Re: Service rant

I've leapfrogged the sales process by getting a dedicated sales rep.
Works quite slick really. I email her what I need, along with any
questions, she gets the answers and quotes me on -exactly- what I ask
for. It's not perfect, and occasionally there are hickups, but overall,
I'm happier with Dell than with any other vendor I've dealt with.

"Dude"

On Thu, 2007-02-01 at 11:24 -0600, Dave Hall wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 01, 2007 at 11:01:46AM -0600, Brock Campbell wrote:
> > I guess I have had a different opinion. over the years I've owned and
> > dealt with Dell and had reasonable to good service for most of it.
> >
> > The trick is to stay away from the "Home/Home Office" side of the house
> > like it was filled with Venomous vipers, tarantula's and sharks with
> > laser beams on their heads.
> >
> > The small business side gives you a North American Service department,
> > and people who will listen when you tell them you 'may' know a thing or
> > two about computers. The other trick is to buy from the corporate side
> > of the line. Latitude and Optiplex. They seem marginally better built,
> > and the service lines are different, and less scripted.
> >
> > Perhaps I'm unique in still thinking Dell is better than the other
> > options, but every time I've tried other Tier 1 vendors, I've had a much
> > worse experience.
>
> I think you make an important point about business vs consumer divisions.
> That seems to be universal, be it Tier-I computer vendors, local retailers
> or even ISPs.
>
> I have an ancient Dell desktop (>10 year old 486) running as my firewall,
> the bearings in the hard drive are just now starting to squeel on occasion.
> I know of a couple of people who've had good luck with Dell on the quality
> front and decent experiences with support.
>
> I've heard nothing but horror stories dealing with HP. The exceptaion may
> be the Proliant server guys, that stuff was Compaq's bread and butter before
> HP consumed them, HP needs to keep Proliant customers happy because the
> printer ink monopoly ain't working.
>
> I've heard good stories with IBM but mostly from big customers but I did
> read one story about Lenovo fixing a fried USB port on a laptop that was
> well out of warranty. I would have bought a Lenovo instead of Dell but I
> preferred Dell's keyboard/touchpad arrangement over Lenovo's.
>
> So far, my two complaints about Dell are:
>
> 1. The options available on-line are not consistent within a product family,
> for example, the Inspiron 6400 with T7200 didn't offer the same selection
> of wireless networking as the same model with other processors.
>
> 2. The sales and pre-sales folks either on-line or telephone were like
> Future Shop sales boys. Kind of slimey, not really knowing the answers but
> saying what they think will get the sale. Basically asking the same
> question of 3 different people gets 3 different answers.
>
> My laptop has a 4 year on-site warranty, including the oopsie (accidental
> damange) coverage. I'll let y'all know what happens if/when I need it
> serviced.
>
Received on Thu Feb 1 11:33:34 2007