The Order in the Dell
Thursday night, after a few weeks of will-I-get-a-tax-refund-or-won’t-I paranoia that I experience every year around this time, I walked out of the H&R Block office I’ve been going to for over a decade with a spring in my step, heady with the thought of a cheque three times the size of last year’s buoying my mood.
Given that last year’s covered the cost of filing and a bottle of booze, that’s not saying much. But nonetheless, I suddenly felt rich. Maybe not Bill Gates rich, maybe not six-figure-salary rich, but relatively temporarily affluent. In a refund-induced delirium, I decided to put a recently-received 30% coupon from Dell.ca to use and upgrade my computer system.
Full of optimism and drunk with the possibilities, I logged onto dell.ca and started choosing my future system. I decided in favor of the not-quite-bargain-basement system, upgraded the RAM, upgraded the hard drive, went for the 13-in-1 media reader, consulted with several people and, with a mixture of trepidation and excitement, clicked “Go to Checkout”, ready to plunk down my credit card number and start looking at the world through a flatscreen monitor. I followed the instructions on the page for applying my coupon and prepared give a little whoop when I saw my total savings and revel in how much money I’d saved.
But the coupon discount wasn’t applied. There was a small notice indicating that the coupon could not be applied because additional information was required or because the offer was invalid.
Whatever, I thought. I clicked on the “Details” link, somewhat less excited but still intent on blowing my refund. But the “details” only showed that I was entitled to a 30% discount. The total purchase price didn’t budge.
Slightly less heady and somewhat baffled, I went back to the original email and followed the links to the fine print on the offer. Nothing explained to me why I wasn’t seeing a discount.
Aha, I thought, I’ll avail myself of Dell’s award-winning support! I called the number listed on the site and put on my “baffled customer” voice.
To Dell’s credit, I spoke to a customer service representative almost immediately. Unfortunately, he only directed my call and informed me that the average wait for this department was ten minutes.
Ten minutes. I figured ten minutes was worth saving $300. So I agreed to be put on hold.
That ten minutes took ten years from my sanity. Dell has some of the worst hold music I’ve ever been subjected to. In attempting to offend no one, Dell’s choice of music had me in a murderous range within 30 seconds. Soporific synthetic strings swelled over a melody that conjured images of Celine Dion thumping her chest. A never-ending loop of cliched chords and drum loops. For a classically-trained closet metalhead like myself, this was a taste of Hell.
But just as I was about to rip my phone from the wall and attempt to puncture my eardrums with it, I heard a click that resounded like an angel chorus and a voice that could have come from the heavens. “Welcome to Dell customer service…”
I’m not an internet noob. I’ve built sites and maintained servers. And I give credit to the service rep for not talking to me like I was an idiot. But he was unaware of the promotion I was trying to take advantage of and, after 30 minutes of going over my order and repeated attempts on both ends, neither of us was able to apply the coupon, or figure out why my order total wasn’t discounted.
Completely deflated at this point, I thanked the rep for his efforts and sent an email to Dell’s customer service address explaining what had just transpired. I wrote a fact-centric account, accusation-free and neutrally worded, save the last paragraph where I said the wait was interminable and the music was infuriating. Somewhat placated, I sat back and waited to see what I would receive in return.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally this morning I received an acknowledgement of my email, requesting I send them the coupon code I attempted to use and my order number. Order number? Do I get an order number if I don’t place an order? Neat. I replied with another neutrally-worded email indicating that I don’t think an order number was generated, and if it was, I didn’t make any note of it, as I cancelled the purchase after investing an hour in trying to buy it.
Anyway, by now I’m in full on “fsck it” mode as far as an upgrade goes. We’ll see if I’m willing to give Dell another try when my cheque arrives.
1 comment April 3rd, 2006