Dell Chat Technical Support System Sucks!
I often encounter customers who have computers that are still under warranty and rather than let them get abused by the technical support process I take care of the warranty claim for them. My past experience has shown that if I tell my customer to handle it can often take HOURS for them to convince Dell that something is wrong with the machine, making them re-install the operating system (and loose their data) in the process.
I have learned that it is usually MUCH faster to use a companies chat based support to handle issues like this. I have had a process down and am usually able to tell the chat tech support agent EXACTLY what they need to know so they can expedite my claim. Using chat you also don’t have to battle the language barrier, and when I give them my address to mail the part I know its right because I have typed it to them. I can also take screen shots of the diagnostics and place them online so they can view them via a web page and I can easily prove my case. There are many other reasons why its been a lot easier in the past to use chat technical support in the past, that is until now…
The new Dell chat support system is horrendously bad! I couldn’t get it to work with Mozilla Firefox, then when I finally was able to install their add-on with Internet Explorer I was put in queue position #87. The number slowly went down, about one a position a minute, and after 1.5 hours I was in queue position 26! Fortunately I had other work to do during this time. When I reached queue position 11, about 2 hours into the ordeal, I noticed the position stopped going down. It just stalled there for another 20 minutes, and counting.
I finally picked up the phone and called. The first representative demanded that I give her the exact error code that the dell based diagnostic utility gave them. Telling them that the Seagate diagnostic reported a Read Element Failure only resulted in her telling me that “We can fix the hard drive over the phone if you follow my instructions.” I asked her “How do you fix a read element failure over the phone? It’s a hardware based problem!” Realizing I was going to get nowhere I booted the machine up to get the Dell based utility to report the failure. In the meantime I asked her to hold while I took another call. The other call took all of 30 seconds, and when I switched back I received silence, then a busy signal – they had hung up!
I called back, this time with the Dell error code in hand, and was able to spend about 20 minutes after that point getting the new hard drive shipped to my address. I had a problem doing this because Dell now requires you to have the original owners name and address, or they send you the parts – so if you get a machine as a gift or buy one used that is under warranty, be sure to get the original owners information with it or Dell will give you a hard time getting support.
While I was put on hold and the claim was being processed I let the chat session run. When the Dell technical support agent returned I told the phone operate I had been in queue on chat for over 2 hours, and he said the queue was closed because it was after hours! Sure enough when I launched another Internet Explorer session and tried to log into dell support chat by stating another instance, I was greeted with a message that the queue was closed and to call Dell instead!
What well written technical support chat software Dell! It will let you hang in an active queue for hours, then just decide to leave you hanging there, no notice or anything, because your chat department goes home and the ‘queue’ closes. Nice of you to even publish ‘chat support hours’. Guess I’ll have to start calling support again instead of the chat, if only there was a number you could call if you were are an expert to bypass the flowchart based tech support dummies that initially try to handle your call.
P.S. A note on replacing your hard drive under warranty with Dell, HP, Etc.
If you are in this situation as a consumer, remember that Dell will always try system restore first, and you will loose your Data if you run it. Furthermore, hard drives have different states of failure. A read element failure makes it very hard to recover any data, but a degrading hard drive often has recoverable data. If Dell sends a technician to your house to replace your hard drive, remember that they will NOT attempt to recover any data. This is why I advise my customers to say no to extended warranties – you are better off hiring someone that can do a better job of trying to get your data back, and isn’t stuck in ‘the system’.
Update: The pic shows queue position 8 at 12:24am, I have moved to position 4 now as of 1:18am. This is probably because other people waiting all night decided to drop, not because their chats were answered. Ill let it sit overnight, maybe someone will answer in the morning!
Article Info
- Author: Brian
- Posted on: Friday April 9, 2010
- Under: Tech-Stories