Tech Support HELL

Wait, you can get Dell to replace a part in less than three weeks?

From:

sure, if you buy the gold service agreement with the hardware.

From:

I'm pretty sure I have a triple-platinum service agreement and my average turnaround is > 5 business days, being 2 days on the phone, 2 days waiting for the tech day to show up, and another day for tech to come back and unfuck whatever he managed to break on his first visit. Mind you, I am on the other side of the world, things may work a little differently over here I guess.

(deleted comment)

From:

hisamishness.livejournal.com

Typically our Repairs guy orders parts, they show up the next day, he swaps them, and we're back in business.

Yes, we buy 3 year no-fault warrantees on just about everything.

From:

yeah, their service outside the US is apparently pretty sketchy, as I'm discovering. The ticket that pushed me to make this post is for a user on business in the middle east...
Dell's international support line was apparently surprised to discover that they have nothing in the Middle East when I called. Greeeeaaaat.

For US repairs, gold = next day, platinum = 4 hour.

From:

Sketchy is an understatement. I did some work for a large company that spent millions per year on Dell gear. Their servers were all under 24/7/4hr SLA's. The most common call I made while working there was when one of the 50 or so aging 4mm DAT tape drives died. (Their hapless IT manager who purchased the gear didn't seem to understand that DAT is slow, small, and fails about as often as your average hooker gets laid.)

A typical support request would go something like this:

Call the support number, wait a mimimum of ten mins to get connected to some poor sod in Bangalore/Kuala Lumpur who's being willingly exploited for piss poor money (presumably to match their piss poor technical and English language skills).
Sod tells me he doesn't have a matching contract or asset information - overseas databases were constantly out of sync with the copy here in Australia.
Sod won't re-route the call to an Aussie call centre without consulting a supervisor, so I'm forced to wait for one to become available.
I haggle with Sod's boss who reluctantly passes the call to someone in Oz.
Aussie rep tries to convince me that external tape drives aren't covered by the contract (even though they were explicitly included in it), and thus not eligible for on-site troubleshooting.
For reasons mentioned in the previous points, I'd usually be unable to get my call logged under the correct SLA. In these cases, I'd log it as a warranty call, then call my Dell account manager in Australia to get the information changed.
Once the call is correctly logged, Dell assign it to a third-party company who provide the on-site tech. Dell and the third party reps have a seemingly dysfunctional relationship at the best of times, which is exacerbated by either side getting hammered by calls. For this reason I commonly would wait 24 hours (on a four hour SLA) between logging the call and the third-party calling to arrange the visit.
75% of the time, the tech would not show up at the arranged time. The techs are all contractors who get paid per-visit, so they often try to attend calls according to their own convenience rather than by the assigned priority, so as to save time and petrol and therefore make themselves more money.
48 hours after logging the call, I've abused my account manager sufficiently and constantly enough so that he calls third-party, kicks their arse, and magicks a tech.
Tech calls me to inform that he's arrived on site. We down the server, then tech realises he's actually got the wrong part. I die a little inside. Because the tech won't release the call once it had been assigned (which would mean losing money), I'd often have to wait 24 hours for the tech to get the right part and re-attend.
About 25% of the time, the tech would foul up the replacement job somehow and leave site without informing me first. + more time for a reattend.

The above is a mere subset of things that could go wrong on any given call. I'd average about hours, not minutes dealing with Dell per call, when multiple things broke at once chasing up Dell became my full-time job for days at a time.

From:

sethb.livejournal.com

You know, if you're spending millions a year, it might be a lot cheaper to buy spares and a lousy service agreement. Something breaks, you replace it with your onsite spare (15 minutes), then mail the broken one to Dell to get it repaired/replaced in a couple of weeks.

Unless, of course, you have a way to force Dell to refund the cost of the service when they don't respond in 4 hours.

From:

The largest component in that cost is the hardware itself, service fees are a fraction of that. When you've got centralised infrastructure on-site spares are good, because one part serves as redundancy for many servers. However in a one-server-per-site scenario, you're effectively doubling the cost of your infrastructure, and that's without taking into account that 90% of the sites don't have an onsite IT person and the costs associated with sending one there.

From:

kayfox.livejournal.com

Third party company... Unisys...

From:

I'm hoping Dell doesn't ask for a service tag when I have my brother call them to get my 2407FPW monitor replaced.. since there isn't one :)

(Power button collapsed, and now I can't turn the monitor off and on... not bad for a 3.5 month old monitor)

From:

heh, good times.
Order number should do it, assuming you have that.

I just put one of those exact monitors on my desk, it's SO FREAKIN BRIGHT... I have it at 36/100 brightness right now, might need to go lower to save my retinas.

From:

Yes, I have that.. had to dig through my email to find it, as you can't lookup what was IN an order on their online order status(says to click the order number to bring up details, but the order number isn't clickable)... and I order a lot of monitors and switches from them, so I had to make sure I had the right order.

We replaced a bunch of 22" trinitron CRT's with the 2407's for our CADD guys, they're MUCH happier with the extra screen room and its much easier on the eyes.. They have their monitors set at 0/100, since they work in a room with the lights turned off.

I use a pair of 2007fp's at work, and have them at 50/100 and it's decent enough.

I do wish dell had a method of dealing with deaf people that didn't involve a TTY(which I don't have).. they won't support people through email for warranty support.

From:

... really?
I put in all our warranty repair tickets through the online chat system or e-mail. Perhaps you need the corporate portal page to access them? We're only a 100 person company but we have an account team and a portal page, makes life a bit easier.

From:

I'm Canadian, I believe that's one of the reasons.

I have an outstanding offer as of maybe 6 months ago to get 50% off on Dell hardware, up to $40,000.. Haven't found anything worth buying though.. So I never got setup with an account team/etc

All we buy is the Dell 1907/1908FP's, and a few powerconnect gigabit switches, and only when they're on sale.. so we're hardly a valueable customer :)

From:

notthebuddha.livejournal.com

I do wish dell had a method of dealing with deaf people that didn't involve a TTY(which I don't have).. they won't support people through email for warranty support.

dell.com | Contact Us | Technical Support More Details | Chat Online With Technical Support

From:

It's been my experience that dell tech support is completely useless. I'll probably end up having to set aside a couple hours to do my RMA that way though.

From:

Heh, turns out I can't chat online with technical support.. their online technical support thing states:

Home Dispatch Service-
Status of an onsite/depot service call or parts only exchange for a Home Inspiron Portable System

Customer service's online chat is currently broken, so I can't use that.

From:

ptstech.livejournal.com

Gold or higher support + DCSE/WPD cert + email address of competent rep = 1 email per issue.

None of this, "Let's try this/that/the other just to make sure..." Uh, NO. I've got an entire plant full of stuff to deal with, I already know what is wrong or else I wouldn't be dealing with you in the first place. Just queue it up and send it already...

From:

yeah, usually I have no issues, but this particular ticket has pushed me onto the mercies of the "International support" queue.

posting a followup to Techsupport...

From:

laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com

We do all our dell repairs here in house. Its VERY easy to get dell certified. And you can order parts through the web without ever having to talk to anybody most of the time. Its nice.

From: