This morning Dell announced a new service called "Your tech team". For a $99 per year fee Dell provides North Americanhardware warranty support for your new system and all other systems in your household (that are still under warranty). Other technical support options, like performance tuning, wireless network set-up and anti-virus support are available for a fee but can be purchased while you are on the call with your favorite technician.The option to have North American tech support has been asked for several times on IdeaStorm. For some reason Dell took a simple idea and instead of offering a reasonable upgrade decided to bundle other things into it for an unreasonable price. Adding $99 per year on top of the extended warranty service pricing is unreasonable for a single product household and in the end could in some cases double the cost of the product over 3 years.
Is Dell really listening?
4 comments:
From the sounds of it, this warranty isn't being directed towards someone like yourself. But you're not the only consumer in the market.
If the cost of the new warranty does not fall within your budget, then you shouldn't buy it.
I know that Dell offers business systems (which can be purchased by individuals) that come with North American support as the standard.
I am more than willing to bet that even if the new service were free, you'd still not like it for SOME reason.
Funny thing is that this service seems to be targeted towards those who buy in bulk which are the business customers. Not many home users have multiple systems in the home and of those how many do you think only own Dell? If it was reasonably priced I would have no issues at all. Thanks for the comment though.
Well jervis old friend, your questions "Will They Ever Learn?" and "DELL Listens?" and your recent suggestion on IS "Stop transferring or hanging up on tech support callers" are interesting. But I think if you would just go back and re-read the InformationWeek link that I gave you in answer to your first question, you'd be able to answer all of your questions. This quote from the article (written May 27th) should help you see them for what they are. "Besides the illegal financing activity, Teresi ruled that Dell deprived consumers of technical support to which they were entitled under warranty or service contracts by failing to provide timely on-site repair. In addition, the company discouraged customers from seeking technical support by telephone through long wait times, repeated transfers, and frequent disconnections. The company also failed to provide rebates as promised, the judge found." They are still conducting, (for them) "Business as usual" Now they want more money to continue to provide the same quality of service.
DELL will never change. Not by law suits and certainly not by any suggestions from a few people on one of their insignificant web sites. It isn't something they want to change. It's the way the do business. It's the reason I will never buy any of their products. I simply don't trust them.
As to your question "Will They Ever Learn" (no offense) but you may want to ask yourself the same question.
Well said Gmat. As usual no offence taken as your comments are accurate. I'm sometimes too hard headed or optimistic to learn from some of my own past mistakes.
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