Dell Customer Service: Stay away !

The following is the chronological order of events and mishaps that occurred in this severely inconvenient and painful never ending experience that no customer deserves to go through. I have tried to raise questions for the Dell Customer Care Center / technical support / payment processing departments throughout the message below; questions that they should address and answer for their own sake if they want to compete with the rest of the companies out there and if they want to retain and increase their customer base. Such incompetent, inefficient and pathetic customer service can only hurt them. Permanently.
1) On a Saturday afternoon (July 31, 2010), I look up a daily deal on Dell.com for an LCD TV produced by Sharp. While not in urgent need of a TV, I decided to go ahead and buy it anyway. However, since I was just about to step out of the house I figured I’d give Dell a call to place the order over the phone. After an initial wait period of about 15 mins (which isn’t all that bad) a sales “specialist” services my call. He takes a couple of minutes to welcome me and introducing himself to me. After enquiring all the details, he informs me that the TV is NOT available at the price that I had seen on the website but in fact at a price which is 100$ more. I ask him to check it again carefully because I had added to my cart about 20 minutes ago. Not wanting to pay 100$ extra , I ask him not to proceed with the order and I decide to go to dell.com (on my blackberry). Voila! I see the same TV for the price that I wanted, shining brightly on my blackberry screen. So, I quickly place an order using my credit card and within 2 minutes I get an automated email confirming my order and providing me an order ID, purchase ID, customer ID and an approximate shipment date.
Question for Dell: Why should a sales “Specialist” see a different list of items at different prices using the internal Dell systems than a customer who is accessing the public website.

2) Saturday night at a friend’s place, all excited about my soon to arrive TV (well that’s what I thought at the time), I log on to the website to track my order and to my utter surprise and disappointment, the status of my order had changed to “Canceled”. I try to find the possible reason for the cancelation, but fail to do so because of the lack of information on the site. Also, I receive no email from dell informing me about the change in the status of my order.
Question for Dell: Why doesn’t your system generate an email if the customer’s order status has changed and why don’t you provide further information to the user about the reason for the status change.

3) Not being able to understand what went wrong; I decided to call Dell customer service (around 10:00 PM Saturday evening). But I realized that they were available on the phone only until 9:00 PM. So I figured I’d chat with them (that’s on 24X7). So I get in touch with an internet representative named Edgar who after investigating the issue for some time comes back with “Upon checking here what we're advised is to contact your bank and your credit card company regarding this order so they can allow it to go through. Would there be anything else we can help you with?”. When I ask for any other piece of information/detail, he says “Please refer to the bank and credit card company regarding this. Would there be anything else? “ . Clearly Edgar was in a hurry and didn’t want to waste much time trying to furnish any more detail. He also advised me to place a new order.
Question for Dell: Why do you authorize a transaction at the time of placing the order if there are issues with the credit card? (Maybe they deserve benefit of the doubt in this case)


4) Before placing a new order, I decided to give American Express a call just to see if what Edgar (the friendly internet sales representative from Dell) told was right. Amex Customer Service Rep picks up and wastes no time in elaborated introductions. He takes my card number and other bits of security information and within 5 minutes he tells me that there is absolutely no problem with my card or account and that he could in fact see an authorized transaction from Dell. He also advised that they don’t have my phone number on file and promptly adds it. Customer service that actually services the customer! Breath of fresh air.
Suggestion for Dell: Hire a manager from American Express to train your employees.
5) Trusting Edgar’s hurried advice, I decide to go to dell.com again and place another order (#2) for the same TV at the same price. This time I use another credit card just to be sure. Oddly, the email that I receive this time doesn’t say “Order confirmed” ; instead it says “Order acknowledged”. Also, there is no order # , customer# in this case. Only a Purchase#.
Sensing something fishy, I decide to chat with the sales associate again. This time it is with Ricardo who is unable to locate the second order but very confidently states that it takes 5-24 hours for online orders to be produced. (P.S: I received the confirmation email for my first order within 5 minutes of placing the order)

Suggestion for Dell: Keep it simple. Why do you have to confuse people with multiple types of automated emails for similar types of operations?
Question for Dell: What kind of order management systems are you using? Try using amazon.com for ordering stuff online.

6) Sunday morning: I check my inbox to see if there is any email from dell confirming my second order. No there is nothing. (Ironically I get a notification from another website about some great dell deals. No thanks, I want my TV first )
Now the real ordeal begins.
I call sales to check the status of my 2nd order. The girl can’t locate it. I tell her the complete story and she decides that my case should go the “systems” team. So she transfers my call. I repeat the entire sequence of events to the girl from this new department. She fails to locate my new order. After probing her a little bit she magically finds some more information and tells me that there is a hold that has been put on my account at Dell. Ahaan!
She tells me that this case must go to the internal Credit card/Finance team. Oh and then she adds that that they are closed on Sunday. I ask her for a direct number for this department. I figured I’d give them a call the following Monday.
Question for Dell: Why should a customer repeat the entire story over and over again to each representative in every department? Surely there must be a way of attaching the gathered information to the customer’s account for an easier and less painful experience.
7) Monday Morning: I now get an email from Dell that states that the second order has been canceled. (This order never even got confirmed). I call the number of the Dell payment/credit card processing team and explain to him all the problems that occurred. The guy after some “researching” states VERY firmly : “Sir there is no problem with the account or any pending orders” . (He said this even after I told him that I received an email that said that the (2nd) order had been canceled. At this point I don’t even feel like enquiring about the reasons for the death of the 1st order.)
Not ready to be convinced, I ask him to look again and FINALLY he says that there is hold on my account. After further “research” he said that I had used 2 other different shipping addresses in the past which is the reason why there was a security alert that got triggered resulting in a hold being put on my account.
Question for Dell: I am not sure if such restrictive security measures add any value, but in any case why should this information be hidden from all other teams and departments. I’ve used at least 7 shipping addresses on Amazon but never had a problem.
Now the guy (I wish I remembered his name) begins the process to confirm that I am in fact the card holder and account holder, not some identity thief whose dream is to talk to every Dell employee in every department of the company, trying to explain all the problems and inconvenience he has been facing in his pursuit to buy an LCD TV.
These are some of the questions that I had to answer in the Dell Court of Justice and Customer Service to prove that I am the real credit card holder.
--“Are you going to resell the TV or use it yourself”
--“Do you intend to take the TV outside of the US”
--“Who resides at the address you used as the shipping address”
--“Who will sign for the package”
--“What was the other New York address you had previously used” : I lived there 3 years ago. I didn’t remember the address.
--“Did you ever live in MA? What address did you use at that time” : I realized I had ordered something from Dell in MA when I used to live there. I didn’t remember the address.
--“How many addresses do you have in NJ”:
-- “How many times have you stolen people’s credit cards to purchase LCD TVs from the Dell Website” : Ok , he didn’t ask me this question, but I felt like this is what he wanted to ask. (The answer is ZERO times btw)
--“What’s the phone number you used on the account. I will call you on that number” : What the f***!
He calls me on my cell phone, confirms that I am not a credit card thief and creates a new order (order #3) for me. I asked him if I would receive an email confirmation and he said yes.
Suggestion for Dell: Leave the policing to the police. 80% of the questions that I was asked to prove my identity had nothing to do with proving my identity. I fail to understand why you would grill customers who were troubled enough by your processes.
8) Monday Evening: I never received any confirmation email. I called them again, explained the whole story and was told “Your order couldn’t be fulfilled”. This is the third order. They don’t have a reason for it. The guy transfers my call to customer “care” that should be able to take care of the issue. The customer care representative now fails to locate the third (or 2nd) order. My call now gets transferred to a senior “specialist” who bluntly says “There is no order coming up!”(his exact words) and totally fails to provide an explanation. He then tells me that he would ask someone to give me a call shortly to address this. I get another call in a few minutes and I have to repeat the entire story ONCE AGAIN. By now I have lost all patience and hope and I ask him to get a supervisor or manager on the phone.
Not surprisingly, he tells me that the case should go to customer care (which is where the call got forwarded from multiple hops and hours ago). He also advised me to wait 24 hours to place another order (order #4) if I still wanted to buy the TV. He told me he would call me in exactly 24 hours.

Feeling totally helpless , angry and almost harassed, I call customer “care” again to speak with a supervisor and file a formal complaint(if that concept exists at Dell) .The lady fails to connect me to a supervisor but tells me that my case has been documented and someone from the “internal department” would contact me within 24-48 hours.
So, this is where I stand right now. After waiting 3 days, placing 3 unsuccessful 3 orders, dealing with pretty much every department there is in DELL, using every possible medium and talking to innumerous “specialists” and customer “care” representatives I feel exhausted, tired, angered, troubled, bothered and annoyed.
And all this happened to me despite the fact that I all I was doing was offering Dell my business.