relief are their prices. I would not want to buy from them again and will militantly stop everyone I know from buying from them."

"With larger companies it depends on what rep you get as to whether or not you have a good experience. I've dealt with Dell for serveral years and have had a pretty good experience overall. The last time I attempted to order from them was a nightmare though. I was ordering an unusual 3 monitor configuration, which Dell really only supports through their Precision line, which is a business only desktop.

It took me three days to actually place my order because my phone calls kept getting dropped because no one could help me. It was very frustrating, but, calling HP and the local shop wasn't any better.

I finally was able to place my order but it was challenging at best."

"I ordered a 32" Vizio HDTV from the Dell website yesterday. I received no confirmation e-mail that my order was processed and the online ordering system did not update all day. So I assumed there must have been a system error and I did not want to miss the deal that they were having on that particular TV, so I ordered again. I then called Dell's customer service line today and after wading through 15-20 minutes of their automated telephone system and holding for 30 minutes, finally got on the line with a service representative. They then told me that, despite my e-mail I sent them canceling the first order yesterday (saying I didn't know it went through), the order was already "In-Production" and could not be canceled. So now, I must wait for two TV's to come to my door, then return one of them to Dell.

Basically, they send NO confirmation e-mails, which is astounding for a huge company like Dell. Their online ordering system does not update for roughly one day. Their phone system when you call them is confusing, complicated, and takes up about 15-20 minutes of your time to do anything. I will never shop with Dell again."

"Ordered a pack of 8 AA eneloop batteries for super cheap since it's on sale. Shipping was free and I got the package in about 1 week even though they said the estimated shipping date was 3 weeks. The package was in perfect condition shipped by Purolator and the batteries are now in my Fenix TK40 flash light. Transaction went smoothly and no problems at all."

"Wow! Lots of negative reviews for Dell's online shop, but I experienced the complete opposite. I ordered a game (L4D2 PC) at an amazing price with no problem whatsoever. Received standard, instant invoice via email, shipping notification, etc. I selected FREE 5-day shipping but received my item in two days! My shipping envelope said "FedEx 2-day Air" so it was upgraded for free! No complaints here! Highly recommended."

"Bought a 'Scratch & Dent' PC from Dell Outlet on the 12th, received on the 15th. The PC is in pristine condition, with tons of upgrades that saved me well over $300 dollars compared to buying it new. I'm even eligible for a FREE upgrade to Windows 7!

I am a video editor, so it was great to find a quad core PC for $380 after tax. It's the Dell Inspiron 546, with an Athlon II X4 620 processor at 2.6 GHz, 4GB of DDR2-800 RAM, a 500GB SATA hard drive (with a 1.5TB hard drive coming in the mail), dual DVD drives (one for burning, one for watching), and a dedicated video card, the ATi Radeon HD4350. The upgrades ALONE cost $370 from Dell's retail website!!!!

My only problem with Dell is that I cannot use my Dell Preferred Account Credit on their Small Business store, and that I must apply for a second line of credit. That is kind of silly.

I have bought from dell several times in the past with no problems. Hard drives, monitors, laptops.. you name it. If you hang around sites like slickdeals, you can pick up a Dell PC at a awesome price like I did. Building PCs is fine and dandy, but I love my Dell Inspiron 546! "

"I was told twice my hard drive would cost $35, yet I was billed $183.26!!??!?!?!?!?!!!! It sells at fry's Electronics for $30."

"Dell customer service is terrible after the order is first made. They are habitually slow with orders, and do not provide a realistic delivery date when placing an order. I recommend not ordering any custom system if you have a true need for a computer within a timeframe of less than several months!

I placed an order with Dell for an Inspiron 15 laptop in mid-October and was told that the laptop would be shipped by Nov 2, probably arriving earlier. About 2 weeks later, I received an email that the order was delayed, with a new shipping date of Nov 9. A week after this, I received both a call and another email from Dell stating that there was an additional delay, with a new shipping date of Nov 16. For this message, I was required to call or email to confirm that I still wanted the order delivered. The email stated that this was required by the Federal Trade Commission. I confirmed that I wanted the laptop delivered, although I was getting pretty irritated that Dell cannot provide a reasonable estimate of the shipping date for orders. It seems like they should be able to know the time required to produce orders, total order capacity and number of orders, and provide an estimate that is correct within a couple days. My strong suspicion is that they could, but choose not to since many customers might cancel if they knew the true shipping date up front.

In any case, there was a third delay about a week later. This time, I was not at home when the email (and telephone call) came, and I was not able to respond for over a day. I called within 48 hours of receiving the message, however, and told the woman I spoke to that I wanted to keep the order active. I asked her if Dell would do anything for the inconvenience that they caused me with the long delays. She said there was nothing she could do, and did I want to just cancel the order? I was upset when speaking with her, but told her to keep the order active and I would call and cancel if I found another computer elsewhere for similar price. After speaking with her, I also sent an email response to Dell saying that I wanted to keep the order active. Later that same day, I received an email stating that the order was cancelled!

I was furious, and tried to get them to reinstate the order. I was told by several people at Dell that they can only start the order process over again from the beginning, and that the delivery date will be later, especially with people now placing orders for Xmas.

I really just feel that Dell's customer service is lousy. It seems borderline illegal that they could cancel my order this way. I have been a loyal Dell customer in the past (I currently own two Dell laptops and also had a Dell desktop in the past), but I will never order from Dell again.

I don't have any complaints with the Dell products, but they really need to change the ordering process and the way they treat their customers."

"Worst computer buying experience of my life. I purchased this system (several invoice numbers) and the pieces all came at different times and much more slowly that promised. I also purchased a 150.00 in home installation. The sales agent advised me that if I purchased the fax/printer it would also be set up.

When the system arrived we were never contacted about the installation we paid for. After spending more than three hours calling around and getting treated badly by support agents we were advised that there was no "in home installation" but that they'd figure out something. Eventually it turned out there actually was in home installation and we ended up dealing with two different people -- one of which eventually came out and sort of installed the computer. The fax/printer never worked properly and was not set up correctly nor does it work to this day.

Dell sent out a customer satisfaction survey but the pin they provided did not work so I was never able to inform them of the time they wasted.

They are supposed to provide telephone support for issues that arise. They outsource their support to other countries -- which is not inherently bad -- but most of the people assisting us could care less about helping us and mostly wanted to argue with us and inflame the problem.

I'd love to tell the whole story but frankly the reason I recommended dell for my 78 year old mother was due to the 24 hour telephone support. That has proven to be a disaster. Not only was the in home setup a waste of money -- the telephone support has been also useless. Frankly I should have recorded the calls and placed the recordings on the internet. That would tell the whole story.

In short after having purchased (over the last 25 years) more than a three million dollars worth of computers from various computer suppliers -- this is the absolute worst buying/support experiences of my life. I wasted more than 7 hours (total) of my time trying to assist my mother to buy from Dell and get support from them. It was a disaster and her fax is still not working properly. Unfortunately I don't live in the same city or I'd be helping myself. In the end she had to hire a professional at 90.00 an hour to come out and resolve her issues. She could have just bought locally from an independent dealer and paid them for in home service. It would have been cheaper, wasted none of my time, and she'd be satisfied."

"This low rating is not about Dell products, which are not bad, but about Dell's customer support and sales. I have had several purchases directly with Dell, through both Home and Small biz departments, big ticket items as well as small purchases. Dell's site is Ok, but if something doesn't work and you have to talk to a person for me 3 out of 4 occasions it's been a frustrating experience.

For example, my last order didn't ship and Dell didn't tell me about it. They send me a confirmation email that it shipped but it didn't show a tracking number. No other word from them. 3 weeks later I contacted Dell to see what's going on. Order status in my online account didn't show anything useful. I tried chat, they gave me UPS tracking id which proved ups never actually shipped it. When I asked why they told me to call customer care phone. I called customer care and was bounced to tree different reps (all with Indian accents). I waited in queue patiently and each time they would first asked for name and order #, put me on hold, then tell me they need to transfer me to another rep. The last one couldn’t tell me why my order didn't ship, and when I ask to reorder said he can't do that he needs to transfer me to a sales rep, then he just hang up. 30 minutes waisted, for what should be a simple issue.

Next, I used sales chat to try to reorder. Same thing, I got bounced through 3 different reps, each time a rep would repeat the question, I would wait, then I would get message that I'm being transferred to another rep. It doesn't make sense but it sure feels like they don't care. And don't even try to call sales, they have the worst possible setup. You have to talk to a machine and answer what feels like a survey before they will transfer you to a live person and some reps are poorly trained and have heavy accents. To be fair, some reps are good and I have had good experiences with sales reps on the small biz side - but overall dealing with Dell has been unsatisfying experience. Best to avoid them.
"

"Purchased a few laptops (3) and some other odd items from Dell.

First, if you are going to buy from Dell, make sure you are on one of their coupon lists. Oft-times you can combine a dell coupon code, with an already discounted sales price. For example, on the last laptop we bought, we were able to combine the online sale with a 40% off coupon for get a 17" Vostro laptop for well over 55% off total price.

As for buying non-computer stuff from Dell, they often have some pretty killer deals on other electronics (again, some of these can be combined with Dell coupon codes for some fantastic savings).

The ordering, sales, and shipping process has always been pretty decent in my experience. In Dell forums I've certain heard a few horror stories of forever-delayed shipments, but I've never experienced such myself.

For returns, it is a doable process (I had to return one laptop), but they will make you just through hoops of fire (and 26 different 'let me transfer you' call center tactics) to get through the process. Be patient and you'll get there. Once I was given the RMA, the return shipping went well, and the item was credited back to my card within 3 days.

I am sure I'll end up buying another laptop (or 3) from Dell down the road. With the sales and stacked coupons, you can usually find a quite nice deal. "