NOVEMBER 29, 2005

Kate Johnston Contributor

Id like to tell you a little bit about by day on Tuesday, November 22. On that fateful morning, I tried to rip a CD onto my four month old Dell Inspiron 6000. But the stupid piece of crap wasn’t having any of it. So, me being resourceful (read: cheap and lazy), I decided I would take my laptop to school and find myself nice friendly computer science major to take a look at it for me. Easier said than done. After much trial and tribulation, I finally found one, and we began the long and painful process of troubleshooting my computer. Nothing was wrong with the drivers, or any of the software, or the CD itself. So obvious even to me; a die hard Windows 95 junkie (I actually had it for 10 years. My desktop has a turbo button. Anyone else remember turbo buttons?) something was amiss with the hardware.

Through the magic of school newspaper articles, let’s jump forward in time a little bit.. It’s now around 3:00pm, and I’m at home, rooting through the giant pile of junk that came in the mail with my computer to find the Dell Tech Support hotline number. In hindsight, this should have been a great big sign. However, me being myself, I thought absolutely nothing of it. After

Dell Sucks... Big Time

finally finding it, I called them, and proceeded to wait on hold for about 20-30 minutes. When someone finally answered my call, it turned out to be what sounded like a middle aged man with a horribly thick Indian accent and horrible horrible English.

That’s not even the worst part. “Kevin” got me to spend the better part of the conversation looking for my operating system disks that Dell “sent” me. HEY IDIOT! A) Dell computers, well, my laptop anyway come with everything fully loaded and a piece of paper stating that the software CD’s are not necessary. B) my problem is with my DISC DRIVE. You know, the one that won’t play anything, nonexistent software included. Jerk. Then, I get transferred (and put on hold for another 10 minutes) to the customer care representative, who, thank Allah, is a woman who speaks wonderful English. Might of even been her first language. I may stretch out on a limb here and say that she was Canadian.

After stating my case to this wonderfully understanding woman, she sadly informs me that she can do nothing for me. She put me in touch with another tech support guy, and at my request, not Kevin. For those of you who may not follow at this point, tech support happens to be exactly where I started. So, now, I’m on hold for another undetermined period of time. I finally get in touch with someone. Long story short, he will not let me just send

my computer away for repair. Probably because that would be way too easy. If something is truly wrong with my drive, Dell sends the part and I have to replace itmyself (read: void my own warranty). This wonderful Tech support guy (who also happens to have a very thick Indian accent and is somewhat rude) also instructs me to reformat my drive, which was a step along the way to installing my operating system with the disks that wouldn’t work even if I had them. “Norman” also had a plethora of other wonderful fuck me over things to suggest.

Eventually, the call ended when he “accidently” hung up on me. Right at this moment, I’m upset, and exceptionally frustrated, so being irate and stubborn as an ox, I immediately call back. By some miracle of God I reach Dell Canada. IN CANADA! But, it was bittersweet, as their systems are completely down, (anyone see the irony in this?) and can’t help me. They tell me to call back in about an hour. While on hold, waiting to talk to tech support, for the third time, I began to churn out this little piece of work. I was on hold so long I got a little startled when someone actually picked up the phone. Another English as a first language, probably Canadian.

I geta little excited. She’s nice, but totally and utterly useless to my endeavor. She tells me that someone had called and left a message for me. Odd, I think I would know if someone

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from Dell’s fantastic tech support had called me. Anyway, she put me back through Dell Tech Support. Here I am for the FOURTH time. I’m on hold for about 10 minutes, when another man, with only a light Indian accent, and not good, but better English answers. He already has my information, which is no surprise, seeing as I’ve called three times already. He takes me through all the steps that I’ve already been through twice, just to decide that yes, I do in fact need a new drive. He takes my information and tells me that a new drive will be on my doorstop in 2 business days. Well, something did arrive, but, for some reason had my mother’s name on it. No one really knows how that happened, seeing as her name was not involved in this at all. So Purolator was very reluctant to give me that package. After an almost fight with an angry postal employee, I’m on my way home to call Dell and have a “Customer Service Representative” talk me through my computer surgery. This is the only way to not void my own warranty. And I think we all can realize how horrible that was for every party involved. My message here is clear. Licensing your technical support to a third world country may be cheaper, but you’re pissing the hell out of every single one of your “valued” customers. I can guarantee that my next computer will be an Apple. But only if] can talk to an English as a first language technician when something goes amiss.

Siufessapougell

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