Elementary Chef

Last summer my modem fried during a thunderstorm. At the time I figured, well, it was a stupid thing to do, I know better than to stay online when a storm comes up, but it’s not really that big a deal to get new part and replace it.
Problem was, they sent me the wrong part. The problem was compounded by the fact there was a time delay. I couldn’t get to work on the computer immediately due to a number of things going on, which shouldn’t have any bearing on the fact the wrong part needed to be replaced with the right one.

The first two people I talked to on the phone agreed – yes, I’d been sent the wrong part, but they couldn’t help me as it was not their department. After a few times getting handed off from department to department, I got a guy named Manuel who suggested I was probably making it all up, and the modem they sent me could be made to work. After over an hour screwing around, we determined to his satisfaction that the modem they sent would not work in my computer, but that was the last I heard from him.

He never returned my calls, so I tried e-mailing.

This was a new adventure. These e-mail correspondents couldn’t get any farther than trying to blame me for ordering the wrong part. This is despite the fact I have documentation to prove the part I ordered was replaced by something else. There also seems to be a policy of not allowing a customer to communicate with the same person more than once, as I could never get the same person to reply to a subsequent e-mail or phone contact.

Keep in mind I have three “regular� jobs, as well as trying to launch a support group for victims of abuse, and somewhere in there I have a husband, a son and daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren who also need my attention. It’s not like I could at any time have simply dropped everything to spend a couple days on the phone to deal with this.

Finally I got a lady on the phone who seemed to understand the problem. She ordered the correct part for me, and my account has been credited so I wasn’t paying for the part twice. She said I’d have the right part on December 19.

I allowed some time for holiday delay, as this year none of our Xmas presents were getting here on time. By New Year’s the part had still not arrived, so I e-mailed yet again, only to be told that for some obscure reason that couldn’t be revealed, the order had been cancelled. Now I’m supposed to contact the sales department.

By now Dell has cost themselves many times the 20 dollars for the part, in terms of paying these people however much they pay them in order to put me off. If I was asking for the whole computer to be replaced, I could understand they’d be a little hesitant to go that route, but all I’m asking is that they correct their own mistake and send me the part I ordered.

I could have bought a replacement part anywhere, but it appeared to be easier simply to ring up Dell. Guess I won’t be doing that again!

In the meantime, I’m going to give up trying to get through to anybody at Dell who understands that when a company sends a customer something other than what they ordered, they should at least make some effort to correct the problem. I’m done being insulted and put off.

The irony here is that I was planning on getting a new computer and maybe satellite or wireless internet service, because dialup is such a pain. I had that budgeted for sometime in February. I can make my dialup connection work sometimes, and because I work in a military library that provides internet access for the Marines, I can always go early and get some things done there.

I’ll hobble along for another eight weeks or so, and for sure I’ll be buying my new computer from somebody else.

dell, dellhell