Dell Delays... Causing Distress

[babonds25]

My Dell Dismay



It's crazy to see such diverse experiences with Dell... I've had a TERRIBLE shopping experience with my Axim order. It took a week for my order to FINALLY get placed, and now I get to wait a MONTH before my handheld will ship. I've been keeping a close eye on the Dell forums at forums.us.dell.com, and there have been a ridiculous number of people who are in my same situation... based on the posts, it looks like Dell is tickin' off A LOT of people with poor customer service and support, yet I've also read a lot of post with people exclaiming how much they love Dell and how wonderful their experience has been with the company...

What really bothers me is the big discrepancy here and the inconsistency among Dell customers. Some have received their order extremely quickly, while other have had to wait an unreasonable amount of time. Personally, I think Dell needs to seriously reevaluate their supply chain and hire some frickin Industrial Engineers... they obviously didn't PLAN well and are having trouble meeting demand.. sure forecasting is always wrong, but this is ridiculous for a leading technology company like Dell to be screwing around with customers like this... that's a big f up. And they need to stop BSin with this whole "custom built" thing... these handhelds should be manufactured no differently than they are by other big manufacturers like HP/Compaq and Toshiba... I wish I just knew what REALLY is goin' on... And I hope that this lack of planning doesn't leak into the QC side of things, 'cuz I've heard a heckuva lot of horror stories about Dell's tech support and cust. svc., and have already had to experience a bit of that myself. I've purchased 5 Dell desktops in the past, but this experience may have just cost Dell my business in the future. They need to get their act together and focus on cust. svc again...

Just had to vent a little here.. i'm ticked.

[fyrfyter]

Ok, First off to anser your questions: 1. The units aren't even made in the US; They are made in asia, shipped to Dell distribution centers, and then distributed to us. 2. Dell never expected to sell this many units this quickly. They did a heck of a job of undercutting everyone else with a cheaper price for a Pocket PC device. 3. The whole customer service thing, seems to be an issue. It seems some are getting outstanding cust. service, and others are getting crap. 4. everyone that is buying one of these and them hammering Dell about squishy pads and other stupid stuff, get over it. Dell said the pad was meant to be soft, and not some hard clicky thing. They wanted the pad to supposedly resemble the buttons on a TV remote control. This is a first for Dell, and like all firsts will need some time to get all the kinks ironed out.

[hyppo]

I can't say that the delay doesn't bother me, but what really pisses me off, it all of the run around the staff at Dell is shoveling to it's customers. Customer service, has two parts a CUSTOMER and one who gives them SERVICE. Without the SERVICE, there is no CUSTOMER. I haven't gotten any service on my many attempts at contacting Dell. :(

[babonds25]

Ok, it's fine to try to defend Dell, but they're big boys. Yes, the units are manufactured in Taiwan and imported by Dell. So, stop feeding customers BS and just let em know that they're on back-order. And a month wait is ridiculous, no matter how you slice it. Dell wasn't even going to enter the handheld market this early, but they did, and a company that's supposedly an industry leader and has been around for 15 years should have had better foresight and done some more market research. They obviously weren't as ready for this release as they should have been... the logistics weren't in place, and now they've put themselves in a position of really tickin' some customers off.. I don't sympathize with Dell. Yes, they sell a competitive product priced below the market. That's great, and that's the beauty of our society and capitalism. But before you release any product, you bests feel pretty confident that you have an effective system in place. Dell outsources the manufacturing aspect; maybe they picked a vendor that just wasn't up for the challenge, and they certainly could improve their logisitics and customer service at the least. Let's face it, it's no surprise that a new entry into the handheld market from an industry-leader like Dell at a price well below those of competitors would generate a fairly large demand. For a business of their calibre, they just dropped the ball a bit on this one. Simple as that.

[Erick]

Originally posted by hyppo
I can't say that the delay doesn't bother me, but what really pisses me off, it all of the run around the staff at Dell is shoveling to it's customers. Customer service, has two parts a CUSTOMER and one who gives them SERVICE. Without the SERVICE, there is no CUSTOMER. I haven't gotten any service on my many attempts at contacting Dell. :(

I gave up on contacting them. I've tried 4 times already.... each time with 45+ min wait.. and then I just hung up. Each time I spoke to a LIVE person...I was almost excited to only find out the tech discovered I was a 'home' customer and transfered me to God knows where. I tried calling at different times. I suppose I might try again in the near future. *shrug*

If dell is smart.. they'd ship some of their PC techs and beef up the Axim dept. :rolleyes:

[Erick]

Originally posted by babonds25
Ok, it's fine to try to defend Dell, but they're big boys. Yes, the units are manufactured in Taiwan and imported by Dell. So, stop feeding customers BS and just let em know that they're on back-order. And a month wait is ridiculous, no matter how you slice it. Dell wasn't even going to enter the handheld market this early, but they did, and a company that's supposedly an industry leader and has been around for 15 years should have had better foresight and done some more market research. They obviously weren't as ready for this release as they should have been... the logistics weren't in place, and now they've put themselves in a position of really tickin' some customers off.. I don't sympathize with Dell. Yes, they sell a competitive product priced below the market. That's great, and that's the beauty of our society and capitalism. But before you release any product, you bests feel pretty confident that you have an effective system in place. Dell outsources the manufacturing aspect; maybe they picked a vendor that just wasn't up for the challenge, and they certainly could improve their logisitics and customer service at the least. Let's face it, it's no surprise that a new entry into the handheld market from an industry-leader like Dell at a price well below those of competitors would generate a fairly large demand. For a business of their calibre, they just dropped the ball a bit on this one. Simple as that.

*claps*