When my dell inspiron laptop had a problem, I called up Dell customer care. I paid 500 Rs for engineer visit. Nobody ever visited. I followed up on phone again and again. I got lies in return, lies about engineer visiting in next X business days, lies about engineer being very busy, lies about Dell calling me back.
Nothing ever happened. I felt defeated. I finally gave up. I gave up the ghost of 500Rs I paid. After all, it was just 500Rs. Ideally, I should have fought it through consumer court, but there are other battles in life and one has to choose his/her battle.
My friend had a worse experience than mine.
He ordered a Dell laptop, scheduled to be delivered to him by courier. He got it, but LCD was cracked. This was unfortunate but acceptable. May be LCD cracked up in transit. The unacceptable part was the follow-up. He had to run around, beg, take day off from office to get his legitimate right of a new part.
Dell customer care, just like mine, played its entire gamut of lies. The same X-business-days, engineer visit, false promises. My poor friend did not have the choice of letting the matter go. For him, it was a cost of a brand new laptop rather than my piddly 500 Rs. He finally got a proper screen.
However, this is not supposed to be the experience you have after paying the cost of a laptop.
So what are the lessons? Not to buy Dell? Unfortunately, in India, we may not be able to stick to this resolution as the competitors may be just the same.
However, I have taken a couple of resolutions for myself:
- Not to buy in a fashion where my product comes to me through courier. I will go to a store. I will play with one particular piece of machine.
I will ensure that it at least works and will return with that very piece. Hopefully, it will prevent me from the mail order kind of fiasco.
- Never to pay one paisa extra for extended warranty or customer-service of Dell. I am ready to give Dell benefit of doubt. May be they have a few cases of extra-ordinary service too. However, what is proven is that you need luck to get a good service from Dell.
I cannot pay money for a service which depends on luck. If something goes wrong with the system, I will visit the neighbourhood repair shop. At least there, the owner has a vested interest in customer satisfaction, unlike the pathetic-army-of-Dell-customer-care-representatives. I will save a few thousand rupees of extended-warranty-charges in bargain.