Losing Time, Money, and Sanity with Computer Hardware Woes
My new laptop from Dell started having hardware problems 7 months after I purchased it. More than 4 months have passed and I’ve spent over 20 hours on technical support and I still have a $1000 paperweight. I have taken action with formal complaints which in theory are being “handled”. (Ask me in a week or two whether this is any more productive than the last four months as the jury is still out.) No one is willing to address the problem once and for all (although they are calling and mailing regularly asking me to pay money to extend my warranty!). Yet I can’t stop thinking and seething about the sheer amount of inconvenience and time and money lost to this whole situation.
Multiply my situation by the number of people in a similar boat. How ineffective, unproductive, and money sucking is that?
Let’s face it. In today’s business world the laptop and desktop are the single most important tool (besides our brains and unique abilities) to a successful career or running a successful business. If you need access on the go, there is no substitute for a laptop. Can you imagine Heather B in her recent post on business travel without her laptop in hand? I certainly couldn’t.
That’s why it behooves me to wonder how much productivity, money, and sanity is lost on a daily basis due to disturbing customer service with the very tools we need the most. The worst part of it is that as consumers we are at the mercy of the companies and the warranties they offer (and not honor satisfactorily at times). As a self-employed business owner, it is like being held hostage in your own personal hell while watching business opportunities and deadlines go whooshing by.
I know personally if I have to hear one more Dell employee tell me “we care that you’re having troubles” or “we will call you back within 24 hours” (and then never do) I could stick a pin in my eye. The sad truth of the matter is that I am not alone. Far from it. Many other professional, intelligent, upstanding human beings are being tortured to within an inch of their wits by the very companies our businesses are relying on – the technology manufacturers.
I read Angela Wilson’s “Computer Woes” with great understanding and sympathy. She has a conundrum of problems that have her screaming “Do not bother calling DELL tech support. Never purchase from Best Buy. Never, EVER buy a Hewlett Packard”. It does make one wonder – who can you buy from? I have to say I feel her pain when she gets to the bottom line of the issue – how she was treated as a customer:
I am sure there are people who try to take advantage of the system. But I was up front. They have records of the PC issues. Yet, all this aggravation nets me… more aggravation? Whatever happened to a company honoring its customers by providing a working unit if the one you bought was defective? I have receipts. I have logs. This unit, with its sleek look and tantalizing features, WAS BROKE! And instead of trying to honor ME as a customer, I got more headaches than this unit was worth.
I should have bit the bullet and bought a MAC. Not only would I have avoided these issues, but I could have burned all copies of Vista while running naked through the moonlight honoring the Apple gods.
I have been working with technology since the early TRS-80 days. For you non-techies, that is a long darn time back when computers were bigger than early microwave ovens and could do nothing without reams of custom programming. So, I know something about them. In fact I’ve even performed tech support in my day. I don’t profess to know it all and I am certainly no hardware expert. My approach is the opposite of arrogant. Yet, I don’t enjoy being spoken to like I am an idiot. I hate it even more when all the painstaking troubleshooting I have performed is dismissed and the non-English speaking, script reading support person starts back at the beginning of the script over and over. But of course THEY are the experts. And sometimes they possess some of the dumbest possible solutions known to mankind.
Ninja Poodles shares a few doozies from her dance with Dell. starts the story off with the tale of the AC power cord:
First, we had to send our laptop back to Dell AGAIN to have the power outlet replaced AGAIN. According to them, it goes bad because we “put too much pressure on the AC cord.” According to me, Dell is full of crap, because the only time I ever “put pressure” on the AC cord is when it stops maintaining a connection without supplemental jiggling/fiddling. Typing with one hand while holding in a power cord at an odd angle is no fun. So now any computer time has to be spent shackled to the PC upstairs in the guest room, which means no multi-tasking. This is not how I’m meant to use the computer.
Apparently she had as much fun with the Dell Repair Depot as I did:
Oh, and remember the laptop? That we shipped to Dell last Monday? It arrived back here on THURSDAY. Seriously. Thursday. Which would be great if Dell had, in fact, fixed it, but for some reason, they sent it back to us with the bottom panel unscrewed, detached, and DENTED, for crying out loud. And still without a working power source.
Hello, Apple? You just got a new customer. Referred by? DELL.
In my own tale of woe, still ongoing, I am committed to the mantra that persistence pays. (or maybe just hoping?). It paid off for Ninja Poodles as apparently a miracle unfolded in “Hello, Dell? I’m Staying. Thank Larry.”:
So once all THAT was out of the way, Larry got right down to solving our problem. And we were positively bowled over with the speed and efficiency and fairness of his work. When one thing wasn’t available, he’d upgrade to the next better thing (I know you love that technical lingo), until finally, because of the uniqueness of our problem and some particulars of our repair history with Dell (seriously, our laptop was whacked), we wound up with a new replacement computer, upgraded from the model we’d had before, because that model wasn’t available at the time, and Larry didn’t want to make us wait. I’m here to tell you, we had Larry earning his paycheck in dealing with us, because we seemed to have one issue after another, and while he had us our new computer inside of a week, we weren’t able to send our old one back to Dell for more than twice that long.
So what is a person to do? I am thrilled for her satisfactory resolution. I continue to be mired in Dell hell, lost time, and wasted energy. While I did finally get a call back from Corporate in response to my formal complaint that I signature receipt delivered to them, all it has gotten me so far is another opportunity to ship my laptop to their repair depot once the shipping box and appropriate tracking numbers arrive. I am sincerely praying this particular road trip for my useless laptop will be more productive than the last that left me with the same problems (sound clicking and a cursor with a mind of its own) plus scratches on the screen.
I have wasted untold hours checking out better business bureaus, small claims court, and consumer protection agencies. Now THAT alone is worthy of its own post. How does a woman protect herself from companies that don’t deliver, do what they say, or leave a job undone?
I am still not even sure what my most powerful next step will be if this latest attempt doesn’t resolve things. I may just have to tap into this more recent update from Ninja Poodles how to get help with Dell Hardware when experiencing ulcer inducing computer woes:
Be sure and check the comments to this post for the response by Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager for Direct2Dell. In part, he writes, to those of you who’ve expressed your own Dell-related woes:
“I encourage you or anyone else that needs help with their Dell hardware to go here:
http://direct2dell.com/contactus.aspx
My personal e-mail is at the bottom of this page, and the Customer Advocate team email is listed as well (fourth bullet point from the top list).”
I’m not sure my heart could bear the shock of a person like the Larry who helped her with real customer service and caring, but I’m willing to risk it.
I’m almost too exhausted from all this to even run my business. Not to mention the problems and frustrations it causes when I need a laptop to meet with clients and travel for business. Personally I desperately need resolution ASAP. From the bigger picture, though – I wonder, how could all this run around and time spent be the least bit effective or profitable for the PC manufacturer either? Even if a company is getting tech support dirt cheap through offshoring, it cannot possibly make sound business sense.
How about you dear readers? What have been your tales of woe and success stories with computer hardware woes? I’d love to hear from you.
Paula Gregorowicz, owner of The Paula G. Company, works with lesbians who are ready to create their lives and businesses in a way that fits who they are rather than how they were told they "should". Get the free 12 part eCourse "How to Be Comfortable in Your Own Skin" http://www.coaching4lesbians.com and start taking charge of your own success.
Well, quite frankly, the simple answer is to not buy Dell. Their systems are cheaply priced because they are cheaply made. Best to buy a whitebox and load linux onto it. Of course, that’s just my professional opinion.
You might also try perusing The Consumerist for tips on dealing with executive customer support (the people who get things done).
I have had 2 different Dell laptops over the past 4 years (one for work, and I left that job, so I bought a new one – the old one still works fine), and I have never had any problem with their customer service at all, ever. In fact, I have had nothing but stellar experiences, and I say that as a person who takes her laptop everywhere. It is definitely true that you will need to call customer service to occasionally get parts replaced, but I think that’s true for all computers, and technology in general.
The biggest tip I have for buying a laptop is to investigate the service plan options when you buy them and consider that purchase to be part of buying a laptop. The next day business service at Dell is totally worth it – I’ve had my computer repaired at my house, at debate camps on college campuses all over the country, when I was travelling for work – anywhere I happened to be at the time. When you consider the purchase of that service plan to be part of the price, you have a lot better expectation of service, and they really deliver. In fact, every time I’ve ever had a person out to fix something on a laptop (Dell contracts out to local computer folks), they’ve suggested other things that coudl be fixed that I didn’t know about and offered to get that done for me.
I don’t work for Dell or anything, and I don’t get paid to write this – I have just had a really good experience with them, and I think it’s only fair to give both sides. Especially considering that even with the service plan, a Dell computer is still five hundred to a thousand dollars cheaper than a comparable Mac.
Had the same awful Dell hardware and customer service experiences all through grad school, and would NEVER buy their laptops again. Even though it was cheap I spent good portions of grad school in computer labs because the computer was constantly out of commission, negating the savings with all the wasted time and inconvenience. I’ve now have a Compaq for three years which was far cheaper and which I have never had to call on customer service for.
While I will take any chance i get to save some money here and there, when it came to my laptop purchase, i still went with the more expensive apple. I think that it is well worth it for the peace of mind. About 3 months ago, I spilled something on my 2.5 years old iBook. About a month after that it started to act up, so I took it into my nearest apple store. I knew that me spilling something on it was not covered under the warranty, but what could it hurt to try? They were going to send it off to the nearest depot and said it would take about a week. 2 days later, I get a call. Surely this would be them saying it wasn’t covered, and I did not want to hear the bad news. Much to my surprise, my computer was fixed and back at the store. It was seriously less than 48 hours since I had dropped it off. The list of things that they replaced was impressive, and it left me with a computer that will probably last a few more years.
Around the same time, my coworker had the backlight in his less than 1 year old Compaq die, and it took weeks for him to send it off and be repaired. Made me even more thankful for the speedy service I received for much more work.
Paula: Dell laptop user here and I’m relieved to report that I haven’t had any problems in the last couple of years. Currently for work, I use a Lenovo ThinkPad (formerly IBM) and it’s been a sturdy and much better option for the road.
If my ThinkPad did break down, my IT person at work would handle the headache with troubleshooting or getting it fixed. I’d probably get a new or substitute laptop immediately and hardly miss a beat with my job. That said, I think you raise a really interesting point about being self-employed.
It reminds me of the time when I interviewed Abigail Garner (author, activist and small business owner!) about the price attached to activism. Her reply:
Corporate slugs like myself are always jealous of people like you who have their own business, but often times, we’re only conscious of the good parts: your freedom, flexibility, etc. It takes a post like this to remind me, that self-employment is just that… self-employment! It’s you dealing with Dell tech support for hours… hours that you can’t bill or build your business. There’s a hard cost to this when looked at from a time = money perspective.
I hope things work out soon for you with getting your laptop fixed!
Thanks for the comments.
Katie: Never had experience with the at-home next day service. Always seemed pricey and with my experience with Dell phone, I was concerned I wouldn’t get the service I deserved. Sounds like you’ve experienced otherwise. Thanks so much for adding your voice to this & I will definitely keep that in mind for the next laptop whether Dell or otherwise.
Jake — appreciate your insights – while I know LINUX rocks as a server and application platform – I wonder how practical a solution it would be though considering most of my web based clients are PC and I am often training them on how to do something.
Warmly
_Paula
I did finally get a refurbished laptop from Dell 10 months later. This one DOES work although it did take 2-3 tries known as a few weeks to get a new wireless card. So for completeness, Dell eventually did resolve the problem, but really did it need to take over 10 months and untold hours?