Dell's Repair Service

Buceph

And so begins another week of dealing with Dell.

About two weeks ago I cleaned up my hard drive, deleting about 40gigs of photos, videos and games. Basking in the clean computer feeling I set the disk to defragment. Five hours later, after getting back to work, it was stuck on 10%. I said, screw it, I'll let it run overnight and left my brother to play Rome: Total War on it. It was running a bit slow, so he used a tried and trusted method of fixing all things technological, he turned it off and on again. Oh No! Blue Screen of Death.

I did the usual inspections with nothing working, before giving Dell a quick call. Dell informed me that my insurance is valid until 2008. They tried to get me to do the standard stuff, re-installing everything being the main one. But I told them it was dead. Eventually they decided to send me out a new hard drive, forgetting to tell me that I have "on site" repair insurance. I agreed to that before reading my insurance. I gave them a quick call and they said they'd have an engineer out.

The next day comes and the engineer is on his way, but he can't seem to find the house and I'm giving him directions over the phone every two minutes. Suddenly Dell call,

"Hello sir! Are you happy with the way Dell has handled your repair?"
'Errr, I'm have to phone your technician to give him directions now'
"This will take about five minutes, sir"
'But I need to phone your technician, this instan'
"Ok Sir, how was your experience with the Dell Customer Service Agent?"
*Beep Beep Beep Beep*

Anyway the tech arrives, replaces the hard drive and the motherboard. Still bluescreening. He says he will get more parts for it and come back tomorrow, which he does. He arrives when he said he would and is very polite and helpful. Unfortuneatly he says there's a major error and I'd be better it off sending it back to Dell, as it could take him a week or so of visits to fix it outside of a workshop. Understanding the situation I agree to send it back to Dell, which the technician sets up for me.

He stressed the severity of the problem, that a technician had attempted to fix it twice. That it could be any of about ten different hardware issues. That I had already taken two days off work to sort the problem out. That sending it back to Dell was actually outside my insurance as I had on site report, and I was doing it at the reccommendation of the technician. That I couldn't really afford to take another day off work, and I had to recieve a phone call telling me the precise time the computer would be picked up, or the name of the delivery company so I could arrange a suitable collection with them myself.

Needless to say, I recieved no phone call. I rand all the delivery companies asking if the had something on their computers about me and my address, no luck. I rang Dell after the weekend, on the day of the pick-up and explained to them what happened. They said it shouldn't have happened, but they can't give me the name of the delivery company as it's not available to them.

By 5 o'clock the pick-up company hadn't arrived. When I recieve a phone call saying they couldn't come to the house as it was on top of a hill and they were driving an articulated lorry. I had to phone my father and get him to give me a lift to the lorry to give them the computer. I had missed work again.

A week later the computer arrives back, all working and healthy... Except for the graphics card, which has been damaged and can't output colour correctly. I give Dell another call and after twenty minutes convincing them that I don't need to reinstall drivers or Windows they get an engineer to come out to me with a new GPU. In the meantime it blue screens again, but it will restart. The engineer arrives and fits the the new gpu, mentioning that he hopes he never sees us again, which is fair enough, I never want to see him again either. But lo and behold, BLUESCREEN! The computer won't boot windows.


RARRRRRR!

muffler

A had a problem a few weeks back where the DVD RW drive went wonky and it was necessary to have the PC taken away for repair. When it arrived back the attached docket from the workshop showed that all diagnostics test were run and a new power supply was fitted. Everything was working.

Got the PC set up and running again and low and behold the DVD drive was still bollixed. Finally persuaded them to get an engineer/technician out and when he did arrive he had the bloody thing flying in 5 minutes.

Sad thing is that it took 6 weeks from the time I first contacted them till the engineer arrived. I told them umpteen times what was wrong with it but its just like talking to a robot.

Buceph

The engineers I've had out have been fantastic, they don't talk ****e, will tell you they don't know when they don't know, and best of all, they listen to you. The worst part about Dell is they don't listen to you, and just go through the script. Please, please pay people who know what they're doing.

muffler

Or even pay people who you can understand over the phone

subway

in regards to the guys sticking to the scripts etc.
ive worked in ovr the phone tech support - not dell and never again anyway.
bottom of the ladder, high turnover stuff.

its not the guys on the phone who wont listed,
its the guys above them who approve call outs/replacements etc.

if the guy on the phone hasnt done all the pointless tests that you know are not going to prove sh.t then the guy above wont approve the call out.

the main reason for this, is that everyone who calls in "has done all that already" and "knows that its not that".

thats why when you call in you get the scripting.

Sponge Bob

if I had a bollixed DVD drive I would just say

no light
no light
no light
no light
no light
no light
no light
no light
no light
no light
no light
no light

and the script monkey would understand .....eventually

Saruman

I used to do Gateway Tech support years ago.. well for home users.. back in 98 after that i did Corporate servers tech support...
Anyway there are times you have to do what some people see as "pointless troubleshooting" And times its fairly obvious it will not help. If you get you PC back from a repair and your screen no longer has the right colours then obviously its not a windows issue if its happening at bios level and during windows boot

If a hard drive is making banging noises.. no point trying to format
The ammount of techs i had to report for this muppetry or send an email to them explaining this is not how to help customers.

However if someone gets a blue screen every now and again they should work under the assumption its a windows or driver problem as it probably is.. What they "SHOULD" do is get you to check the event logs for the error though instead of "ok sir lets do a reinstall"
If you PC will not boot though..as in cant even get the option to boot into safe mode as it will not go past bios.. obviously its hardware..

Yes a lot of idiots in tech support jobs who do not know anything about computers.. just read a script.

MrPudding

muffler wrote:

Or even pay people who you can understand over the phone

It can be a pain but a lot of the techs do know what they are doing. They are not working off a script, per se. In order to dispatch a part they have to go through a knowledgebase program which wil give them a code. Without this code they cannot get a part dispatched. End of story. They may very well know what the problem is but their hands are well and truely tied.

In Dell support metric are very important. Believe it or not Customer Satisfaction is the most important to them, it is 50% of all the support department targets.

After that it is things that cost money. Thing like repeat diapatches and the like. They do not have a problem sending an engineer or parts out, but when they do they want to make sure that 1) the visit is needed & 2) the part dispatched will fix the problem. They are a business and have identified that these things cost them money, a lot of money.

They have tried many things in order to reduce repeat dispatches but have found that using DSN is the most successful. Team that did pilot schemes where DSN had to be used before a dispatch would be authorised saw an increase in first time fixes, a decrease in dispatches in general and a huge decrease in repeat dispatches.

At the end of the day they are a business operating in a very low margin business. Every time an engineer goes to your house or place of work it costs them money. All the site visits are carried out by 3rd party companies and are charged per visit. Naturally they want to reduce this as much as possible.

I worked there for 2 years and TBH I found most of the guys really did want to help people and did know their stuff. A lot of the stuff that punters do not like comes from above and there is nothing the pions can do.

MrP

muffler

MrPudding wrote:

It can be a pain but a lot of the techs do know what they are doing.

What I meant was its a pity that they are not fluent in the english language.

I wouldn't like to imagine what would happen when someone from the gaeltacht would ring a techie support in India :eek:

Sponge Bob

Never mind the Gaeltacht.

I have had minions working for me in Ireland , one of whom was from Donegal and could not understand Cork people and the other was from Cork and could not understand Cavan/Monaghan accents .

Imagine what a Bangalore person makes of that and throw in a few Geordies and Scousers and Glaswegians as well.

TempestSabre

Buceph wrote:

...tech arrives, replaces the hard drive and the motherboard. Still bluescreening. He says he will get more parts for it and come back tomorrow, which he does. He arrives when he said he would and is very polite and helpful. Unfortuneatly he says there's a major error and I'd be better it off sending it back to Dell, as it could take him a week or so of visits to fix it outside of a workshop...

...they get an engineer to come out to me with a new GPU. In the meantime it blue screens again, but it will restart. The engineer arrives and fits the the new gpu, mentioning that he hopes he never sees us again, which is fair enough, I never want to see him again either. But lo and behold, BLUESCREEN! The computer won't boot windows....

I don't get any of that. Major error? A PC is a simple machine. You have the GFX, CPU, HD, RAM, Motherboard, PSU. By simple trial and error and swapping parts you should identify the problem in 30 mins or less. You find the error, you recreate it to confirm. Swap the part. End of story.

If you think of all the resources, time and people, that farce took. It was more economical just to replace the machine. You could build a new machine from scratch quicker. What amazes me is that people are willing to pay Dell so much for such rubbish support. Friends of mine say I should fix machines on the side, because they think theres money in it. I've no interest in that penny pinching business. But reality is the truth is people are willing to pay Dell hundreds of euro for a support service, which is terrible. But not a local tech.

Buceph

TempestSabre wrote:

I don't get any of that. Major error? A PC is a simple machine. You have the GFX, CPU, HD, RAM, Motherboard, PSU. By simple trial and error and swapping parts you should identify the problem in 30 mins or less. You find the error, you recreate it to confirm. Swap the part. End of story.

If you think of all the resources, time and people, that farce took. It was more economical just to replace the machine. You could build a new machine from scratch quicker. What amazes me is that people are willing to pay Dell so much for such rubbish support. Friends of mine say I should fix machines on the side, because they think theres money in it. I've no interest in that penny pinching business. But reality is the truth is people are willing to pay Dell hundreds of euro for a support service, which is terrible. But not a local tech.

For a major error, what I meant was that there were multiple problems with it, the processor, motherboard and hdd.

What would have happened if I had paid a local tech to do it? I'd have had to shell out for more or less an entirely new PC.

People who give out about Dell really piss me off. They offer a reasonable service for what they are. They're desktops are cheap if you buy the right ones, there long term warranties are cheap, the components are fairly decent, and they are upgradable if you buy the right ones. As with anything, if you do your research you can get a good product with good support(you just need to push the right buttons.)

Edit: As for you doing the support yourself, unless you have serious money to put into it, then it's not worth doing. What happens when you **** up? You shell out for someones entire system. It's not as risky as building machines for people, but there are a lot of risks setting it up as a business. If your just talking about for friends, then go for it, I do it myself.

TempestSabre

The odds of so many components failing at the same time is very rare unless there was a spike or surge through your system. What exactly were these problems.

I doubt that there were multiple problems. Generally someone who knows what they are doing (not Dell support) wouldn't need to replace everything. They'd identify the problem correctly in the first place.

I'm not giving about about Dell, I like them, installed thousands over the years and very rarely do they give serious trouble. My problem here is that the story doesn't seem plausible. Maybe it it. But its unlikely. However its a very common to hear this kinda story from bad support techs.

Its a bit like mechanics who replace loads of unnecessary parts on a car, (NCT etc) and charge you for the privledge. Either because they want to over charge you, or because they simply don't know what they are doing.

MrPudding

TempestSabre wrote:

Its a bit like mechanics who replace loads of unnecessary parts on a car, (NCT etc) and charge you for the privledge. Either because they want to over charge you, or because they simply don't know what they are doing.

No it isn't. They key difference being "Its a bit like mechanics who replace loads of unnecessary parts on a car, (NCT etc) and charge you for the privledge" they want to replace as little as possible and do it in a few visits as possible. Parts and visits cost money.

When I worked in Gold server hardware support (I had the 3rd best case close rate, the lowest parts dispatch rate and one of the best first time fix rates) I still came accross systems that, even afer *all* parts were replaced the problem persisted.

Multiple problems can and do happen. They don't happen all the time but frequently enough to be a pain in the arse as they are very tricky to troubleshoot.

The other thing is, where you have not bought any additional warranty you are dealing with the lowest level of support techs. They have absolutly no leeway in how they troubleshoot and whatever you might think the scripted troubleshooting which results from using DSN (which they must) in very very effective. I have seen the results first hand.

MrP

TempestSabre

MrPudding wrote:

No it isn't. They key difference being "Its a bit like mechanics who replace loads of unnecessary parts on a car, (NCT etc) and charge you for the privledge" they want to replace as little as possible and do it in a few visits as possible. Parts and visits cost money.....

That assumes that the support person is good at what they do, and they have in interest in saving you and themselves money. Thats not been my experience of the big companies desktop support. Enterprise and server support is a different ball game. But it depends who you get.

Do you think the OP is recieving good or bad support, considering he has paid for on site repair and this a simple desktop system. I don't.

I said that major problems will all the main components of a PC are rare. Not that they don't happen. If you think that this is "frequent" then your experience of Dells is a lot worse than mine.

Buceph

TempestSabre wrote:

That assumes that the support person is good at what they do, and they have in interest in saving you and themselves money. Thats not been my experience of the big companies desktop support. Enterprise and server support is a different ball game. But it depends who you get.

Do you think the OP is recieving good or bad support, considering he has paid for on site repair and this a simple desktop system. I don't.

I said that major problems will all the main components of a PC are rare. Not that they don't happen. If you think that this is "frequent" then your experience of Dells is a lot worse than mine.

The on-site tech support I received was fine. The first day they were out they said it was a "big" problem. The second they replaced, the motherboard, ram, gpu, hdd and still couldn't sort it out. At that point he said I should send it in to Dell, as they would have far more equipment at hand to sort it out, and they wouldn't have to be requesting parts every day, ie there was more facilities available than an on site service. In fact the technical support wasn't the problem. The problem was customer support, the human side. Promised phone calls, promises of telling me who was picking up the computer that never came through. Having to meet to go to the delivery guy myself...

The tech side of things were fine. I'm not completely thick when it comes to computers, and I knew when he replaced the hdd, the motherboard(twice), ram, etc. and nothing was working that it was on the more serious end of things.

TempestSabre

Buceph wrote:

...replaced the hdd, the motherboard(twice), ram, etc. and nothing was working ....

Sorry that doesn't make sense. The new HD, motherboard and ram didn't work either? He brought out broken parts? What else was left to change? The PSU and the case? Maybe the power lead was broken...