Whitley’s Dell Computer Nightmare

Ever had a problem trying to deal with Dell Computers Well, Whitley sure has, and they’ve tangled with the wrong irascible guy. Get a laugh out of his letter to Michael Dell about Whitley’s Dell nightmare–but if you’re thinking about getting involved with Dell, BE WARNED!

From Whitley Strieber

Dear Michael Dell:

I am the author of more than twenty bestselling books and the host of a weekly radio program with over a million listeners. I am writing you to complain about your company, from which my son had the grave misfortune to purchase a computer in July of 2000.

From the day it arrived, this computer has never worked properly. It has had so many things wrong with it that its pointless to go into it here. Suffice to say that it is a dismal, inferior and flimsy piece of junk.

Right now, it is eight twenty on the morning of Saturday, February 9. I have just received a dunning telephone call from Dell Financial Services about the lease payment for this computer.

The lease payment has never been sent late. This is the first time it has ever actually been posted late. However, it was posted, according to your own system, on February 6.

The other ELEVEN TIMES since July of 2000 that they have called to dun us, the payment has always already been posted according your own system. We have complained and complained about this.

The computer itself has been sent back for repair a number of times, always without a useful result. Most recently, it was returnedafter the torturous process of reaching a human being through your system, which appears to have been developed by a Kafkaesque madman on steroids to prevent that from happeningonly to be sent back immediately without the packaging we had put around it in inside your box even being removed from it.

It had not been touched and still didnt work. After numerous calls to your ludicrous customer service representatives, who were not willing to acknowledge that the repair had not been made, we finally found somebody competent enough to read and understand the machines repair history.

This womanone of the few competent, customer-concerned people in the whole hostile, moron-infested Dell madhouse actually managed to get the computer rescheduled for return.

However, the computer has now disappeared. Its repair status cannot be accessed on your spiderweb (its not a website, I wouldnt dignify that morass of obfuscating confusion as a website at all) and queries are only answered by your artificial intelligence program with meaningless replies.

So now, at least, we dont have to suffer with the miserable computer. But then again, we ARE being dunned for payments on itthat we have already made!

Mr. Dell, you and I met quite a few years ago in Austin, when your company was still little and human. But it was at a party of some kindI myself dont recall exactly when or where and you struck me as a surprisingly human being, despite the fact that you were soaring to financial stardom.

Beginning now on my website, where I am going to post this letter as a submission in our Insight section, and tonight when I am going to read it on-air, I am going on a campaign to let the world know just what a horror show your company has become.

The basic problem is that you have worked so hard to keep the customer away from your human staff that you have created a frustrating, maddeningly useless monster.

Every time a menu button is pushed, another reminder tells the poor jerk customer that the information can be found on your spiderweb. Has it not occurred to you that nobody in their right mind would even be calling unless they had exhausted every other possible means of reaching Dell

And oh, by the way, why not try building computers of quality and selling them with integrity I know that this old- fashioned idea may seem ridiculous to you now, but gee, it worked so well during the years when our forebears made this country great.

Whitley Strieber

NOTE: This Insight, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.