My Experience With Dell Customer Service

My new laptop and Wacom tablet finally got here. Unfortunately, my joy was blunted when I realized I didn’t get the software bundle that was supposed to come with it. I spent two and a half hours on the phone with customer service getting transferred here, there, and everywhere before finally talking to a rep who could help me. Bless his heart; he tried. I was on hold forever while he researched my problem. Alas, he finally told me it was going to take much longer than he expected and he would call me back the next day. Of course, I missed the call, but the customer service representative was kind enough to email me. He said to call the sales team, order the software, and Dell would refund the cost. Cool beans.

So, I called the sales team. The dude I talked to immediately started talking about only having McAfee. I tried to explain that I didn’t want McAfee. I already had McAfee (and deleted it, because, in my humble opinion, nothing beats Avast free antivirus). What I needed was Adobe Photoshop Elements9 & Premiere Elements 9. I even gave him the part number for the order, provided to me in the email. His response:

“All we have is McAfee.”

OMG

I’m not usually so rude, but I was so frustrated that I just hung up on him. I guess I’m gonna get some karma back from it, because I don’t even feel sorry about it. Whatever.

What further complicates the problem is that the Wacom tablet I ordered from somewhere else came bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, the newest version of the software. Dell is selling Adobe Premiere Elements 10 for $99.99. The bundled package of Photoshop and Premiere Elements 9 is $131.99 (free for me, if I can get a hold of a sales rep that doesn’t have his head up his…. Anyway, to upgrade them both to version 10, it’s around $160.00 dollars. So really, thanks to Wacom, I’m better off cutting my losses and just purchasing Premiere Elements 10 for the $99,99.

If Dell’s customer service wasn’t so difficult to deal with, I would ask them if I could just get the Premier Elements 10 and save them $30.00. In my experience dealing with Dell so far, I envision trying to accomplish this feat more of a mess than it’s worth. For one thing, employers these days generally don’t empower their employees to make common sense decisions like that. Worse still, even if they did, the accent barrier is a bothersome hurdle.

Apparently, they don’t teach Hillbilly in foreign ESLclasses. I try to do my best “I’m from Ohio” accent when I’m on the phone with overseas call centers, because I know that my East Tennessee hillbilly accent is hard to understand. I rarely get the same courtesy, though. Call center employees are scored on how quickly they get through their calls, so most of them go through their script like auctioneers. What makes it even worse is that my type of ADD comes with weak auditory processing, and I’ve lost some of my hearing from listening to too much loud music. I have to make people repeat themselves all the time, even hillbillies. Show me something, I’ll remember it in detail. Tell me something, I’ll get it jumbled. This is part of why I have such an aversion to being on the phone in the first place. Put me on the phone with someone speaking in a thick accent and my brain melts.

Yes, I tried the customer service chat. The first rep transferred me to another rep, and that rep told me to call the toll-free number.

Exactly.

Blah.

Next time, I’m buying an Apple, even if I have to sell a kidney to do it.

That’s all for today.

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