Just deactivated my Twitter account. Damned thing was echoing. My fault.
Anyway, say that I’m now on my third order for the same computer with Dell, and they are continuing to screw up.
Just deactivated my Twitter account. Damned thing was echoing. My fault.
Anyway, say that I’m now on my third order for the same computer with Dell, and they are continuing to screw up.
Sigh … I feel for you. I’ve been with Dell and am no longer.
I suggest an adult beverage.
Or a quiet sit-down with a cup of tea (my solution, usually)
I don’t understand the whole “left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing” operation. Don’t these people put notes into the record when you call? Don’t they have a means whereby any customer service representative with whom you’re dealing can access those notes, read what has already gone before, and instead of repeating the same thing over and over, can actually HELP you?
I regret that Dell has managed to ship its technical support overseas to wherever they send calls nowadays, so that when you try to talk to someone, you have to adjust your ear to the accent, and then, realize that they’re using a script and talking you through it. And cancelling an order because an SKU was changed? Do you mean that Dell is so disinterested in alerting the customer and possibly losing the money that they’ll just cancel an order without notifying the customer? If these cancellations are automatically generated, then there’s a problem right there. The more automation a company puts between themselves and the customer, the more likely a problem is to arise. I’d seriously consider dropping any company that thinks so little of me that they’ll let their robots talk to me rather than a real person.
I remember Dell also using the remote desktop to fix my problem, which, while it was nice and convenient, it also made me feel like one of those people you read about in tech support blogs…you know, “I can’t use my computer. Yes, it’s plugged in, and yes, the power switch is on. Oh, it’s been like this since the power went out 2 hours ago.” I spent most of my Navy career working with computers, I have a degree in Business Administration with my concentration on Information Systems…..and it is damned irritating to be thought of as though you’re incompetent or need to have your hand held as you go through the steps to correct the problem. Even when I tell them exactly what the problem is, they want to go through the steps again, sometimes using the remote desktop. Sometimes, I get the urge just to grab the damned mouse and start moving it all over….no, restrain yourself, sir.
I have a Dell XPS tower PC, an Inspiron 15 laptop, and an old CPi Latitude (yes, it runs a Pentium II @ 266MHz – but it WORKS!). My biggest issue with the XPS has been that the Firewire port on the front of the machine have stopped working correctly, and the USB ports have become somewhat wonky. Of course, this machine is about years old, so maybe it’s time. The primary hard drive is a Hitachi, while I have installed Western Digital drives in the computer as the auxiliary drives. To date, I have not had a bit of trouble with the Hitachi drive, but I’ve gone through 2 Western Digital drives that have gone south, plus I’ve replaced drives in the external MyBook drives. One of my external drives has decided that it won’t work at all any longer, and as it’s been out of warranty, is pretty much a lost cause. The other MyBook is a 2TB that I’ve made into a RAID drive, halving the available storage space to ensure that data is preserved during backups. It also is a Firewire or USB drive, depending on which connection I choose, but the thing no longer works on the Firewire input, so I’ve been forced to buy an additional USB 2.0 card to work with this drive. I know, I’m behind the technological power curve, but I am also behind the financial power curve, as well. I swear, the next computer I buy is going to have a solid-state drive as its primary, and maybe I should invest heavily in external drives that are also solid-state, so that I don’t lose data due to the mechanical failure of the drive motor. I’d consider cloud-storage, I have a Dropbox account, but that’s a free account, and I’ve seen where if someone puts something in my Dropbox, unless I download it and remove it from the Dropbox, THEIR account is also tied up with the storage space for whatever they’ve sent me. For example, send me an album of pictures that takes up 40MB of space….until I download those pictures and remove them from Dropbox, you are also using 40MB of space on your own Dropbox account – or at least, that’s how it appears to us. Perhaps Carbonite is a good way to go, and if I can afford it, I’ll consider it.
In the meantime, I hope you’re able to get Dell to do the right thing, get the computer right the first time, and get it to you in a timely manner. You’d think that with your history of working with Dell computers, Michael Dell himself would want to be sure you got what you ordered.
I feel for you, CJ. When your computer is your livelihood, any trouble with it is a major pain.
My computer was iffy last month, but seems better this month; still experiencing slowdowns while it’s busy with something, but that’s to be expected for a 3 to 4 year old machine. I’m hoping it will hold out until I can solve it.
I have been going around and around with bureaucratic frustrations since January. No sense in going into it all here, But yes, I sure understand the frustration, when it’s nothing you’ve done, it’s their own process that’s the problem.
Here’s hoping your computer problem gets resolved soon.
I’ve always gotten the in-home service policy, which means in general that I talk to people who are not overseas, and who often are topnotch—that it took 4 repair techs to find a bios switch, however, means that Dell has a real funky bios that should NOT be turning off USBs in an era when a laptop uses headphones, wireless mice, etc, etc, flash drives, and all sorts of things just stuffing the little slots. What were they smoking when they did that? Or didn’t put the quick fix in the manual? It cost them 3 motherboards, 3 daughterboards, 3 keyboards (that was another non-flipped switch) and a palmrest, while we were at it, and had one tech ready to order me a replacement computer—that’s pretty spendy for a problem that should NOT have been more than a, “oh, the usb thing? Keyboard won’t light? Give me control for five minutes, and done.”
That’s a money drain. Not to mention the shipping about of the computer and the repair techs not finding it either, probably because none of them knew enough English to READ the letter I sent with it.
In this case, if I were other than a customer who knows these machines are good and tough (when properly set up) — I’d be off to some other company. But I NEED that stupid trackpoint mouse. The hand tremor is something I can cope with while gaming, but when trying to exactly place a cursor to take out a period—my hand shakes too much. The touchpad, same problem. And I can’t cope with that kind of thing. It’s one of those tremors that, the more precisely you try to aim, the worse the tremor gets. It’s a real pita, and I’ve had it since childhood. It’s just a dirty trick of history that it turns out to matter a lot in controlling the machine I have to use.
Once I do get the new machine, I’ll doubtless be happy as can be with it. But I certainly hope after all these part changes they’ve made that it turns out to be the machine I ordered!
If it isn’t, they’ll get it right back.
What is darkly amusing is that the price of the machine goes up 3 cents for each new iteration.
Apropos fine control in editing, can’t your editor/WP let you click somewhere close and move letter to letter with the keyboard cursor keys? I usually find that’s easiest, and your hands don’t have to leave the keyboard.
The keyboard cursor keys are useful, but don’t move on the diagonal, which slows you down a lot. I admit it, I’m just spoiled by the trackstick. Even a sideways mouse reach is slower than the trackstick—for me.
I too have been using Dell computers since the ’80s, but I’ve ordered from the website since the ’90s, not by using the phone to talk to a person. I have run into a problem with the screen I wanted being incompatible with the rest of the machine, but on-line it flashes red print at me. I’m surprised the sales staff doesn’t see some sort of notification when they are entering your order(s). Sigh. For work machines I’m still a Dell user, but I’ve branched out some for “play” machines. I’m typing this on a Samsung Ultrabook which has been reliable for 2 years so far. Can’t say the same for an ASUS laptop I bought a few years back.
Joe, I’ve been a Western Digital drive user since the ’90s also. Dell has been shipping their laptops with Seagate drives the last few years, but I usually replace the hard drive within 2 years to get more space and get rid of the original Seagate drive. My work laptop’s Seagate HDD failed in January 2014 at a little under 2 years of use. Dell replaced it with another Seagate HDD which failed in less than 24 hours. That time they sent a WD drive, but NewEgg had a sale on Samsung SSDs so I dropped that into the machine a week or two later with a great sigh of relief.
Thanks for the tips on the hard drive.
BTW, I went to Dell’s website, just for S&G to see if I could build a computer to my specifications. I wanted a tower, an Intel i7 Gen 4 CPU, an Invidia graphics card, Windows 7 Professional, 16 GB RAM, and a 3TB+ HDD. I got the very bright red letters – your configuration cannot be made, or words to that effect. ReallY? Why? Bet if I called them directly, I could get it done my way, or else, I just say, well, thanks, I’ll do what David Cherry recommends, buy the best MB you can afford, plenty of RAM, and then build from there.
I’ll see if I can build my own specifications by a phone call to Dell and see if they will do it. I don’t want a mechanical HDD if I can get a decent sized SDD to hold the OS. I just wish there were better backup methods that didn’t cost 6 mortgage payments……
@Joe, I too have always had good lucj with WD drives. I’ve still got some 1GB Caviars that have always worked reliably for me, and I’m sure still work. As far as MoBo’s ASUS makes the best, IMO.
I built according to the online forms, then called a person in ‘small business’—if you’re Precision you can’t talk to the ‘home’ people, who don’t have any help for you— who built the thing according to what I said. At no time were there red letters. One problem is that apparently SKUs are being changed and robots are baffled. I don’t know whether this is only with the Precision builds or whether it’s general, but what gets me is why TWICE they have waited until the delivery date of the computer to say it got cancelled two weeks ago.
Something is so bizarre up there.
I’ll ask DH if Dell is crapping out on our business orders. We’ve been sticking with Dell because they can still offer Win7Pro without requiring the Win8 (and all its minions) rubbish which gives our business customers the pip. We recently got a new customer service rep (as a business that regularly orders computers from Dell for our clients, we get a quasi-dedicated contact person), so I wonder if Dell has been going through any internal rearranging, which might account for the disorganization.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/03/business/dells-life-after-wall-street.html?ref=topics&_r=0
They are in a restructuring process. But they have some major difficulties—their phone people directing customers to wrong departments, or being unable to direct them anywhere. They’re contracting the size of their workforce, and hopefully trimming those who don’t know how to transfer a call…
I’ll be interested to hear, Chondrite, re the business orders. We’re exactly the same in wanting WinPro7. But boy, if they want to hear tale of woe, 3 replaced mobos, 3 replaced daughterboards, two replaced keyboards, one involving their Houston repair center—all over two missed bios settings, which we finally got to the right person to state was the case. Then two cancellations over SKUs on a Precision order. With them swearing they sent notification and us checking our SERVER e-mail records to say no notification was sent. Not to mention the gal in ‘chat support’ who ceased a conversation and left the screen stating that she couldn’t deal with ‘small business’—no further help, just, bye, I can’t help you. Those are things they need to fix, pronto. I’m patient beyond the limits of most customers, because I know what I want. But it’s been a 3-ring circus, and it’s cost me time, and having to reload all my data for no-help-at-all.
Sheesh! Excuse the rant. But it’s been a zoo!
And I love the product. The machine I have, while getting older, is great—once we found out it was never set up properly.
I’ve seen a variety of businesses in recent history failing at customer support. They leave you on hold for hours, drop calls when transferring after that hours-long wait, don’t keep logs of what has been discussed/promised, fail to follow through, and different service reps will give you different answers on the same issue (apparently depending on the phase of the moon). It’s what made us buy Honda rather than Chrysler for our last 2 cars, and is causing buyers and sellers to flee ebay in droves. Sadly, there seems to be enough new blood coming in that management doesn’t see any need to change. The chat support drop alone would have made me see red, without even an offer to transfer you to someone who could help — yikes!
Well, DH says that we have NOT had any issues recently ordering computers. Maybe it’s because we usually get relatively uncomplicated ones, and if any tinkering needs to be done after the fact, we do it ourselves. Do not confuse happy fun Dell representative. That still doesn’t explain their complete fumble of your repair and order; if they offer it, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to do.
You would think!
So far so good. I’m accessing Dell daily to be sure it still says ‘in production’—but then, they say that all the way to the delivery date, then tell you ‘cancelled.’
I had a good long think as to whether I want to have the new machine at all, since I’ve gotten the old one behaving much better. But the thought of coping with Windows 8.1 is just too uncomfortable. I know that I can get several good years out of 7 Pro, and that I won’t be alone, either, until Win 10 has proved itself. It’ll have a Win 8 license, so it has a stepping stone toward 10, but will have 7 Pro, and by the time it obsolesces totally, I’m pretty sure Win 10 will have flown or failed.
I don’t think you need worry about the upgrade. Microsloth has finally gotten a clue, and is offering the Win10 upgrade for free to any Windows machine that has Win 7 or Win8.?, for the first year it’s available. A year should be sufficient to see if Win10 will meet your needs, or if it’s time to look at Linux 😀
I’ve spent the last day and a half trying to figure out what on earth was wrong with my Vista SP2 PC. Yesterday a common font (Courier New, I believe) suddenly became unreadable. I futzed around with browser settings, video settings, possible video driver updates, and finally googled the symptoms only to find MS released a security fix for Vista SP2 with a known bug in it. ACK!! I’ve now uninstalled said patch and have had to force Vista to permanently ignore that patch (KB3013455 in case anyone is interested).
Apropos our recent talk of losing computer data, Internet pioneer and now Google VP Vinton Cerf has been in the news lately warning of a “digital dark ages” as everything we’ve produced digitally is lost to obsolescence of HW/SW technology.
Make books! Books require no assistive technology. Just use good, old, paper, not this modern acidic, “slow fire”, stuff.
Western Digital fans may be interested in this article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/17/us-usa-cyberspying-idUSKBN0LK1QV20150217
“The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world’s computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.”
Although the article doesn’t say so directly, the linked graphic shows that infections have been found in the United States as well. The virus is built into the firmware of the drives.
I guess sales of US computer technology overseas will drop even more now.
I wondered why you’d disappeared from my Twitter feed. Good luck with the new machine and I hope you re-activate your Twitter account in due course. It’s way too useful as a “one to many” broadcast to those of us who don’t have time to log on to dozens of sites each day to keep up with the news.
Bob.
Sorry about that, Bob.
.
No need: you have to do what you have to do. And heck, I still get so much pleasure from your books, the new ones as they are published and the oldies that I pluck from my library shelves from time to time that loss of a few Tweets is neither here nor there. Currently I’m back in “Serpent’s Reach” from 1980 and I feel sort of guilty that you don’t get repeat fees for every time one of your stories is re-read. But not too guilty!!! lol
Bob.