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Now, as we are all aware Dell has spent some time in the news as of late. I saw a lot of people cutting them some slack and thought I would share my recent currently at one month ordeal with Dell and how that has developed. I want to twist the knife that much more.

We had initially ordered 30 new Workstations through Dell as we are planning to upgrade to Windows 10 going forward and thought a hardware refresh was due. Cool. We decided we would try Dell this time. We originally had HP and didn’t have any problems, but the small form factor (Optiplex 9020) was a nice seller for us as our users could certainly use more desk space among other deciding factors.

Then comes the big day, the arrival of our new PCs and me getting to create my new Windows 10 image. But wait, a problem arises! Unfortunately Dell sent us the right PCs with the wrong hard drive size. We had requested 256GB SSDs, however they sent 128GB SSDs. This was a unfortunate setback but not horrible. I had asked if they could just send us the appropiate SSDs and I could swap them out, but no, we have to send the systems back and receive whole new systems. That’s fine, less work for me.

Move onto two weeks later and being thoroughly ignored by Dell and their representatives, we FINALLY receive return labels to send back the incorrect PCs. Note we have refused to pay the invoice at this time. Fine, business happens and sometimes things get over-looked. Not happy, but it’s done and we’re on our way… HA!

Today comes, our new PCs arrive! I can start work on them now! No… No you can’t TrevorDK. Because Dell shipped you another 30 PCs with that 128GB SSD that you don’t need. Twice. In a row. I can understand once but this is just poor handling on Dell’s part. I still have received no response on this matter, in fact. Needless to say this situation coupled with Dell’s recent irresponsibility with software certificates, I am far from happy with Dell. Just thought I’d share, thanks for reading my angry rant.

@HP @Dell_Technologies

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Nice! Sounds like you need a new account manager.

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Wow, that sucks to hear.

Was it direct from Dell or a reseller?

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That’s unfortunate, people are human, mistakes happen, but the same thing twice in a row is just sloppy and poor service.

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Unfortunately I actually didn’t place the order and can’t say if they did use a reseller, but the contact that I’ve dealt with has an @dell.com e-mail and the packing slip has a Dell logo so I assumed (potentially incorrectly) that this was Dell’s issue. It’s just really frustrating as I WOULD have had most of these PCs deployed last month but now I’m already into December and looking at spending extra time at work now instead of having holidays, all because of extremely poor shipping and RMA habits. I’m bummed and angry but such is life, we truck on. We’ll probably just not bother with Dell on our next hardware revision and do the best thing we can, which is vote with our wallet.

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Exactly. This is how I felt about it, the first time was a huge hassle yes, but mistakes do happen so I gave the benefit of the doubt. I was a little upset about how long it took to get the ball rolling on the situation, but I understand business doesn’t stop just for my company. The second time? I just feel like there’s no excuse to repeat the same error, especially when these machines go for roughly $1200 per. That’s almost $40k, but I feel like I’m receiving penny service.

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My Dell account manager rocks, but have been down this road with other vendors. You only get services as good as your rep is and it sounds like yours isn’t very good. The same mistake twice is unacceptable and I would be escalating this to your reps manager.

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That’s messed up, man. Sounds like a purchasing and account management issue.

FYI, CDW recently started offering Dell. I do the bulk of my purchasing through them, so it’s nice to have additional options.

Not sure about changing up my workstations, but I might pick up some Dell monitors sometime. They’ve had some good ones over the years.

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Yea I actually have a CDW rep that I speak with occasionally myself but unfortunately I didn’t get to make the order myself due to being away but such as it is. I just wanted to get this off my chest but not throw anyone specific under the bus. I appreciate people reading though, and maybe some negatives piling up on Dell can only serve to benefit us as they improve services and procedures. Fingers crossed!

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Call your CDW rep and see if they can beat the price you got on the twice incorrect units.

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Have you tried Insight? Our rep never let’s us down.

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I’ve not tried Insight personally but I have been approached by an Insight rep who’s contact information I’ve been holding onto until I have to make a new purchase or order, I may take Snufykat up on that advice and contact both reps to see if we can get anything better through them.

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Apparently before I came to my current job, they used to get Dell until they started double and triple-billing them, then threatening lawsuits. After that, no more Dell.

I don’t have much of an opinion on Dell hardware, except when compared to any other brand of PC, Dells always seem more likely to make me bleed.

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Bad form Dell. I’ve had many bad experiences with their support sending wrong parts, not communicating in a timely fashion, etc… We even had them send us the wrong processors once on a 150 unit order. That was infuriating, at least our rep (at the time because they change like socks) was efficient in correcting the problem. It was maybe 15 days before we had our new towers. The new ones came with labels to send back the old ones. They just don’t seem to care about the little guys. Look for another vendor.

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I also wonder if Dell have been dropping the ball lately. In the past I used to order via the Dell Premier site. I could login and custom design any workstation, laptop or server I needed and order with the click of a button at wholesale prices. Since the middle of November 2015 Dell have started migrating Premier accounts in Australia to Ingram Micro. So now I am unable to do my own quotes and have to specify what I want from Ingram Micro and wait 24-48hrs for a quote to come through. Now quotes are behind schedule and it’s impacting my ability to deliver results to clients. This has been a painful process to change to. I am starting to think about moving back to HP at this point.

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I can see it happening once, but twice. Unbelievable.

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Hi Trevor,

I’ve read your post and I thought it was going to end happily for you with the correct system and SSDs, but I’m sorry they managed to send you the wrong SSDs twice.

You mention that you still haven’t received a response to the problems with the second shipment, so - if you want to - can you send me via PM your Order number, Customer number, the account manager or sales agent you have been emailing and your email and I’ll take a look at what’s been going on with this and hopefully get the 256GB SSDs issue resolved - at the third time of asking!

Colin

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When we make a mistake with the same customer/order, at least we try to make a different one 2nd time around.

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Though I have had very good service from Dell … AND … very poor service from Dell, I would honestly say that your rant is justified. One incorrect delivery is bad enough, but twice can easily become a FUBAR as far as setting customer expectations.

I would elevate this to the upper management level and damn the lower management or sales representative’s feelings. Obviously, someone has their cranial matter taking a vacation up their waist disposal canal and this issued needs to be rectified to you, the customer’s satisfaction ASAP.

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presume you checked that order/quote you got from them, I’ve always found you haqve to go through with a fine-tooth comb to triple check every line, every iteration through the order process

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