Dear Dell Parts Warehouse Monkeys:

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

When I give you morons a part number for the part I am ordering, that is EXACTLY what I expect to get. This machine has a glossy TrueLife LCD. That is the part I ordered. You've now sent me TWO matte displays. The note on the 2nd part order detailed EXACTLY what was done, and what SHOULD have been done, and both had correct part numbers on the requests.  Obviously, you cannot read written English. Instead, I had to call the guys at Warranty Parts Direct phone support and do the order the hard way.

Die in a fire.

--laptop_mechanic

Comments

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

feh .. "what part of 'send me part X' did you not understand, and why did you decide on your own to send me part Y, because it looks sort of like X, when that wasn't what I ordered?" I'm with you on this one, if I order something by part number, I expect to get the exact part I ordered, and I tend not to appreciate warehouse monkeys subbing other parts because they think I don't really care which one I get ..

[kyidyl.livejournal.com]

As someone who also deals with them fairly often...I say, amen.

I'm in the US, but...just try sending a part to puerto rico. Just TRY. >.<

[gholam.livejournal.com]

Not too long ago, I had to order a replacement HDD for a PowerEdge 2950 co-located in US (XO facility in NYC). Someone must've thought they were being smart by sending out a bare drive without the caddy - fortunately the guy I had on site managed, with appropriate guidance, to swap the drives, but if it had been the datacenter staff, they likely would've simply sent the bare drive back to Dell.

Oh well, at least they didn't send a SCSI U320 or FC drive instead of SAS, and they even got the size and RPM right, although make turned out to be Seagate instead of Maxtor.

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

Thank the gods for the DCSE/WPD cert.

One email, one request, no muss, no fuss.

That's the way you do it.

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

That's what I did. Twice. They still sent the wrong parts, which is why I had to call. =)

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

Ouch.

[awarrenfells.livejournal.com]

My experience proves to me one result...

Dell Support == FAIL.

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

...make turned out to be Seagate instead of Maxtor.

/me thinks you got the better end of the deal, then. I have seen too many Maxtors crap out before their time, and very few (as in approaching zero) Seagates doing the same.

--
"Memento Mori Ergo Carpe Diem"

[gholam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the thing is, I don't like mixing different drives in one array, and reliability isn't that important - if a drive fails, there's a hot spare to rebuild immediately (well, within a few hours).

[pehteyemdjehuty.livejournal.com]

...Epic fail, Dell. *nods*

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, I suppose there is that.

--
"Memento Mori Ergo Carpe Diem"

[jecook]

Even then, sometimes the parts received *still* don't work or fit:

We had a failed redundant power supply on one of our powervaults- so I call the support line, and a courier comes out within our 4 hour window.

Except that I had asked for a supply *and* fan- all we got was a brick with a half-broken fan connector.

Next day, I call them back and try again- the same thing occured, only this time the fan connector was floating around inside the brick...

While the 4 hour response sure is nice, putting up with half-broken parts that are supplied is not.

[curmudgn]

!FAIL == P/N 00098. (Of course, if your part's not in stock, then the order will stay on backorder forever . . . and if your part's OSI, that's how long it'll stay on backorder. Use P/N with extreme caution.)

Re: GAH

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

I'll let you in on a little secret:

http://warrantypartsdirect.dell.com/amer/program/T1400000.asp

Its not up to date, and doesnt include all models, but many part numbers are listed there.

Re: GAH

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

On thats easy. Discrete boards have separate video boards.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Now, if Dell wasn't a bunch of asshats, they'd ship servers with enough caddies for all the bays.

On the flip side, I did a 4 bay hotswap cage on my new workstation which uses *no* caddies. Drives just slide in and are held in place by the door. I wish more companies would use things like that.

Edit: Linky to pics (http://www.mattcaron.net/projects/core_2_quad/)

[gholam.livejournal.com]

Ah, but then Dell (or any other server/storage vendor) wouldn't be able to charge you a premium for "blessed" drives. With most storage arrays, caddies or lack thereof won't even matter - drives must contain special firmware that keys them to that vendor's array, and the array plain won't work with other drives.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Yeah.. Sun always used to (and likely still does) pull the same crap. That's why I'm happy to see independent-vendor arrays which will work with any drives.

The flip side is that you lose any optimization provided by that firmware, so you may take a performance hit there.