In the spirit of Jeff Jarvis’ famous gripe I would like to offer my own beef with Dell. I bought a machine from them before without too much trouble but this time I have been having extreme difficulty just getting them to take an order from me. More details below
I wanted to buy a stripped down Dimension 5150 without a monitor (I already have one) and without the crappy video card they bundle with it (I have bought a GeForce 6800GS already). You can’t do this from their website but a friend told me you can get non-standard configurations if you talk to them on the phone. Since I am at the London School of Economics I can also get a ‘top up’ discount and other goodies but I have to get the consumer sales team to send me their quote so I can forward it to the academic team.
I have now spoken to four people over several days each of whom has said they would send me a quote. None has yet done so, and each time I try to ring the salespeople I talked to before back I go straight to their voicemail. Who would have thought it would be so hard just to get them to take my money?
