Dude, You’re Gettin’ A Dell! And It Sucks.
Editor’s note: This article is a not a rant about Dell. Dell is simply an example of what I believe is poor customer relations having a negative impact.
Last week we bought a projector (Dell M109S) for our studio, Solley Photography. It was a cool, tiny (fits in the palm of your hand) Dell model, highly praised on the Dell web site. We were excited about the prospect of bringing this small new projector to our clients’ homes to give a presentation of the clients’ photos.
But we hit a snag. And that snag reaffirmed our philosophies on customer service. Let me explain.
We were very excited when the UPS delivery truck arrived with the projector. We opened the box, turned it on, plugged it into the computer, and…yuck. The image was dark, not much larger than a large computer monitor, and just generally stunk. Maybe it’s just too bright in our living room, we thought. So we went to the basement where it was dark, and our experience wasn’t any better. Our expectations of the product were completely dashed.
We called Dell and told them we wanted to return the projector. We told them it fell far short of our expectations and that we’d buy a full size projector. We were quickly told that the projector was performing as designed and that we’d have to pay a 15% restocking fee. What?! So we lose shipping and have to pay just to give back a poor product? Plus they tell us they’ll refund our money 30 days after they’ve received the return. It’s safe to say we won’t be buying any Dell products again, ever!
How I See Things
It’s this simple: if you have a poor product and combine it with poor service after the sale, don’t expect your customers to return. We take this very seriously here at my studio. We do everything in our power to deliver a product (our photos) that exceeds our clients’ expectations. In addition, should we ever falter, we make it right. Immediately. No questions, no hidden fees.
Putting Our Money Where Our Mouth Is
We recently demonstrated this commitment to quality and service to one of our clients. She made a print order by email. We fulfilled her order as usual and sent the prints to her. The next day, she called to tell us there had been a mistake. We had sent her the wrong photo. We told her “no problem, we’ll take care of it immediately”. Turns out she had asked for the wrong photo in her email order to us (it’s easy to do when ordering lots of images).
At this point we could have gone the same route as Dell. We could have asked for her credit card number and charged her for replacement prints. But we didn’t. Instead we immediately got the new prints made and got them in her hands a couple days later (the day before her son’s 2nd birthday party). When she found out the mistake had been hers, she offered to pay for the replacement prints, but we declined because we know a little good will goes a long way.
This is what sets us apart from so many businesses these days. We like to think it’s refreshing, especially in this down economy.
A few days later we got a call from our now very happy customer. She wanted us to send her a stack of brochures. Turns out she owns a scrap booking business and talks to lots and lots of moms every day. She wanted to start giving them something tangible when she raved about a photographer she recently worked with. That’s cheap advertising.
What do you think? Think companies should start stepping up? If you have a photography business, do you treat your customers like they’re valued, or like enemies?
Loading ...Updated #1
I sent this email to Dell customer service yesterday:
I just wanted to know that I think your company’s attitude toward your customers stinks. You treat your customers not like they are valued, but like enemies.
I find your customer service so lacking that I wrote a blog post about it. By this time tomorrow more than 2000 people will have read it.
Enjoy:
http://www.sublime-light.com/index.php/2009/08/03/dude-youre-gettin-a-dell-and-it-sucks/
And here was the customer service rep’s response:
Dear Tim Solley,
Thank you for contacting Dell Online Customer Care.
I see that you are not satisfied with the level of service you have received. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused to you. We have taken your feedback into consideration and we assure you that we will work on making improvements based on your feedback.
I have received your email however it does not provide the information that is critical from resolution point of view. Please elaborate on the concern that you are facing. As once I have the required information, I will be in a position to assist you with the issue.
I assure you that both Dell and I are committed to a quick and complete resolution of your issue.
Sincerely,
Naveen Grover
Rep ID 104123
Dell Online Customer Carehttp://support.dell.com
I’d say it’s pretty obvious that Naveen didn’t bother to read this post. I even said “I wrote a blog post about it”. Looks like even when you send them details they don’t bother to read.
Update #2
It just keeps getting better! here’s the email I sent back to Naveen:
Sure Naveen, I’d be happy to elaborate.
I purchased a projector from you (see my order number). When it arrived, it was useless. I can’t even read the screen, even in a dark basement pointing the projector at a white paper screen. In addition, the screen is tiny. As I said, I cannot use the projector.
So I called to return it, and was told that I would incur a 15% restocking fee. And that the refund would take 30 days. So now I’m out for shipping, around $50 in restocking fees, and I won’t even see my refund for a month. This is an absolute joke.
Further, I explained all this in the link I sent you, which you obviously didn’t read, or you would have had more than enough information. Not exactly customer “service”, is it?
And Naveen’s response:
Dear Tim Solley,
Thank you for contacting Dell Online Customer Care.
I understand from your email that you want to know the credit status.
I see that the credit request has been initiated under CRA number 118037628. It can take up to 15 days for Dell to receive and process your return once it is picked up by the carrier.
Since it has been less than 15 days since the product you are returning was picked up, you can check the status of your credit return by going online to “My Account”, then click on “Order Status” for your account activity.
Sincerely,
Naveen Grover
Rep ID 104123
Dell Online Customer Carehttp://support.dell.com
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August 4th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Wow, you bought a product that was clearly not designed to be used like a normal full sized product and then cried when you wanted to return a used product and not expect to pay for an exchange?
I applaud you on your customer service, but your talking about prints, not electronics, if they sent you a “Reburbished” or used projecter you would probably be upset and blog about it.
Dell would have to take that projector back now and market it as reburbished/used/or demo, for which they lose money, just because a stupid customer expected something amazing.
Sorry, sounds like a mistake on your part.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Sensible,
What exactly would you expect from a projector that “creates stunning colors and highly-accurate images”? It’s a projector, meant to project a large image on the wall so that you can see what’s on the screen. If it can’t do that, it’s not a projector, it’s just an overpriced lamp. The product did not live up to even the lowest expectations.
And your argument is false. It’s not a used product. Dell will still resell this projector as used. Do you think that when you return a product you buy at a retail store, that they send it back to the distributor to be sold as refurbished? No way, it’s back on the shelf the next day being sold as new. And yes, I would be upset if they sent me a refurbished or used unit when I bought new. But like I said, this is not a used unit now. It was turned on, put back in the box, and shipped back.
And no, I didn’t expect something amazing. I just expected a projector that I could use. But I didn’t get that. It’s no different than prints. Let’s say I shipped a customer a large print that for arguments sake I charged $100. But it has a horrible green cast to it. It’s clearly not up to my customers standards. So they send it back to me and I tell them I’ll refund $85. After all I can’t resell it at all, not even for less, and I lost money on the printing. Should my customer just shake it off and say “well, I guess I was just a stupid customer”. No way.
The bottom line is this, and was the point of the post: if you have poor policies and customer service, don’t expect customers to return. Doesn’t matter if they’re “stupid”, you still aren’t going to get their money. And isn’t that the point?
August 5th, 2009 at 5:21 am
So, what you are saying is that if that customer who sent back the $100 photo didn’t like it the first time, you would refund 100%? What about the second, third, fourth??? At what point would you consider charging your customer for returning? There has to be a point of diminishing returns right? You can’t go on forever giving the customer their money back and you loosing money on paper, chemicals, time, and wear and tear on the enlarger, printer, shipping, etc. Right?
I’m thinking that is more accurately the point.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:16 am
This is good, I’d like to see this keep going. I’m sure there’s lots more here to be discovered about how we can better run our businesses.
Fred, I would give the customer a print that was right. In my example, the print was bad. Just like the projector was bad. Doesn’t matter what the product is, the customer needs to get something that meets their expectations.
A few months back I had a customer order an 11×14 canvas gallery wrap. I calibrate my monitor every two weeks. At some point, my monitor got reset (my two year old son’s doing I’m sure). I sent the order to White House Custom Colour for printing. When it got here, it was way too dark. It was completely my fault. I could have shipped it to the customer, hoping she wouldn’t notice. Instead, I called White House and told them what happened and that I needed a reprint. They offered me a 25% discount on a reprint. I reprinted it, sent the good wrap to the customer, and moved on, knowing I sent her a good product. Had I sent her the original wrap, I’m sure she would have either returned it (thus hurting my relationship with her) or simply never called again (definitely hurting things). In both cases she likely would have told friends and family about her negative experience. Instead, just yesterday she called to make another large order of gifts. So yes, I was out 75% of the cost of a gallery wrap, but now I’m definitely in the black. All is well at my studio.
When White House first started making press printed books several years ago, I immediately ordered one for a studio sample. It came and the pages were falling out. I called them and they quickly sent a reprint, no questions asked. This one was bad too. So again, they sent another one. They surely lost money on the deal. But because they took good care of me, I’m still a loyal customer, and they’ve made lots of money off me. They’ve been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years, and there’s a reason for that.
Fred, I’ve never had to fix an order more than once. It ALWAYS goes out right if there’s been a mistake, no exceptions.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Aaaah, but you are talking about a Defective Product out of the box in your example.
Apples and Oranges here. You didn’t receive a defective product from Dell, you just don’t like the way it worked in your situation. Sounds like personal taste has come into play here, not that the product did not work.
Of course I’m not talking about sending a customer an 11×14 canvas gallery wrap that obviously doesn’t look right to you, much less the customer. I’m talking about what if you had sent the photo to the customer all looking perfect, and they wanted a refund because it wasn’t “cropped” exactly they way they wanted it. How many of those would you do for free, before you hit the point of “diminishing returns”?
Charging a restocking fee for a “new” product that has been returned and by law must now be considered “used” or “refurbished” costs money. It can no longer be sold as “new” once the package has been opened and touched. Besides, would you puchase underwear from a clothing store that had been tried on and returned because the customer didn’t like the fit? I don’t think so.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:18 am
You’re right Fred, I was talking about a defective product right out of the box in my example. But I was also talking about a defective product from Dell. It doesn’t work. The projector wouldn’t have worked for a sales person doing Powerpoint presentations. You simply can’t read it. Whether the specific projector is defective or the design is flawed, the projector can’t be used either way. I told the Dell rep. that the projector image couldn’t even be read, and they just stated “that’s how it was designed”.
So no, this case isn’t any different from my dark gallery wrap problem.
August 5th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Why didn’t you claim the image was dull and the projector faulty. That way Dell would have exchanged it or offered a money back option. Never just say you don’t like it unless the seller offers that money back guarantee to you.
These little Dell projectors aren’t rated very highly, by anyone. But they are perfectly useable and readable; they are just a cheaper, smaller low quality projector. Did you try adjusting the projector picture type and quality, as that makes a big difference. Also did you see if the bulb was set to run in economy mode, as that runs the bulb dimmer but prolongs bulb life?
If you did try all of this and the picture was still so dime and dull it was unreadable then return it as faulty.
PS. you really should have read the online reviews before buying it, or any product. Independent reviews and user comments are a good test of a product. A little research here would have saved you some time and money.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Icthus,
Thanks for the comment. I did actually tell Dell that it was defective, that it was unusable. It may actually have been a broken unit for all I know. But apparently they know the design stinks because they insisted that it works as designed and was not defective.
I did look at online reviews. There were many positive reviews of the projector. And there were negative ones. But ALL products get at least some negative reviews online, and you have to determine if they’re valid or just negative nellies. Even my beloved Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS gets negative reviews.
I don’t want to dwell too much on this specific instance, what he said, did you push this button or flip that switch. It’s not about the projector so much as about the business attitude toward customers.
Here’s the bottom line: I’ve added a poll up above that asks whether people think Dell is blowing it. The list of “yes, they are” is growing. This means that people don’t like this sort of customer service attitude, which directly translates into revenue. That’s the point. If you’re running a business, this is a very serious issue that you should be taking note of.
August 17th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
HOW Dell has managed to stay in business all these years is absolutely amazing to me. Both myself and another family member had very similar problems with Dell. Their Customer Service should be renamed to “Customer Non-Service”. Maybe it is the Texas way of doing business. For myself, I would NEVER deal with Dell again for anything.
August 18th, 2009 at 10:47 am
I have never had problems with Dell. I bought a couple lens from them, and both arrived fine, and I never had to deal with their customer service. However Tim is right. I cannot help imagining that if something had gone wrong with any of the lens, my story would have been the same. No one customer or commodity Seller is always one hundred percent perfect. Being a commodity seller who is prepared to go an extra mile in satisfying even a ’stupid customer’ does make a lot of business sense. What ever happened to the saying that the “customer is always right”? Many people do go out to buy stuff especially electronics, not knowing exactly what they want. When you add the fact that buying online is shopping trusting that you would get a product that will do what it says it would do, as you do not have the opportunity to see or try the product until you have paid and it is shipped to you. Reading the correspondence between Tim and Dell shocked me. I now realise that a big business name is nothing without a good customer relation ethics, even “stupid customers” deserve to buy without people taking advantage of them online. Dell please do something about this!
August 19th, 2009 at 5:54 am
Well, I agree that the customer service could have been better. But maybe you should have checked the specs first, not just the big print (almost everyone lies there). They clearly say that it has a 50 lumen brightness (the rest of Dell’s projectors have 2000 and up) and a contrast ratio of 800:1 (the rest, 1800:1) and up.
So with 1/40th of the brightness and less than half the contrast, the performance cannot be anywhere near a normal projector.
Anyway, I think that Dell can afford a return, even if it was due to a bad customer’s choice.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
I’m amazed at all the posts that support Dell’s position! Even if you do, it’s obvious their customer service is absolutely horrid. You can tell that from the second email where they didn’t really answer Tim’s concerns, opting instead to send out a boilerplate response.
I recently had to deal with Dell’s “customer support” for my company and while I won’t go into details I will say by the end of the ordeal I’m ready to trash Dell to anyone who’ll listen. I probably talked to their “support” staff a dozen times and every single time I had to re-hash what the probelm was and every single time they wanted me to go over the same steps which, as an IT professional I already had numerous times. Clearly, they don’t read what’s gone before. They don’t care (I guess they think they’re too big to fail).
Bottom line: their “customer service” is the worst I’ve ever seen in 25 years in IT. The worst. I will never buy a Dell. Never.
End of Rant.
John
September 4th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
If you had a customer who ordered a small 6×8 print and then decided that it was too small and wanted to return it, you’d charge them. You received a product that met the technical specifications listed so it was not defective and you cannot blame Dell if the projector doesn’t match what you imagined.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I do a lot of business with Dell and I can tell you the problem here is the outsourcing of customer service.
Fortunately for me, I have only needed to contact customer service a couple of times. Generally speaking, Dell sends out good products.
However, the times I have had to deal with customer service were not walks in the park.
But this isn’t just a Dell issue. It’s becoming much more common as computers and accessories move toward commodity products. The profit margins are so slim that the companies can no longer afford to do customer service in-house. Or can they???
I would argue that as long as you can push out quality products and outstanding prices and still allow the buyer to customize the product that yes, you can afford it. That is precisely why I continue to deal with Dell.
However, if you can’t compete on price and give the same level of customization, then I feel like you should really rethink the customer service. I know for my local purchases, I will gladly pay more at a store where I know I will be treated right rather than try to save a few dollars and feel like I am more a bother than a customer.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Those responses remind me very much of the kind of responses you get from those new phone menu systems that use voice recognition. I wouldn’t be surprised if these were canned responses from an email-based automated response system.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Dell used to have great customer service. My sister got a Dell laptop when she started college, and by the time the warranty ran out Dell had replaced almost everything on the computer. My good friend in college was having problems with his laptop, and after they tried to diagnose it, they had him replace the hard drive free of cost. When that didn’t work they sent him new memory, which fixed the problem. After that they didn’t even ask for the hard drive back, so when my hard drive failed a few months later, I got my friend’s old Dell hard drive free. I know this reply seems to reflect badly on their products, both my sister and friend were heavy users who worked their computers hard. I’m really surprised that Dell treated you like that, guess the recession hits pretty hard.
September 5th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
“So, what you are saying is that if that customer who sent back the $100 photo didn’t like it the first time, you would refund 100%? What about the second, third, fourth???”
Man, because something done a hundred times is foolish, you can’t deduce that doing it once is also foolish. There is this little thing called logic – you should try it one day, it would suit you!
What’s the matter with people here? Dell advertises a product that “creates stunning colors and highly-accurate images” – obviously that is an outright lie (oh no sorry – it’s marketing!). Would you people defend me if I sold somebody a bit of snake-oil?
Personally I’m fed up with all the crap that we have to submit to in the holy name of business. Spam in mail-boxes are baaaad – but costly glitter-prints shoved into my mailbox even though I don’t want them, that’s OK. and on and on…
And then posters here DEFENDING poor Dell! When they obviously goaded Tim into buying something that did NOT perform as promised, even though it wasn’t malfunctioning.
What are you? Nuts?
October 13th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Fred Moore and Sensible just don’t get it! When you spend a considerable amount of money on a product, quality companies offer a no questions asked satisfaction guarantee. Sure, there are some people that will abuse this, but Tim has a valid argument. The product did not work as he expected and he called immediately to tell them. I stopped dealing with Dell long ago because of customer service issues.
April 19th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
I spent ages writing a nice comprehensive response about this and then my computer to crash…so I’ve given up and will just say nice site lol
April 19th, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Tim Solley is entirely correct. Dell truly SUCKS. I had 2 experiences with them years apart. I felt I should give them a second chance, Bad idea. The second experience was even worse than the first. I believe that Dell looks after their “Commercial Accounts”, concerns that have several to several hundred computers. The individual is given short shrift by Dell. NEVER AGAIN.
July 19th, 2011 at 11:02 am
I had a similar problem with Discover. I am not a credit card user anymore, but if I ever wanted one I definitely wouldn’t get a Discover card. They are rude and condescending. I called them to pay off a card and they still treated me like garbage. It’s much too long of a story to tell here, but I can relate to your horrible costumer service nightmare. These companies need to shape up!
September 14th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
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