Monday, February 05, 2007

Should we blame companies who give bad service unintentionally?

Yes. I don't base my customer service reviews on intentions, I base it on results. If I order a product and it ends up in half way around the world by mistake, I blame the courier for 75% of it and 25% the seller for hiring such a poor delivery service.

If I return a product and it takes ages to get a refund or I have to call frequently and stay on top of the situation to get a result, I blame the seller 100% who accepted give a refund but did not carry enough the resources to handle the return in the timely fashion. Any company who has to use India for Customer Care really needs to rethink its Customer Service plans for the future because I don't think customers are going to tolerate poor customer service any longer. I'm not.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I have totally had it with Dell. I even went to that dell-2-dell site (where I got this address) and did you know all the links on the "Contact Us" page don't work? I have now had three bounced Dell e-mail addresses in the past 24 hours. Really makes me feel great about the company. Here's my story (if you're interested). I tried to send this to customer_advocate@dell.com as recommended at that blog, but it bounced back. I did include my customer # and order # when I sent the original message (but did not include it here).

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I am attempting to get this situation resolved with both your technical and sales support, so this is still ongoing, but I thought as a customer advocate you should know how frustrating my experience with Dell Outlet has been so far.

When I received my new XPS M1210 laptop from Dell Outlet, I was pretty psyched because it showed up early. When I opened it up, the first thing I noticed was that more than half the keys stuck, and both mouse buttons stuck as well. I called tech support, waited 45 minutes on hold, and talked with a rep who said he would send a new keyboard and that I would be replacing it myself. OK, I thought. I asked him if that would fix the mouse buttons. He said he wasn't sure if the keyboard replacement included the mouse, but if it didn't, I could just reply to the e-mail that he would send me and they'd take care of it.

Since I now had the "approval" to remove the keyboard, I decided to do this and see if I could tell what had happened to this laptop. When I did so, I discovered that something had been spilled into the machine, and underneath the keyboard were stains. Keep in mind, the fact that something was seriously wrong with this laptop should've been obvious before it left Dell Outlet. Just tapping on the keys or the mouse buttons would've been enough to tell this should never have gone out.

I tried to "reply" to the e-mail that your tech sent, but the message came back immediately as undeliverable. This was my second shock. There was no other instruction on how to reach my tech in the e-mail. All it said was to hit "reply," which is what I had done.

I called regular customer service, and I guess they are India. I was told all their systems were down and no one was going to be able to help me, but they could call me back.

I am trying to get a return authorization so that I can send this thing back and I hope to get all my money back. I don't know if I can trust Dell to send me a replacement. If someone had tried this on Ebay, I'd be all over them, but I understand there are scammers out there. I NEVER expected this kind of thing from a company like Dell. When you spend over $1000 on a laptop, even one that has been refurbished, you don't expect to get one that's had liquid spilled inside of it.

Thanks for listening.

Aaron Clow
stores@tiserves.com

goodtime said...

Try emailing: CP_Huffman [at] dell.com