Not so typical Dell

The thought of contacting DELL’s technical support usually causes my stomache to wretch, and with good reason. Every time I have to deal with DELL, someone convinces me that it’s time to start all over as the human race has hit an all time low. Today was the exception.

My laptop sound died, It’s probably the amp on the sound card, but to get it fixed, I need to let a tech monkey at Dell India East make that determination. Another issue is that I renewed my Next-Day-On-Site service with DELL and they applied it to the wrong laptop! It’s been over 3 months since I initially advised DELL of this issue. The first agent took my credit card and threw it away, as nothing was done and DELL had no record of it. The second call, 2 months (and a new credit card) later the issue was supposedly “escalated to operations” but after another months, even that agent seems to have stopped replying to my bi-weekly emails asking why it wasn’t done yet.

So I have 1 Laptop, I paid for 2 years of service on it. Those 2 years of service have been applied to a defective laptop I returned to DELL back in 2003. and somehow, very basic Mail-In service is active on this one.

But there’s a light at the end of this dark tunnel. As I said, today was an exception.

After telling a rep via the online chat that I “had been dealing with their Warranty Support Services” and having the response to that being, “Did you talk to DELL about this issue yet?” I called up ready for a fight with a sub-par, fake-americanized, peice of crap, Dell-Drone, but was pleasantly surprised by Brian. Okay that may not be his real name, but if more support technicians were like him, thet could be named “Squooshy” and I wouldn’t give a shit.

He was honest and straight-foward with me. He advised me what he could and couldn’t do for me, and actually listened to what I said. I did not have to repeat major points related to my issue as I have in the past. He actually showed intelligence and comprehension of what was going on. He truly knew what he was doing and demonstrated that on the phone with me by not making me walk through 6 hours of bullshit to tell him “There’s no sound on my laptop”. (DELL once told me to reinstall Windows XP as a fix for the dpi, Dots per Inch, setting being too high. The correct solution was right click on the desktop, and fix the setting!)

This post is a toast to Brian, and all the other technicians like him, not just at Dell, but any company that deals with the public.