Dell + delays, need I say more?

I was in on 11/26 for the 20% off PayPal promo and ordered a Visiontek 3870, I knew and Dell knew it wasn't in stock at the time I accepted the charges but we both figured it would arrive within the 1-2 week specified time frame.

12/11 shipping date comes and I get an order delayed email. Contact Dell and multiple reps give me their own B$ they made up that instant with a firm confirmation the cards would be shipping in 24-48 hours.

12/17 delay date comes and I get another order delayed email (12/24), prompting me to contact Dell and OK the delay by order of the FTC. I cancel because I've seen how the 8800GT Dell orders have gone even worse over this same time frame.

Now I don't care if it was Dell, Visiontek, or some cow in China that caused such a massive and continuing delay for DIFFERENT brands of cards. Dell is the end retailer, they are the ones responsible to the customer, and Dell acted like a retarded, deaf, lame duck.

I work IT for a university campus that is all Dell (atm) and I can tell you this is not a one time problem, I have dealt with their awful business practices with almost every system purchase we make. Like most tech people I have sent all of my tech-handicapped relatives and friends to Dell for purchases, but after this past year I am going to find another system builder for everyone I know - any recommendations? Gateway? HP? eh?

I "personally" wouldn't go with HP, PCWorld, rated them as one of the worse in customer service. They have an article about various companies in this months issue.

I have no love for any brand name pc honestly at this point... Everybody cheaps out somewhere...

Why not make the system builder 'yourself' and add a few bucks to the system and make them go buy the parts for u

Lenovo FTW

Theocnoob said:

I have no love for any brand name pc honestly at this point... Everybody cheaps out somewhere...

Why not make the system builder 'yourself' and add a few bucks to the system and make them go buy the parts for u

Click to expand...

System builder for a whole college campus?! Sounds like quite the undertaking.

As for retailers, we have some nice Gateways at my school, as well as many MACs :/ Which suck more than the Gateways.

Theocnoob said:

Why not make the system builder 'yourself' and add a few bucks to the system and make them go buy the parts for u

Click to expand...

Warranty and Support, thats why.

Theocnoob said:

I have no love for any brand name pc honestly at this point... Everybody cheaps out somewhere...

Why not make the system builder 'yourself' and add a few bucks to the system and make them go buy the parts for u

Click to expand...

Building a PC for yourself is one thing. When you have to order computers for a large organization(company, university, whatever), you don't want to have to try and build 300 systems yourself. Nor do you want to keep track of individual hardware warranties for those systems, manage software licenses, etc etc etc. Nor do you want everyone calling you for tech support.

I don't even build computers for friends and family members anymore because of that(I'll help them pick parts, but it's with a very clear understanding that I will not help them build it, and I will not help them if it breaks for free). I have a full time job that takes more time out of my day than it should, no reason I should be part time tech support on top of that.

Prisoner1138 said:

Building a PC for yourself is one thing. When you have to order computers for a large organization(company, university, whatever), you don't want to have to try and build 300 systems yourself. Nor do you want to keep track of individual hardware warranties for those systems, manage software licenses, etc etc etc. Nor do you want everyone calling you for tech support.

I don't even build computers for friends and family members anymore because of that(I'll help them pick parts, but it's with a very clear understanding that I will not help them build it, and I will not help them if it breaks for free). I have a full time job that takes more time out of my day than it should, no reason I should be part time tech support on top of that.

Click to expand...

Oh ya!
Doubtful the Dean of IT will ever switch from Dell (I think he gets kickbacks), but my parents, grandparents, relatives etc sure won't be getting any more.

erasmus372 said:

Oh ya!
Doubtful the Dean of IT will ever switch from Dell (I think he gets kickbacks), but my parents, grandparents, relatives etc sure won't be getting any more.

Click to expand...

Usually when buying large quantities directly, whoever is in charge of the purchasing, will get special offers. One recently was a BOGO on a laptop or desktop(limit 1). A friend of mine got it because he's a Dell customer purchasing for a business. So yes, there are offers made to folks like that, and Dell isn't the only company that does it.

Funny thing though about you not getting Dells for any of your family anymore. About 6 months ago I actually bought a dell desktop for my mom, because the system I built her a year or two ago decided to self destruct(one thing failed, i'd replace it. another would fail and be replaced, then another, and another. And no, it wasn't cheap or refurb parts either, nor were they being abused. Just bad luck). I got her the dell simply because the $350 out of my pocket for that, and her being able to call dell for warranty and support was well worth it.

I'm just curious why you are having troubles with Dell. I range from about 5K to 20K per month with them in servers, workstations and peripherals. With my rep, I normally get items shipped within a couple of days. This includes most servers and workstations(custom configuration). I have had to wait on things like quad monitor racks and the occasional out of stock items. I get 4 hour enterprise support and the time I've needed them, their support tech arrived 15 minutes behind the replacement planar in less than two hours. If your IT support section is having trouble, climb the customer support ladder and get a different rep.

Some things Dell is better with than others. We are still a Thinkpad shop, but Dell is used for a growing part of our infrastructure for price, time and warranty reasons.

my company started dealing with dell (were small) but first few times anyone had problems it was a pain dealing with them. you had to go beyond the normal rep to get anything done.

So we started dealing with microcenter store by us for anything we need. Yeah we don't call them for the tech support. But they always have whatever system we need for a awesome price. Powerspec is what we usually purchase from them and purchase other parts to fix or upgrade other machines. Power spec has been pretty good for us so far.

Not sayin dell is horrible, but not great either. But then again were small fries ;0

Yeah dell REALLY ****ed off a LOT of people with that whole 8800GT video card BS. I still don't have a working pc after a month of run around with them. They even went so far as to blame MSI saying they don't make the card anymore. Gee that's funny shipped in one day when I ordered it from newegg. Dell just didn't want to honor the insane price they had it for $207. I'm done dealing with dell, and I'll make sure anyone who asks for my help avoids them as well.

I've had decent experiences with Gateway in the past two years or so. Just from a personal standpoint, I don't have anything against them.

I used to be a big anti-HP guy but our company switched to them being our preferred vendor so we didn't really have a choice. We have used a lot of the HP DC5100 / 5150 and the DC5700 / 5750 series desktops and they have worked great, especially the 5750. I think they are technically referred to as a workstation class PCA breeze to set up, on board RAID, easy to ghost an image to (when you will be using RAID in the image there are a couple tricks we have to do but no big deal once I figured it out). Also use a decent amount of the ML350 server class units that have been pretty trouble free as well.

When we have needed parts or had an issue we have not had any real problems with HP, but experiences will vary I am sure.

DELL always ships really fast for their free ground shipping to me.

A lot of their P4 era Dimensions are REALLLLY quiet too.

I just hate how picky they are with memory.

just this xmas, dell delayed both of my 8800gt's for 2 months... yes 2... thats not a typo.... ordered in November 24th , for December 10th delivery... they delayed it to January 24.

I initially had faith in them but I had to cancel the orders and will never order anything from them ever.

their customer service was also rude and insultingly tried to get me to accept a 2600 ati card as a replacement.

I am still waiting for a 30" WFP3007-HC LCD monitor from Dell.

I only purchased it in early November!! First order was delayed twice and then cancelled by Dell without asking me. Then the second order went through again for the same item and it has been delayed once and now even the customer service rep has stopped responding to my emails.

**** poor company IMO.

I like how they call that award winning customer service!

not

Surfrider77 said:

I am still waiting for a 30" WFP3007-HC LCD monitor from Dell.

I only purchased it in early November!! First order was delayed twice and then cancelled by Dell without asking me. Then the second order went through again for the same item and it has been delayed once and now even the customer service rep has stopped responding to my emails.

**** poor company IMO.

Click to expand...

get a hold of the supervisor their email addy is provided within every email from the cs. person.

PhysX said:

get a hold of the supervisor their email addy is provided within every email from the cs. person.

Click to expand...

I am just letting it go and waiting for reviews to come in on the new WFP3008 series monitors.

It's still annoying as all hell.