"Great service and expedient delivery. Products were well priced."

"I just got off phone with Customer Support (in India, of course), trying to get Dell to call UPS and put an intercept on the package for local pick-up after holiday weekend.

Spent 5 min arguing with rep who told me that was impossible (had done this 5 min before with NewEgg who got this done in 2 min.) Asked for Supervisor, who also said this was impossible. Finally got UPS on a conference call, who said it was possible, but since Dell hadn't sent out shipping manifest in 2 days, that they had to call back when it was received.

This is certainly not the first time I've had such problems with Dell Customer Support.

Ditto that (problems) for support for the small-footprint Studio Hybrid. Asked for specific info whether a 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA drive could replace the stock 5400 RPM. I saw no reason why not, but called to make SURE. Call 1 - no you can't; call 2 - (after seeing this as an upgrade option) yes you can.

Also issue was whether a Wireless N card could be added after the fact - were antenna wires in place. Never got an answer. Then, what size is the card, 1/2 or full height. Specs say 1/2, service manual looks like full. Tech has no idea.

This can I say - I do anything I can to avoid these people unless absolutely necessary.

(Also find it interesting that Dell does not use these ratings to improve their Customer Service - but like Lilly Tomlin said, "We're the phone company, we don't have to care...")


UPDATE #1 (July 3, 2009)
Since I could not discern what kind of wireless LAN setup there was, I bit the bullet and ordered it with the Dell 1505 Wireless LAN card that had several poor reviews. Upon receipt of the computer, the Dell Wireless card performed badly, frequently dropping file transfers and hanging. After waiting on Tech Support in India for 45 min, I got Dell to send a replacement Dell card instead of the better reviewed Intel for which they do have drivers (they outright refused to do this enven though they stock it).

The replacement card showed up two days later, and performed almost as badly as the first.

I then ordered an Intel 5100 Wireless LAN card from Provantage which was delivered 3 days later and performed perfectly the first time.

I contacted Dell support by Chat this evening, was told that Dell would refund for the dysfunctional card, but I had to call their Customer Support Line, resulting in a dropped Indian queue after 30 minutes.

I've given up and applying for the refund through my Credit Card company.


UPDATE #2 (August 10, 2009) 1-1/2 months after my order was placed, I have received a refund on the defective LAN card from my Credit Card company with absolutely no communications for Dell which was mailed a duplicate letter of complaint with support documents for the refund (typical!!!)


MORAL - never, EVER deal with Dell unless they have something like this, that no one else makes. If you do deal with them, expect to do your own tech support as they are little help. What makes this worse is this unit was ordered for customization and resale through my consulting business; there is nothing like being hung out to dry by your supplier and having to apologize to your customer for their incompetence."

"two of the computers worked great but another one keeps restarting for no reason. called Dell a dozen times and get three tech to look into it. problem still not resolve over a month. we are supposed to have next business day service and I am quite certain it's hardware issue. but..."

"Tried to order Yamaha Headphones from Canadian Website. Would not let me login with my email address since in the past I had once used it for the US website. Customer Service Chat Link was broken. Called customer service, talked to three customer service representatives, some hard to understand, before I eventually got transferred back to the main menu. Gave up and registered on Dell Canada with another email address. Tried to place order, but website forced verisign for Mastercard. Had to set a Verisign password before I was allowed to place my order. Ordering process did not prompt for shipping address so I accidentally placed order with shipping address same as billing address. I tried to edit shipping address online but order would not show up. It kept directing me to the US site and kept showing me someone else's order history (it seems that dell re-uses customer numbers in different regions). SO, I called and the customer service representative said that they could not change the shipping address. I cancelled my order.

UPDATE: Event though the CSR gave me an order cancellation number, my headphones arrived the next day. In the end they delivered, but their online ordering system and customer support leaves much to be desired."

"Dell is so screwed up I have a "purchase id #" and an
order #". Go figure which one.

I've had my eye on the dell 2709 for months and jumped on it when there was a $180 price drop. When I received the emailed invoice it was for a DOUBLESIGHT 27". I called to rectify. It took one hour, countless automated choices and finally 6 phone transfers to get to the right rep.

The rep them proceeded to tell me it was my mistake when it was, in fact, IMPOSSIBLE since the only way to get to a Doublesight 27" is to actually search for "27", and I went through your standard "monitor>flat lcd>24" - 30" filters. The rep said I could find the Doublesight 27" by doing a 27" search, to which I repeated I never did a 27" search. Why should I when the 24 -30 filter yields only 6 or 7 results in the first place. Can you believe this went on the 15 minutes!!!

After that, all was straightened out. The only reason I didn't give Dell a 1 on their survey was because I got what I wanted in the end."

"Dell has a really bad return policy. I placed an order for a 32" Vezio HDTV. Then the next day I went to Costco and found Vezio 37" HDTV for the same price! So I called them and wanted to return it. They told me that they would charge me 15% restocking fee. I told them I hadn't received it yet. I'd like to refuse the delivery. They told me no matter what, 15% restocking fee cannot be removed. How ridiculous is that? It's brand new and never been touched.
Also, the customer service is really poor. When you call them for purchase, they are very nice, almost instantly answer the call. I had some glitches with credit card purchase: the VerifyVisa didn't work on their website. I called my visa company, and was told it's must be their website problem. Then I called them and left a message, and they call back in a short while, and very eager to get the deal done.
However, when I tried to call them to return, I was directly twice to a department, and waited half an hour to get some one to talk to. The representative is Leslie, and she told me they cannot remove the restocking fee. I asked for her supervisor, Eddy, and explained the situation. He too told me he cannot remove the restocking fee after I reasoned with him for a long time.
Post Note: When I received the TV, I noticed they shipped the TV with its original box, no additional packaging. Maybe that's why they need to charge me 15% restocking fee because it's not brand new anymore. Once I accept the 15% restocking fee, everything else with the return was very smooth: they send free return UPS lable and keep track of the return status."

"I have ordered a Inspiron 1525 from Dell. The overall quality is good, but the webcam did not work from the day 1, and I'm still trying to fix it ... I have reinstalled the drive for a good 10 times and tried to search online for solutions but still not able to fix it. Now I'm still using my desktop's webcam. Sign ... Not good."

"I wanted to buy my wife a really nice computer after our first year of marriage. after putting something together for price checking purposes i called and got a rep. named James. what a jerk. he acknowledge my wanting of a small discount at the beginning of the call (to keep in mind a bad experiance with dell 7 years ago)only to tell me after trying to sell me more items that i vehemently didn't want that after wasting 20-25 minutes of my time that there can be no discount after hinting that he would do exactly that at the beginning of the call, he then proceeded to talk over me many many times, interrupt me more than 10 times(not an exagerration) and actually yelled at me twice! so i then went to the online dell chat system and got a rather pleasant young lady from india who did most things right except whan i asked if we could UPGRADE my video card took me from a card with hdmi to a card that didn't and i didn't find out till i got the machine. this caused me to go to tech service when the computer arrived because no image would display on the screen. i was trying to plug into an hdmi connection that was not connected to the card, just the motherboard i believe....this took almost an hour with nothing being accomplished between me and this very thick russian accented imbicile i believe his name was Igor until i forced(would not give me a supervisor until i actually yelled at him for 5 minutes). i was told he was a trainee(that's an excuse? no one and i mean no one with his extreme lack of experiance should be on anyone's phone as a tech rep, especially being that i was promised he would be a specialist!) within 2-3 minutes the supervisor figured out the solution to the problem but i am still stuck with a non-hdmi(and pricey) video card! i have purchased from many stores in the past such as adorama camera and j-r music in nyc or online and some others and i never and i mean NEVER have stories like this, what gives Dell?? i thought we left bullies behind when we left grade school?!
p.s. now i need to buy a new computer for myself and i will not make the next purchase with dell, you can be sure of that!"

"Cancelled an order from dell, only to have them give my my money back after 30 days, and in installments!

Who gives money back in installments? The customer service people only communicate with form emails. When you do reach someone they can't help you or they transfer you around from india, to pakistan to BFE and no one ever answers your question. After I cancelled the order, they still shipped the product to me 18 days later after telling me it wouldn't ship, telling me they told FedEx to return it etc....ALL LIES.

If you like wasting money and time, talking to retards and being transfered around and put on hold, then by all means, buy from DELL.

If you would rather do business with a GOOD company, stay as far away from dell as you can."

"I purchased a Studio XPS 435T from Dell. The ordering experience was fine. Took a month to get the system, that was ok too. They gave me updates when it shipped. I ordered the system with the base 6GB of 1066mhz ddr3 memory. The system guide indicates the system can use 1066 or 1333, and if you look at upgrades after the purcahse, all Dell sells is 1333mhz memory for this system. I had ordered the memory from Newegg (who are awsome by the way). It was Corsair XMS 3 ddr3 1333mhz memory (which is what Dell sells on their site!!!) I ordered 12GB. After installing it and bringing up the system (that went smoothly) only 8GB was being seen. I have viste home premium so it should recognize 16GB, so its not an os limitation. I check the bios and its only using 8gb and at 1066 speed. After running CPU-Z i can see all 12GB , but again only 8 is being used, but I notice im in Dual channel mode and not Tri channel. So i open a support ticket with Dell and work with their folks. I come to find out 1333mhz memory is not only not supported, its not tested, despite what their documention specifies (which support terms a typo) and that the only sell 1333 as an upgrade for this system. I'm told I need to get 1066 memory for the device. So im stuck with 12GB of memory I cant use now. Dell refuses to do ANYTHING to help. I spoke with 3 customer services reps including a manager and sat on hold for 45 minutes to no avail. Dell certainly doesn't want my business even though they say it's important to them. Their machines are fine if you never plan to upgrade them. I'm not looking to hotrod the system. I just want to use it within it's documented specs. I'd say spend your hard earned money elsewhere."

"I ordered a Dell 3007WFP-HC Monitor. I've been purchasing from online retailers for almost a decade, and checking out was a breeze.

Immediately after the order, I pulled up my online banking account at Wachovia and checked that the right amount of money had been withdrawn from my account by Dell.

Eventually, I received a Fed Ex tracking number and monitored the shipping status with great anticipation.

On Thursday, the day I was supposed to receive the monitor, I noticed that Fed Ex had a "Delivery Exception". It was around 10 a.m. and Fed Ex claimed to have attempted a delivery. I checked my front door and there was no tag. I called Fed Ex and they told me someone from Dell called Sharon Stevens had canceled my order. I called Dell, and they hung up on me twice. I was put on hold, but somehow the line kept dropping.

When I eventually spoke to a supervisor with a heavy Indian accent, he was kind enough to admit there had been a mistake and he went ahead and re-ordered another monitor and this time, and the polite fellow even ordered it with standard overnight shipping!

Later on the new tracking number was posted on their site, and I couldn't have been more delighted.

The next day the same thing happened. Someone from Dell, again informed the people at Fed Ex not to deliver the monitor to me. And to make matters worse, the Fed Ex guys did not update their website. So when I call Dell, they look up my order and tell me that Fed Ex tried to deliver but I was unavailable, and that they will make two more delivery attempts...

How is this possible. How can they take money from my account, and then cancel my order later due to online fraud concerns?

I called my bank to figure out if all my shipping/billing details were correct, because it is a new debit card which I got after a previous one was lost. Everything checked out. I am now waiting to hear from dell, but all they do is tell me to contact Fed Ex.

I should have consulted this website before making my purchase. I don't know why I assumed they were a strong brand, of good repute. I will NEVER buy from Dell again. And I hope none of you here have to deal with this kind of nonsense, ever. The cost of the monitor has considerably gone up due to the amount of phone calls I've had to make. I'll be purchasing my monitor from HP instead, once I get my refund. "

"The price for the Playstation 3 was great and the shipping was fast. No complaint about their website.

On an unrelated topic to the purchase, but to Dell's customer support/extended warranty nonetheless. Be sure to NOT get their extended warranty. I have a 3-year extended warranty on my Inspiron 1520 and when my extended life battery died; their customer support was of no help at all. They said the battery wasn't part of the extended warranty and offered to sell me an inferior 6-cell battery for more than an extended life OEM battery I found off another internet merchant--which I found completely ridiculous."

"Ordered a Samsung monitor from Dell on 4/27. Monitor listed a $110 discount. Proceeded through checkout where discount continued to appear. After submitting payment info, discount had disappeared. Understand that this constitutes criminal fraud on Dell's part. Be warned about them."

"Very terrible, Dell is going down as bad as their customer service is. No wonder people are running away from them. Customer service can't cancel an order 2 hours after the order been made. Reason it's in production and can't be canceled. The shipping is next week? Why you can't cancel, and prefer to charge your loyal customers 15% restocking fee. This is the last time I will buy again from this company. Dell is getting the worst rating ever. "

"I ordered a computer on February 20th. The original delivery date was supposed to be after a couple of weeks. I received two order delay notification emails (expected delivery date April 1st). When I called Dell I asked them what the problem was, they just blamed it on a part not having arrived. I asked for a discount or at least for expedited shipping and they refused to provide either. The call center experience is awful. I spoke with different assistants and no one seem to care about customer satisfaction. Most dell representatives were really rude.
The computer eventually arrived after 6 weeks from the order. Will never order a Dell again, as they cannot deliver the products and service they advertise on their website."