Thursday, September 6, 2007

The Sounds of Silence or is it One Hand Clapping

Well, I thought I would hold off on my next blog until I heard back from the two Escalation team members from Dell who recently contacted me. Oddly, after contacting me, they never did reply back. So, instead I will share with you the email I sent to them and let you decide if a response was warranted. Ronak who is the recipient of the following letter is a member of the Escalation team at Dell... and for the record I did eventually hear from Robin Chacko's supervisor... he offered me a %10 discount on a refurbished motherboard!

EMAIL TO "Ronak" who has never been heard from since....

Hi Ronak: I have been in touch with your colleague Robin_Chacko@dell.com on 08/16/07 about this issue and it seems more than one person from Dell has responded to our contacts. Here (below) is the email I sent to Robin Chacko...

I have yet to hear back from her on the email sent, so I am not sure if you were intending to take over from her? If so, I am available at this return email or by phone xxx xxx-xxxx

regards, duff sigurdson

BEGIN

Hello Robin: We are pleased but most puzzled to hear from Dell again. I trust you are up to speed on our file so I won't repeat it all here, except in summary FYI with my suggestions for a solution below that....

After speaking at length and over a period of months with as diverse a crowd as Lionel Menchaca at direct2dell, another on-line bigwig known as Richard@dell, the Better Business Bureau, and a number of senior staff at Dell Canada, we had reached the conclusion that Dell was not willing to do more to solve our problem other than to sell us a refurbished motherboard for our problematic 9100.

This was unsatisfactory to us as we feel that the problem is directly related to the design and manufacture of the model and a replacement mob (at $700 installed), was not a solution, i.e. replacing a known faulty part with another faulty part that has been "remanufactured" is not a workable fix!

The computer was approximately 2 1/2 years old when it failed and it was a top of the line Inspiron 9100. Hardly the typical life span one would expect from a flagship model from the world's (then) leading computer manufacturer.

Dell has taken old, loyal customers (my wife and I who have been with your company since the early days), and potential new customers (my daughter and her network of friends who follow this saga), and turned them in to a customer relations nightmare... (see www.dellhellrevisited.blogspot.com)

Our position is you have sold us an "EDSEL" and although we understand the tightrope you are walking what with all the class action suits surrounding the inspiron line, we believe Dell should replace the faulty computer with a model which you are confident will not die a premature death.

No need for a "mea culpa" or anything else... just a "hey, your computer sucked, we are sorry you got stuck in dell hell, and we DO want you all as future customers..."

I will mention here that many similar cases to ours have been resolved (usually by members of the Executive Escalation Team) by replacing faulty computers EVEN when out of warranty, You can read examples in the dell forums.

What we don't want is for Dell to tell us they are cutting off the topic and consider the case closed as unresolved (Richard@Dell online back in early June), AND THEN contact us again to follow up (Early July), fail to follow up THAT call (mid July), and then wind up here in another email to someone at your end (Mid August).

BTW, A tech called two nights ago (see my latest posts at direct2dell in the "Real People are here and they are Listening" section). I almost cried when he wanted to "review" my problem but I stayed polite, answered his questions and listened to his offer to sell me a refurbished motherboard. It all seemed a bit pointless and so it was.

In any case, I noted yesterday that despite the $150 million invested in customer service in the last while, Dells' ratings dropped this year to the same levels as during the Customer Service crisis at Dell in 2005. Somehow this doesn't surprise me.

When you compare the cost to dell of replacing our faulty 9100 with that money and those figures, and you add in the bonus that you would be "doing the right thing", it is a no brainer... Dell won't recognize that the computer is an "edsel" and that is fine by us, but Dell should recognize that the computer should have lasted longer than it did, that we are valued customers and that it is worth keeping us. Selling us a top of the line model at top of the line prices, and after it dies 2.5 years later saying "so sad, too bad" is not on the list of "Tips for Good Customer Relations".

I look forward to hearing your solutions to this issue, a fresh set of eyes and ears is often the way out of the woods.

regards, duff sigurdson


2 comments:

cheap computers said...

I think T-this was unsatisfactory to me as i feel that the problem is directly related to the design and manufacture of the model and a replacement mob and i guess that this was not a solution.

used computers said...

This was unsatisfactory to me as i feel that the problem is directly related to the design and manufacture of the model and a replacement mob, was not a solution.