GrinchyNet

I have been dealing with this for over 2 months now.. im not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel.. im planning to contact the BBB monday. and perhaps seek legal advise. has anyone had any success with any particular course of action?

I am still amazed this is still a problem at Dell. I have not resolved my particular issue since I have had other pressing issues going on. However, since my account can't be verified I cannot make online payments which I would prefer to do than sending out a check every month. So I guess I am going to have to deal with them soon so i can make online payments. I'll keep you all posted.

My letter to Michael Dell

michael_dell@dell.com

To Mr. Michael Dell

First of all, I hope that this email address is a good one because my frustration with your company has reached a boiling point. I've been a loyal customer for over two years now. I have purchased a 42" Plasma TV, Two axim PDA, one mp3 and several other items. My wife also purchased an Inspiron E1705 Laptop valued at around $2700.00. We pay our bills and I can assure you that we are hard working Americans and will keep our end of the bargain. I also work with computers on daily basics. I can take one apart and put it together with my eyes closed. I also referred several of my friend and coworkers to your site in search of a nice computer. I always believed that you had a good thing going with this company until now. After years of loyalty I can tell you that I lost my respect and admiration for what you accomplished.

On 2-23-2008 I called your financial services office and requested an increased on my credit as I was thinking of purchasing an XPS laptop (order # xxxxxxxxxx). On 3-01-2008 I went into my Dell account to check the status of my new xps laptop. To my surprised the ordered was cancelled. Four hours and several phone calls later I was still unable to resolve the issue. I totally understand the whole verification thing, but I think that the nonsense went a little too far. The team of idiots that you have working there doesn’t take the time to verify anything. They are following some sort of computer software to go to the process. I felt like I was calling Microsoft and a Tech rep. was following a computer program telling him or her what to ask next. How come for the past two years I've been buying things from your company with no issues, but now there's a problem? All my orders are going to the same address, same shipping, same billing, and same phone number. Nothing has changed in regards to my information, but your verification department can verify that I am the same person that's been purchasing items for the past two years. I find this beyond believe..
When I opened this account (Several years ago) I use my primary number. This is the same number that I use for all my previous transactions but apparently is not good enough. The one thing I really don’t understand is that they made no attempt to contact me, via email or telephone? After speaking to three separate supervisors (Several phone calls later) the problem continued. This people couldn’t get their stories together as I got several different version of what the reason was for the cancelation. In one occasion I explained to them that I did not received a phone call from anyone. One of the representatives then informed me that they were not authorized to call or send emails to verify an account. So, How in the hell do they verify an account? I had this account for years. I finally had to hang up with them. I couldn’t take the level of incompetence from some of the representatives. At one point I was telling my personal information to one of those idiots and he actually told me that the computer prevented him from continuing with the verification process. Are you kidding me? It seems that as companies get bigger they seem to forget how they got there. To add insult to injury, a few of the rep. asked me if I would like to be transfer to the sales department so I could use another method of payment. Are you kidding me? After all the hell this idiots had put me through, I don’t know if I ever will buy anything with the name Dell on it.
At8:30 PM (3-1-2008) I finally got a dell verification department SUPERVISOR. Once again, I had to go to the entire process. That’s another thing that I absolutely hate about calling any customer services of any company. The fact that every time that you get transfer, you have to give all your information to the next rep. You would think that technology would finally catch up and resolve that very annoying issue. I do feel bad for this last supervisor, but I must say that he acted professional after all the hell that I gave him. Once again, he needed ALL my information. After I gave him an ear full of build up frustration, he finally asked me if he could call me on my primary number. Wait a second; I thought that was against Del l's rules. I then told him that, if they took the time to do that to begin with, they would realize that it was my account. A few seconds later he called me back and verified my number. All this started because I used my cell phone to call the first time, which brings me to another issue. As many Americans, I pay extra to be able to keep my number private. How can dell and other companies are able to see your number when you call them if you are paying for your phone to be private? Someone should look into that. After the phone call he told me that the verification process was completed and that he would re-order my laptop. He also told me that I should be able to see my new order the next day. We will see about that. Dell has one more shot at my money.
3-2-2008 8:00 am. I once again logged into my dell account to check the status of my account. It’s funny that late last night as I went to bed I was thinking that what just happened with the last supervisor seems to be too good to be true. Boy was I right. Once again as I scrolled down several pages in your site, I realized that my account was still locked and my order cancelled. I don’t understand why I SUPERVISOR would tell me that everything was ok and then it wasn’t? Maybe he told me what I wanted to hear just to get me off the phone. 8:15 am. I once again contacted the FINANCIAL VERIFICATION DEPARTMENT or as I would like to call them the very incompetence Department. The first call resulted on a hang up by a very rude rep named John. Now I know names won’t matter as I learn that big company usually tell customers that they are not able to track who speaks with whom. The second and third phone calls ended the same way. It seems that a key word for instant BS and consequently a "Drop Call" is the word Supervisor. Many times I swear I felt like I was talking to an animated machine since the answers were all the same, which verify my assumption that they are following some stupid computer screen. America has gotten so lazy that people actually get pay for showing up to work, not for actually doing their jobs. The last phone call went out at approx. 9:15 and by this time and very close to a hard attack due to the amount of BS and stupidity from some of this people. I once again spoke to a lady and as usual you have to go to the whole process before they even listen to what you have to say. I informed this lady that I just wanted to speak to a supervisor. I told her that I was sick and tired of repeating my damn information to her as I knew that she would not be able to help me. I also told her that once I give you my information you are going to come back with the same stupid response, obviously the number one response in the computer screen "Unfortunately we were unable to verify your identity, therefore we cannot continued with the verification process". If I get a dollar for every time I heard that response in the past two days, I could buy the stupid laptop cash. At the end she refused to transfer me to a supervisor. Just like several idiots before her, she offered a transfer to the sales department so I can give Dell some of my money via a check or another credit card.
Like I said before Mr. Dell, I don’t know that it's because you company got so big that you actually don’t care for the people that got you there. It's absolutely ridiculous that loyal customers had to go through this crap after years of loyalty. You should take the time and speak with these idiots and fix the problem. You are losing hundreds of loyal customers due to incompetence. I can assure you that you lost this one. Here is my account Number just in case you do care (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx). Why don’t you do a little test yourself? Create a fake account or put one in the system. Try to resolve it via telephone with your Financial Verification Department. You lost a 4600.00 sale due to very rude, incompetence and not willing to work with the public staff.

Hello again. I'm not sure how many people were posting replies, but I'm the guy that ordered one then they canceled it saying they couldn't verify our home # , and wanted us to reorder it, wait until almost Feb to get it, pay $150 or so more, and not get a $150 gift card.

They did send a UPS man here to pick up the mouse and bag that was sent on a separate order, that was free for me. They also refunded the full amount and shipping. After some bit of time they credited back my account, so my credit limit is fully restored.

I haven't even begun to try to close the account, I've been busy and wasting time with them isn't on my list of priorities.

I did apply with Gateway as well, and though I had problems with them in 2001, I had a good feeling about it this time. I found a laptop for a very similar price with similar specs. I have 2ghz instead of 2.2 , 128mb dedicated video memory instead of 256, and a 5400RPM harddrive instead of 7200rpm... the video card bothers me, but at least it came with 2GB of ram instead of 1, so I don't have to spend extra money and install that crap myself.
I applied for credit on Dec 24th, placed the order on Dec 26th, and had it within 2 days.
I'm in love with my laptop :)

I will never attempt to be a Dell customer again in my life, thanks for reading all of my rants lol.

Could I afford the laptops out right? Not at the moment. Can I afford to pay for them on a monthly basis? Yes. I get what you are saying but I figured it would be easier to purchase using their Preferred Account. I didn't do it for 0% financing, in order to qualify for that you had to purchase their support. I found that ridiculous since I am an IT guy. To answer your question though, I did it for simplicity. But you see how that has back fired on me. Thanks for the comment.