To Whom It May Concern,

 

I am in receipt of your order delay email and I am compelled to explain to you that this is an egregious mishandling of any client’s order by a company who depends greatly on the client base of customers to exist and employ, what I can only surmise to be, thousands of people in the industry.

 

I am disappointed that at each step of the way during this process I have been promised higher benchmarks of service than what I have received from this company.  Find each of the points listed below:

 

• I expressed concern when this item was ordered (7/15/2021 confirmed order with an 8/12/2021 estimated delivery date) over any potential delays and received assurance that not only would this *not* be an issue, it was highly likely that the order would be fulfilled earlier than posted.
  • Of note: the salesperson I spoke with somehow bypassed the security features of the website which presumably kept my personal information from his view and instead took it verbally over the phone.  At the time I raised an eyebrow at this.
• The order was listed as going to a state college that I have not been affiliated with in several years and not the actual address that I had listed.  The same salesperson corrected this issue fairly quickly and sent confirmation to reflect that issue.  The item is still listed as going to a state college, but care of my name at my home address.
• I sought to apply a sale price to the laptop after it was ordered and was instead given a year of premium service coverage.  On the invoice this shows a vast pricing difference and is unintelligible at first glance and appears to be nothing more than a numbers juggling game wherein a vaporous service coverage is potentially going to be provided in lieu of any tangible sales discount.
• The laptop had not entered into the production stage by 8/5/2021 (Thursday prior to shipping) which indicated that this would not be delivered in a timely fashion.  A website chat resulted in being directed to “Order Modification” via phone with confirmation that my order was being delayed.  No contact was received from Dell, this contact was initiated by the paying customer.
• This spurred a phone call to the “Order Modification” line listed by the web chat.  At that time a soft-spoken customer service representative appeared to struggle through an apology script that Dell had provided to her.  During that call, Dell confirmed that not only had the original salesperson guaranteed the product would not be delayed and would in fact receive priority, but also the fact that it was delayed (due to lack of materials available).  The phone contact ended with assurance that a higher level company functionary would return my contact within one hour.
• The same soft-spoken customer service representative called back within an hour and a half at which time she advised that she would be taking responsibility for my order and that the price would be reduced in an attempt to make the situation correct.  The call ended with the Dell employee stating that a representative would be in contact by Tuesday (8/10/2021, a day after the shipping estimate) to confirm that my order had been “prioritized and discounted”.
• On 8/10/2021 (two days prior to the projected delivery date) I have received only an email from a supervisor from the “Order Modification” department which stated that Dell found my satisfaction very valuable to them and was apologetic for any inconvenience that this delay may have caused.  There was no mention of any discount discussed by the Dell employee on the previous phone call nor a new projected delivery date.
• On 8/11/21 an official Dell email was received which gave a new estimated delivery date of 9/2/2021.

 

It is my sincere desire that this email is forwarded up the chain of command at Dell for review so that it may highlight the deficiency in the company and to highlight the failure to deliver what was promised at multiple levels and milestones.  This delay was glaringly visible by a customer prior to the actual purchase, addressed at that time and re-addressed throughout the process.  Either this is a glaring blind-spot that should not exist in the business model, an actively deceptive business practice or a combination of both.  None of these conclusions are acceptable and, quite frankly, surprise me as I had considered Dell to have a higher standard.  I will provide an actual log, names and recordings/transcripts of each encounter at each step of this process upon request should this be pursued by a quality assurance investigation within the company.

 

In short, shame on the Dell company for their complete failure in this incident.  One can only presume that this is not an isolated incident and that the clientele that pays the company have noticed the same lack of business integrity displayed in this instance.  May it reflect upon your bottom line in a sincere hope that you fix your house; for it is not in order.

 

UPDATED to show 9/2/2021 (new estimated delivery date)

 

                Moments after I sent the above letter to the ‘supervisor email address’ I received a phone call from Dell support (note: like every other previous contact sounded as though they were from a call center in India and at one point confirmed as much through a very poor phone connection and difficult to understand diction).  The supervisor appeared to have a script in which they profusely apologized for the delay and once again explained that it was due to the unavailability of certain components.  The Dell representative then assured that they would ‘be taking personal responsibility for my order and that I would be contacted with timely updates as they became available’ and that further discounts would be forthcoming once the product arrived.  The Dell representative advised during that phone call that one of the two difficult to obtain components had been received and that the computer was entering the production stage.  Only one component remained to be received. 

 

                -shortly after this phone contact the orders screen updated with new delay and the ‘in production’ bubble was now colored in.

               

                -On 8/31/2021 a new email was received from Dell titled Action Required: Your Dell Order has been Delayed (NOTE: the previous delayed date was 9/2/21).  In this email there was no personalized response whatsoever, there was no sign of the ‘taking personal responsibility for your order’ I had been assured of over a dozen times thus far.  The email very clearly stated that unless I took action the order would be cancelled for a full amount refund and that should I agree I was acknowledging a new delayed date of delivery of 9/10/21.

 

It should be noted that during the previous phone conversations I had asked numerous times to be put in touch with a higher level decision maker in the Dell corporation that would not be reading from a script.  Sadly, no such contact has been received to date.  Since I had originally placed my order on July 14, 2021 I found the youtube channel, ‘Scammer Payback’ which typically utilizes call centers in India to commit phone and computer fraud as I was concerned about my initial salesman contact where he gathered my personal identifier/credit information via phone as opposed to the Dell website security system gathering it without showing it to the sales department.  During that time I noticed the tendency for the scammers to utilize ‘American sounding names (Mike, David, Jim, Susan, etc)’ when speaking with their prey and using higher quality phone systems which were far clearer than the Dell contractors (who used India native names).  The Dell contractors were, for the most part, very polite as they followed the mollification script on their end while speaking with me.  I understand that they are not directly responsible for the delay, the fact that Dell falsely promised a delivery date on two separate occasions at this point or the overall shortfall in components available in the market.  That being said, Dell has employed these individuals to apparently act as a cost efficient buffer between the corporation and their client base as they fraudulently promised the product would be delivered prior to the original date all through a substandard quality sounding phone systems.

 

Update on 9/23/2021:

 

• The merchandise has yet to be delivered and the now often changed delivery date has just been greyed out and crossed off with the order shown as being ‘in production’.
• I have now received one additional (two total emails) requiring my account interaction to leave the order open or to cancel it.  In order to leave the order open I was required to accept the new delivery dates.
• I have additionally received two emails from the modification team support manager in which they state that the ‘order is delayed due to quality hold of the components’.  The email apologizes and says that my satisfaction is very important to the company.

 

I am not mad, I am disappointed.  Shame.