I had the worst customer service experience in recent years on the phone today. This was surprising because it was with a company that I spend a lot of money at, every year. It’s safe to say that I am a frequent customer of Dell. Last Christmas, I purchased 2 XPS desktop systems and received two $150 gift cards, as a result.
On August 3, I made two purchases. One was for a Studio Laptop and the other was for an mp3 player and a PS3 video game. Both orders were purchased online with the gift cards.
The cards were entered and the $150 was removed per card. I put the remainder of the bill on my Dell charge. I received my bill, a week or so later, to learn that the gift card money had not been deducted for these charges, despite the Dell website claiming that the gift card money was removed.
I called to handle the issue and spoke to 5 people that transferred me, all of whom could not speak English well enough to understand me. The fifth person transferred me to another person, also a person that did not speak English and was incredibly rude. He blamed me for not realizing that you cannot use Dell gift cards and Dell credit cards in the same purchase. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, he rudely informed me that it wouldn’t make a difference because a supervisor would not change the rules for me. He ended up transferring me to another person that could not speak English, who was rude, and was unable to work her phone well enough so she ended up hanging up on me.
I called back to request a manager, which once I got to her, made her the ninth person I talked to in a single day. The manager was the most polite person I spoke to, but when it came to dealing with the issues I had, she put me in touch with someone from returns. That person (number 10) claimed that he could not take the charges from my account, but due to the fact that the computer was already malfunctioning he would offer a discount on the computer. He offered $120, which I declined. When I informed them that my Microsoft Office CD was stuck in the computer, the first response was that a CD like that isn’t that expensive (though Dell charges close to $400 for the one I have) and the next response, once that was pointed out, was that you can download the program, so as long as I have my activation number that CD should not matter.
At this point I was through. I informed the man on the phone that I wanted $150 off the laptop and both gift cards returned, since the money for them was never taken off anyway. He claimed that he was unable to offer the additional $30 so I have made plans to send the laptop back. After that he connected me with person eleven in order to get my gift cards back since they were never used.
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