Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Bad Customer Service. Why is it still here?

cliffski

I’ve recently ahd the displeasure of dealing with both sony and dell for customer service. Dell are supposed to e sending me a laptop, but it’s not here. Naturally, like all megacorps, they cant be bothered to actually *care* if you get the product, so they outsource this vital part of their business to some third party who ignore emails and have a broken website with an order tracking form that returns blank pages in all 4 browsers I tried. I outsource part of my business (credit card payments) to BMTMicro, and I KNOW they are damned good, because I tried RegNow, RegSoft, FastSpring, Plimus and BMT.

The bit that bugs me is that emailing dell themselves means that you get a reply in their business hours, which is mon-fri 9-5pm.

lets look at that again:

Mon-Fri 9am-5pm

What is this? 1970?

Dell are a HUGE and GLOBAL corporation. They can afford to employ a skeleton staff over weekends, or even (maybe I’m out on a limb here) to work from 8-5 or 10-6 in overlapping shifts?

If you emailed me this morning for tech support, or customer service, you got a reply today. Today is a Sunday, and Mothers day. I will answer your email the moment I read it. I am a one-man company. I sincerely hope that in this recession, discerning customers learn to punish the companies that treat them badly, and reward those who treat them well. I know I will :D

5 thoughts on Bad Customer Service. Why is it still here?

  1. Hm when i had a dell computer the customer support was great, my computer broke and next day there was someone to fix it and also great support from you last time i lost my democracy (or rock band) license thing.

    However last time i had trouble with my credit card on playstation network and i mailed in i was asked to try scart stick instead of HDMI and to restart the console…

  3. Gah, you gave me quite a scare with that “Mothers day” line. Its an entirely different day here in the US, and for a moment I thought I’d blown right past it.

    Customer service is one aspect of a company’s reputation that can’t be faked with marketing, at least for the people that actually experience it. No amount of advertising will get me un-mad at Microsoft, and it sounds like the only thing that will soothe Cliffski will be genuinely better customer support. Free market at work!

  4. Dell’s support in Europe is simply atrocious. You think you’re having problems now, when you’re just waiting on your laptop to arrive? Wait till you actually need them to fix something. It’s even worse.

    What’s more frustrating is that Dell support in the states is actually not half-bad.

  5. On the Dell front, my laptop broke on a Sunday night. I contacted them on the Monday evening (the first available chance), a courier picked it up from my place of work on Wednesday (the earliest possible date), and it was returned to me as good as new on Friday. They can be very good indeed.

    However, I have to agree with Cliff’s larger point about support only during office hours, for any major company. And don’t get us all started on banks…

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