An open letter to Dell:

Thank you for your email confirmation of our conversation today with customer service .
I only wish you had extended the same courtesy to me last week after Dell lost my order
for the ultra-sharp 19″ flat panel LCD along with the 15% online savings discount from Dell’s e-coupon that was emailed to me.

It is considered very bad customer service to lose a customer’s online order, then your customer service rep confirms there is no order, and finally five days later, Dell finds and ships the lost order and debits the customer without any notification whatsoever.

No confirmation email; no customer service courtesy call offering to ship my lost order or even verify if I still wanted it, and then confirm shipping and debit dates. Is that business as usual?

I really wanted that ultra-sharp 19″ monitor too because the savings discount made it a good bargain, but after Dell’s customer service reps confirmed the order was lost, I gave up the idea of ordering online and found a nice 19″ flat panel monitor from Sony, that I bought at a local retailer. And it’s a real beauty too! Current LCD technology is better than ever.

I guess what really pissed me off was Dell’s debit on my bank account without prior notification, that has overdrawn my account by almost that amount. So today I paid an NSF fee, and may have to pay another tomorrow. All because Dell debited my account without notification.

Imagine if you placed an online order, recieved no written or verbal confirmation of your order, no further communication from the online retailer, and then a week later get debited for a large amount of money, resulting in your bank account being overdrawn, and then starts bouncing checks. And of course, you paying the resulting NSF charges.

There’s not only the sting of paying the NSF charges, but I’m really paying for Dell’s mistakes!
And their customer service department tells me I have to wait an entire week for them to
reverse their charges back to credit my bank account!
Meanwhile, I worry about more NSF fees.

And Dell has the audacity to tell me “customer service is their number one priority.”

Just to let you know, I have been a faithful customer. I’ve bought three computers from Dell, including upgrades and accessories. That includes a new PC, purchased just over a year ago, and several reconditioned units bought locally at a factory authorized outlet. And I’ve been a certified Dell technician in my daily job in IT for three years. My shop is all Dell PC’s and notebooks too, so I work on them every day, and deal with professional hardware and software support personnel.

Sorry Dell. You lose another sale and another customer. You’re supposed to be the best at sales and service. If this is the best you can do, then I really fear for the future of our computer industry. And I really want to talk in English to someone in Austin, not India.

But I will let the world know how great your customer service is by posting this open letter on my websites and all the consumer forums I’m a member of. And I talk to alot of computer users daily in my support position.

Maybe if you lose enough market share, your customer service will actually improve.

Pissed off and mad as hell…

Yours Truly,

customer#69703679