Buying Dell on Finance

shoegirl

I placed an order online with Dell last week to buy a laptop on finance and got an email confirmation showing my internet receipt number. However this was now 9 days ago and I've heard nothing back since. I presume the loan is arranged through Permanent TSB but I've heard nothing from them on the phone or in writing either. I have tried emailing Dell Customer Care but got no response.

Is this a common scenario? How long would it normally take to get through the system? It seems extremely slow considering that nowadays a peronal loan can be arranged in less than a couple of days. I'm just concerned that I have heard nothing at all from either. If I've heard nothing by Monday I am considering just mailing them to cancel, thats of course if they don't just forget about it altogether.

Culchie

Did you check the smallprint?

If memory serves me correctly, the interest rate for Dell Finance is up at credit card rates .. 23%

I know they used to go through TSB Irish permanent, but not any longer methinks?

shoegirl

Yes I am aware of the interest rate, I'm just wondering why my order seems to have stalled.

Guy:Incognito

Finance agreements have a 10 day cooling off period. If you dont specifically sign (not sure how it works with doing finance online) a section to waive the cooling off period then nothing happens for 10 days, during which tim eyou are free to cancel it.

shoegirl

Yes I know that there is a 10 day cooling off period - but that is AFTER the loan has been agreed. But so far I have only gone as far as the application stage, and heard nothing back. I know no news is good news, but surely they'd have contacted me after 5 working days? I don't know if the finance has been approved because nobody has contacted me. I'm just wondering if anybody knows what the Dell process is, so it might explain why I've been left waiting.

shoegirl

The latest in the saga is that I emailed Dell (3 times actually) and eventually got a reply by emailing the address for complaints. I mailed them my internet receipt and explained that I'd made the order but hadn't heard from Dell or the finance company and so the internet receipt hadn't yet become an order.

Dell emailed me back asking me for my order number. Incredibly, its like they never read my mail at all. So I mailed them back explaining that I didn't have an order number, only an internet receipt.

I also telephoned customer care and spoke to some guy (possibly in India?) who I didn't really understand very well who explained that my order had not been processed yet but he would get somebody to look at it and they would call me back by close of business. Which was 2 hours ago. Nobody called me back.

I should add that I did work for Dell about 5 years ago but was in technical support and so had little or nothing to do with customer care or sales (and was in corporate rather than home users anyway) and I remember service being stretched somewhat but not as awful as this. At this stage I'm considering just forgetting about the whole thing as Dell probably have already managed to "lose" the order and just buy a laptop elsewhere on the credit card.

WexCan

Dell Financial Services - 01 279 6250 - give them a go.

TempestSabre

Theres been quite a few complaints lately about Dell internet orders seemingly being "lost". You buy Dell because you want cheap, not service. Their sales and support seems to be chronic these days. I would cancel the order in writing, telling them why, then buy a Sony with an extended warranty.

People tend not to ignore snail mail for some reason.

shoegirl

TempestSabre wrote:

Theres been quite a few complaints lately about Dell internet orders seemingly being "lost". You buy Dell because you want cheap, not service. Their sales and support seems to be chronic these days. I would cancel the order in writing, telling them why, then buy a Sony with an extended warranty.

People tend not to ignore snail mail for some reason.

Thanks for the advice. I've been reading around on the net and indeed there seems to be a common scenario where orders vanish into the ether. As I've already had more crap from Dell than realistically I would have expected I'm not confident in them providing a quality product, charging me correctly, or to be honest, managing to get anything right. For goodness' sake they couldn't even find any reference to my initial internet order even though I gave them to the original reference. If its that bad then they are simply not capable of getting it correct at any point and I'd be better off buying elsewhere. I've been looking at other retail sites over the last few days and some are offering pretty good machines at similar prices.

Having said that I really should have known better - I worked for Dell for a year about 6 years ago and thing weren't great on technical support even then, I just thought they might have been able to manage sales properly considering they have such a huge emphasis on the initial sale.

TempestSabre

Fine if you get one cheap and can do your own support. Otherwise....

shoegirl

3 days later now and still nobody has called me back.

Looks like I'll be taking the advice above and formally cancelling the order.

Will not be buying Dell again needless to say. They've also given me an opportunity to hang them out to dry, which in some sense vindicates the sense of unjustice I felt that drove me to resign from my old job there many years ago. Looks like they treat their customers with the same contempt as they treat their staff.

jimmycrackcorm

I was ordering 5 computers under Dell leasing and had the same story - nobody knew about the internet receipt or the order. Got computers from another supplier.

shoegirl

I phoned again on Monday and a guy explained to me that the order hadn't yet been processed because they hadn't received my forms from the financing dept. I explained that I didn't receive them to start with so he said he'd get in touch with them and get them to send them on. 3 days later and still nothing.

I did get another response to one of my emails (wow! what great service, 2 emails out of 6 get a response!) saying that they were passing the query on to whoever was supposed to be dealing with it. Again, nothing.

I'm kind of tempted to put in another order just out of curiosity.

I've actually also just put in the 6 euro to the ICB to see if Dell or their financial services company checked my credit rating. If they haven't I'm going to just keep putting in orders until somebody actually processes one of them!

shoegirl

After more than 3 weeks of repeated emails and phone calls to Dell (almost all of them asking me had I sent back finance forms which I never received), I was contacted by Dell Financial Services who told me I had been turned down for finance. They also said that each and every person who I spoke to on the phone should have been able to tell me that. They claimed to have sent me an email but I've double checked my mail and the only thing I got from Dell was an initial order receipt.

Needless to say I'm pretty angry at this being strung out, but very glad on one thing - if the customer service is so poor, then Dell have saved me from buying a product that would have been high risk at being substandard.

Thank you Dell - and won't be doing business with you again!

MOH

Just make sure they have cancelled the order.

I bought a PC off them just over a year ago. The first time I finalised the order, the website crashed and I got a message saying the order hadn't gone through due to a trechnical error. When I tried to set up the same spec again, it was no longer available. I set up a different spec, ordered that.

Then I got invoices for two different systems. When I phoned them to sort it out, they had two machines in production for me. Spent about half an hour on the phone trying to sort it out, but they eventually agreed cancel the first one.

An hour after I hung up, I got a call from a different girl in Dell asking had I intended to order more than one machine. Explained that I'd just sorted it all out with someone else. When she checked, they now had a record of three orders - two of the first model, one of which was cancelled, and one of the second.

shoegirl

MOH wrote:

Just make sure they have cancelled the order.

An hour after I hung up, I got a call from a different girl in Dell asking had I intended to order more than one machine. Explained that I'd just sorted it all out with someone else. When she checked, they now had a record of three orders - two of the first model, one of which was cancelled, and one of the second.

At least you got a response - which is more than I got.
After my ordeal with them I've decided to take my money elsewhere.