Worst customer experience ever

The best notebook ever

I blogged about my attempts to buy a decent notebook here before. But let’s recap quickly. In the fall of 2013 I bought a Dell XPS13 Developer edition. When Dell shortly thereafter announced that they now accept BitCoin, I had the feeling I missed out on that opportunity. Nevertheless, it was the best computer I ever had. As it came with ubuntu preinstalled, there was no hassle with drivers. Everything just worked, it was lightning fast and gorgeous. But in February 2015 it was stolen.

Paying with BitCoin

I wanted to buy the same notebook again, but this time I wanted to pay with BitCoin. The option was not available for the Swiss market, but they expanded it to Canada and the UK. I really didn’t want to find out that it would be possible in Switzerland just after I ordered. Thus I decided to hold my breadth. The waiting became very long, as my ancient intermediary notebook was having thermal issues.

Purism

The selection of ultrabooks with linux pre-installed, that can be bought with BitCoin is not so large. If It has to have a backlit Swiss keyboard, it gets really difficult. But somehow I learned about purism. Their librem notebooks looked very good. As with most startups, the people were really approachable and helpful. I was ready to order their best machine, but they kept having delays. Delivery was always two months out. When it was pushed way back again, I decided I didn’t want to wait any longer, and re-targeted for the Dell.

UK

After a lot more than a year of waiting, and asking Dell to make the leap forward, I was ready to give up the Swiss keyboard. I was ready to order from the UK instead. I was ready to retrofit a Swiss keyboard myself, and pay double taxes. I found a service that would forward the parcel. But although BitCoin was listed as a payment option on the UK Dell website, the option was not available on the checkout screen. I reported this to Dell customer support and tried on a regular basis over the course of a month. Finally I gave up on the UK store.

US

The US store had a model with a 1TB SSD that was even better than the models offered in the European stores. So I went for that. All the mail forwarding services in the US either couldn’t process my card to cover their fees, or didn’t provide a phone number. But a domestic phone number was required for the order form at the Dell store. So I asked around if I could have my order delivered to somebody in the US, and he would forward it to me. A former co-worker who lives in California now agreed. I went ahead and placed the order to his address. Because I was really in need of the device, I chose the faster, more expensive delivery method. Shortly after I paid, I received an eMail stating that the formal order confirmation should follow in two days at the latest.

Black hole

That was the one and only, and the last communication I received from Dell. After a week I started to question why I didn’t receive the formal confirmation, and I found out that the order didn’t appear on the order status page. So I tried to contact Dell order support. In order to initiate a support session, one has to enter the order number. And because the order was not properly in the system, I couldn’t contact them. I tried different means to contact them almost on a daily basis. This week I could finally chat with a support representative. He couldn’t find my order in the system neither, and gave me an eMail address. So I wrote to what appears to be the main eMail address for customer support in the US. An automated response came immediately stating that a human would respond within 24 hours. Nobody ever did of course. I reached out to coinbase to ask about my transaction. They very quickly responded. They stated that on their side everything went through normally, and that Dell indeed received the money. Somebody on a forum suggested that the order might be canceled because of some obscure export regulations. But why a company would cancel an order on such a basis without ever notifying the customer is beyond me.
It has been almost a month now, that I have been desperately trying to find out, when I will receive the notebook that I really need. Dell didn’t even bother to tell me anything. How is that different from the worst scams and frauds out there on the internet? To me that was a lot of money that I sent. I thought of Dell as being trustworthy. No more…

Update September 8th 2016

Barton sent me a mail today stating that they found the problem. They made sure it doesn’t happen again. And the notebook should be delivered early next week. Looking forward…

Update September 22th 2016

The box with the precious new power machine was delivered to me today.
Hooray! Finally! Jay! So excited!
Now I know what I will do tonight… Setting it all up.


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Comments

3 responses to “Worst customer experience ever”

  1. Barton Herrin George Avatar

    @ulrichard I apologize once again for your experience.

    After you left the comment on my blog last week I sent a note out to figure out how get this fixed, I also brought it up in yesterday’s team meeting. I will follow up again now. stay tuned.

    Barton George
    XPS 13 developer edition project lead

    1. ulrichard Avatar
      ulrichard

      Hi Barton,
      thanks for looking into the issue.
      Your team did a great job with the Sputnik line.
      I’m sad that you have to be involved when the sales and support department screws up.

  2. […] Last week I finally received my new notebook. It was a long journey, but it was worth it. If you didn’t follow my blog, you can read about it here, here and here. […]

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