There’s a Silicon Valley saying: “Underpromise and overdeliver.” The presumption is that it’s much better if your customer has lowered expectations early on than to disappoint. My experience with Dell has provided a twist on the old adage.
A few weeks ago I decided to replace Tompkins, the server that became uncommunicative after a close encounter of the MacBook kind. Except for laptops, Dell has been my go-to computer supplier for the past five or six years, in spite of some recent bad experiences. I logged into my Premier account page, and tried to configure a server. I could configure a server that the Dell software liked. I could configure a server that I liked. However, they were always different servers. Over the years the Dell server configuration software has become increasingly Byzantine, and the disk/disk controller section completely buffaloed me. I sent off a note to my account rep.
After an hour, I hadn’t heard anything. I called Dell. The salesman couldn’t configure the system either, and didn’t seem to know much of anything about servers. He called in reinforcements, and a pleasant and efficient woman came on the line. She said that she often had problems with the web configurator, and used in-house tools to configure my system. She then handed me back to the salesman.
I gave him my credit card number, and we ran into a problem. They had an address in their database that I hadn’t used for thirteen years. I gave them the new address. They said they’d be verifying the change later.
The next day I got an email from Dell, asking that I request a change in billing (not shipping) address. They told me all the information they’d need to process my request. I gathered it together and sent it off. They acknowledged.
They’d quoted me two weeks delivery, but after ten days, I got a call from FedEx, saying they’d tried to deliver the machine to the old address, and would I please give them the right one. I did. I few hours late, I checked the package tracking information, and it said they’d returned the package to Dell. I sent an email to the person who I had been dealing with on the change of address. She said she’d try to get the package turned around. A day or two later she said that she couldn’t do that, but that she’d ordered a new system for me.
I started emailing and calling the salesman who sold me the server to find out the status of the new system. Three days went by before I caught him on the phone. I found out that the new server was being shipped that day, with overnight delivery.
The next day, I had my new server.
Leave a Reply