Seth wrote in to describe the response he got from Dell recently, and compared it to the response he got four years ago. That was a more innocent time, before rags like BusinessWeek blew the lid on our EECB strategy by printing it in old media that execs would read.
I think readers on Consumerist might find this interesting… with all the emails being sent to executives these days, are they becoming deaf to it? It appears at Dell that might be the case.A comparison:
Four years ago, I wrote to Kevin Rollins, the then CEO of Dell, about a prolonged problem with a monitor. I received a very quick and friendly reply from Mr. Rollins, which was copied to two other executives. One being Ro Parra and the other I can’t recall. The issue was SOLVED, sincere apologies were made, and I was thanked for letting them know about the problems.
Three weeks ago, I wrote a top-level executive at Dell about a problem with the same product. I received no reply from the executive, but got handed off to something called the customer resolutions center. The representative was curt, unhelpful and misinformed about technology and just about everything else. She even gave me the infamous “I have no supervisor” reply when I asked for hers. When I did speak to her supervisor, he was very professional, but since then has never returned one of my calls.
Apparently, at Dell writing to executives no longer has quite the punch.
Don’t get me wrong–I don’t think executives are required to write back to every customer that emails them. But the message I got from Dell four years ago was crystal clear: customers first. The message I got three weeks ago was… don’t write us, we’ll write you?
I think I’ll stick with companies that welcome hearing directly from customers.
Seth
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I can not complain about Dell at first, I had bought a PC from them and when it was shipped late and I call them the service person sent me a printer for free for my problem. Next thing I bought was a laptop and had just a little problem with communication I could not understand the person asked for someone who spoke english better, they hung up and took 4 more attempts to get supervisor on the phone, who could speak english on phone 4 hours. Warrenty problems lots more problems, like LOTS. Have trashed the last 3 Dells PC I had bought and learned to build my own PC’s. Big Universities and companies Dell is johnny on the spot, small customer not so. Wont buy Dell again.
Dell has become def listening to any way or form to contact them, I have order many systems from dell in the past few year I think I have ordered close to 20 of them this year alone, I resell systems that dell makes, well I use to I am now looking at Toshiba and hp. I called in to talk to tech support over this past weekend and I could hardly understand what the tech was saying, I already knew what was wrong with the system when I called. The first tech I spoke to was rude and was swearing at me. I got his rep ID number and asked to talk to a manager, after fighting with the rep to get a manager, I finally get to speak to one and he bluntly calls me a liar, I was shocked as I have never been treated that bad before by a company. I end the call with him and call back in hopes of getting a different person to which I did but to no avail my call is sent to another manager and my call is finally sent to someone else who calls me the next day. He was rude I told him about the calls for the previous day and he was like I don’t believe that happened to you and is rude. I tell the guy to call me back when you cannot be rude and can listen to what I am telling him. I have yet to receive a call be or an email from any one. I take that back I got a email on Sunday night from the same guy I talked to earlier saying that he has been trying to contact me and that if he don’t hear from me he is closing the file as resolved I email him back saying that it is not resolved and that it should not be closed I have yet to hear from anyone at dell meanwhile I have a broken laptop and no one to send me a replacement. DO YOUR SELF A FAVOR AND BUY FROM SOMEONE LOACAL OR ATLEASET CHECK OUT THE COMPANY FIRST. I did a BBB check and dell has had 11,500 complaint sent to them in the past few years. That is 900 percent more than wal-mart.