A Day in the Life of...

I recently purchased a refurbished laptop from Dell's Web Outlet. I received it on Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, it was refurbished in name only. Dell's website points purchasers who wish to return products to their Customer Care number. One is then routed to India. The CSR (Customer Service Representative) I spoke to on February 15th, was helpful and she routed me to another agent who could help me. He in turn directed me back to Dell's web site which had their Change Ownership page. After following the directions and filling it out with a minor oops from me, (you have to enter xxx for the first and last name of the previous owner for it to go through), I was told that it would be 5-10 business days before the change took affect after which they could help me. I was amazed at how broken and hidden this process is. All Dell had to do was tell people that if they want to return a refurbished system, that they have to change ownership first. They could have done this on the web page directing people to call Customer Care. Instead they waste 45 minutes of a CSR's time and the customer's directing the customer back to Dell's own website. Then there's the Customer Care voice menu. To get the Returns Department which is only open 0900-2100 Central Standard Time, you have to tell the voice recognition software, "none of those" for an option. Once you do that, you are eventually directed to the Returns Department. That CSR helped me over a 10 minute period and it was relatively painless. I was notified that the ownership was changed yesterday, and today was the earliest I could call them. The laptop and the battery I ordered are going back to Dell. Perhaps my credit card will be credited by the end of the week. This was a most unfortunate mess and it was made more painful by intentionally hidden options and by a bad process. The CSR was not at fault at all. Perhaps by not revealing the Returns Option, the company is making money in some way such as interest off of the transaction. So it comes down to making a buck or being insensitive to your customers, I'm not sure which. I won't be buying a Dell laptop any time soon however.

Labels: Insensitivity customer disservice