An open letter to Bob and the guys that pay him...from a formerly happy customer....

A number of months ago I wrote a blog post about "Millie" in Manila. Millie worked for Dell, and dealing with her was such a nightmare that I basically resolved to never, ever do business with Dell again.

This one will be about "Bob" or maybe "Robert" . The blog post will have some blanks in it, the blanks to be filled later depending on the response that I get.

The product, a _________ is something I use all the time, something I have come to be very dependent on, and something that I typically rave about. And one that I have caused a dozen of my friends to buy.

When I drove West 10 days ago, I noted that I was having trouble with it. Battery life sucked, and that I was having trouble making it work.  Hedging my bets I borrowed a similar albeit far less functional backup device.

In Seattle my device died, and I spent at least 2 hours on the phone with tech support, ultimately convincing them that they needed to replace it. And also noting that this would be the third placement of my original device.

So we went through the entire deal, all my contact data, credit card info, and a clear, very clear understanding of when they would ship the replacement, i.e. not later than 3-5 days.

I told the tech support guy that 3-5 days was fine as I would not be back in Florida before yesterday. He assured me that it would arrive not later than today. At the end of "today" I went on to the company website, put in my "service number" to find out shipping info, and couldn't find anything and kept getting an error saying that they had no record of my service number.

I immediately got on the phone, worked the voice mail triage system, recalling clearly that I had been told that the tech support folks were in Tampa, and open until 11 P.M. EST. After waiting approximately 33 minutes the first call, I got a lady who couldn't speak English, and a connection that was so dreadful, that we got cut off.

I called back, got a second lady, whose English was worse, but the connection was better. When I went through all of the info, I learned that there were no replacement units, and that guy 1 had basically lied to me. But that she would escalate me into a priority and that I would be getting a new unit within 1-3 days. Finally her English became so impossible that I asked to speak to her supervisor.

His name was Bob. After 30 minutes on the phone with Bob, I learned the following:

• That the first guy had lied to me.
• That they had no replacement units.
• That the woman had no basis for telling me that a unit would ship in 1-3 days.
• That she had been trained to use this date range to more or less placate people and get them off the phone.
• That maybe, and a weak maybe that I would get a replace by best case December 15, 2004.

At that point in time, the line died on Bob's end. Two minutes later he called me back. I asked him if he could confirm when it shipped. He said he could not. He said that he didn't have access to E-Mail, but that he would call me. I said, find a E-Mail address that you can work with, and he said that he might be able to, but with no assurance that he would be able to. I asked him for the name of the company that he worked for, and he refused to tell me.

So, now approximately 10 days after my first conversation, I am looking at another 7 days, and when I said, "Bob"...how about if I just offer to pay you extra for a new unit and get this behind us, he told me they didn't have any of the new ones either.

So, what does one do? Do you go ballistic, or do you just suck it up, and say that the company can't execute either on quality or delivery, or do you just live with it?

I find this kind of business practice to be totally deplorable, but maybe that's what you have to do today.

Who knows...and stay tuned for the blank to be filled in.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Don Schenck]

Do tell!

[Evan]

This is insane and I don't know why you blanked out the name to begin with. If that company jerked you around, and outright lied to you (the nerve!), that is beyond deplorable.

Ballistic seems in order, and at the very least say who it is. I don't know why you're hiding the name to begin with. Who/What are you trying to protect by hiding this information? At best it could get a company rep to quickly placate this matter and make sure you're compensated/taken care of. This would allow you to post a go rebuttal on their behalf.

At worst they could ignore and your readers can see the truth of this stupid company and their awful product.

[Todd]

Sounds like the exact same experience I had with Dell and my never-to-be-shipped Axim x50. Multiple emails and calls to and from people who spoke little english and had clearly copy/pasted sections of their email responses to me. Like you, I won't do business with Dell again.

[Greg]

Sorry to hear you guys had some bad Dell experiences. While we've all had some tough experiences with Companies, I've actually had great experiences with Dell. So much so I went to work for them recently. In any case from what I've seen so far, the company really does take customer sat VERY seriously. I know they've some troubles with some some offshore customer support, but they've been working hard to get those fixed. I hope someday you'll give 'em another chance, but I do understand how frustrating this can be sometimes (I have been there with other companies:)