I have had my Dell D810 since end of 2005, and it was time to change… at work in the last couple of months, I managed to transition to a Lenovo T61p and quite liked it (nice to have a bit more horsepower)
The fact the Dell was so sturdy and I did not have any problem with it kind of influenced my decision to continue with Dell, so I was looking at something a bit more up-to-date, so my choice settled on Dell Precision M4400 which seemed to have reasonable reviews..wasn’t perfect by any mean, but it looked pretty much acceptable.
So I went to Dell Netherlands website and started to configure my laptop…just to realize that it was impossible to select the LED screen I wanted against the 2CCFL one since the webcam and LCD cover were incompatible with it and impossible to deselect. So .. fall back to phone call and do the configuration on the phone… a bit of a lenghty process, I receive the configuration via email, doublecheck and fix some mistakes… all in all it took about 3h and it’s the next day… and I wait to receive the payment instructions.. which I do immediately (bank transfer).. and this is yet another day.. and to next week.
So for an order placed on July 23 (thursday), it is effective on July 27 (monday) and the target delivery date is set to August 13. Uh…well, that’s no fast delivery is it ? Too bad, as I will be in Indonesia starting from the 13th.. so hopefully it will be arriving a couple of days before.
On August 9, I receive an email stating the delivery date is pushed to August 20.
On August 16, I receive an email stating the delivery date is pushed to September 18
On September 15, I impatiently wait for this laptop to arrive so that I can book my flight to New York..I have a friend on Skype who is joking that by the way it looks I will still be waiting for my laptop in January, which for some reasons makes me check the order status on Dell website…to realize it doesn’t display September 18, but October 26 ! All hell break lose and I’m calling customer service to have a nice lady in India who recites her text saying that there is a huge demand, etc etc… well thank you very much, I immediately write a mail to the sales manager I had on the phone as well as his manager saying I want to immediately cancel the order and get a refund within 48h. In the meantime, I go to a Dutch online shop and order a Lenovo Thinkpad W500 to (hopefully) be shipped within 2-3 days.
On September 16, I receive an email stating the delivery date is pushed to October 26. As I don’t have acknowledgment of reception, of my cancellation..I call the sales manager.. who tell me it has been escalated to the escalation manager and seem surprised I didn’t get any call yet…well sure enough by the end of the day, I still didn’t get any call back from the escalation manager.
So in the end, I’m far from being impressed with Dell and you can bet I won’t exactly run to place another order near time soon…and I’m still waiting for my money back.
