Well, it would have to stem from last May when I bought my fourth Dell desktop computer from them. Yes, my fourth, and I will say that the first three were fine, so apparently, Dell has gone way downhill in product quality and customer service.

Back in May of ’05 I ordered a Dell computer. I even added an extra two years of tech support for it as I am not that computer savvy to begin with. Well what does Dell do? They send me double my order. I got two computers, two monitors, two sets of software, and two surge protectors. Now even though I am on my computer 24/7 or so my hubby says, I really did not need two computers. Of course I do live in a two story house and having one on each floor would be pretty convenient, hubby said no. So, it got sent back. Dell emails me a week later saying they received it and would credit my account. I think everything is fine and dandy and get on with my life. I get my credit card statement and Dell had not credited my account. GRRR was the first thing that came to mind; suicide was the second thing after I called customer service and spent the next 4 hours on the phone with Hajib and Frankestro, both whom did not speak a word of English. My third thought was actually sympathy for those who go postal and blow up big companies like this.

After being assured that it would all be taken care of, I get off the phone and play the waiting game. Another month goes by and I find out they never did get it fixed. After a six hour phone call to customer service they tell me they never received it. By this time, I’m banging my head on my computer desk and crying out, “Oh God! Why me???”

I get a supervisor on the phone, Panjib, who also doesn’t seem to understand much English. Hell, I think I could have spoken to him in Spanish and he wouldn’t have known the difference. I could actually feel my blood pressure rising at this point. I am told I have to prove I sent it back. After digging through like 6 months of receipts I actually get lucky and find the tracking number showing that so and so signed for it at Dell.

*Please hold*

I actually banged the phone on the desk this time. I figured I was being screwed by Dell over an extra thousand dollar computer I might as well go into debt buying a new phone. By the time they come back on and tell me the computer is not in their warehouse I am ready to just cry. They even ask me where it is. I had to laugh at this point. How the hell was I supposed to know what they did with it?

*Oops, I said the H word*

Hell. There I said it again. Apparently they understood that word so it must translate into many languages. Now they tell me not to get upset. Sure, they aren’t the ones who have spent what seemed like half their natural life on the phone with idiots who were trying to screw them out of a thousand dollars.

Finally, they assure me that they will credit the account.

I’m skeptical but politely say thank you and hang up the phone. It takes me about an hour to stop having murderous thoughts in my mind and actually relax again with my *new* computer. BUT, my new Dell computer decides not to work. Can you feel my frustration?

I try everything possible to get it to work but it keeps giving me an error and it is making this weird noise inside. Now this computer is only two months old by this time and hardly used since I spent every waking moment on hold with Dell customer service.

Award winning customer service I remind you.

Something is definitely NOT right with my new computer. I call Dell tech support. After Osama tells me to try the stupidest things, like is it plugged in? Do you have internet? Is the monitor turned on? He actually expects me to open the dam thing!

Hello??? I’m not a stupid computer technician. Still, he insists I open the dam thing up and fiddle with the wires and stuff inside. What fun, I have always wanted to shock myself senseless. I figure it was Dell’s way of silently killing me so they can still screw me over with the extra computer charge.

They finally agree to have someone come to my house and install a new fan inside the computer. It took three hours to come to this conclusion that it was the fan.

A week later, after a new fan is installed, it is still doing the same thing. Apparently it was *not* the fan. I call tech support and ask for help only to be told that my service tag is invalid. Since they couldn’t find the other computer I sent back, they went ahead and processed the number of the computer I still had, therefore wiping it entirely out of their system. So much for the extra 99.00 I paid for the 2 years of tech support.

Now I’m stuck with a thousand piece of crap computer.

Dell… award winning customer service… forget it!