I realize that I have not been a prolific blogger and probably never will be but the latest gap is the result of “another” fried laptop. In approximately the past 2 1/2 years I have shelled out about $1600 bucks (not counting upgrade costs) between two laptops and did not even get to use them for the whole 2 1/2 years. The first HP laptop was purchased in September of 2005 and fried 1 year and 3 months later (3 months out of warranty). The second laptop was purchased in February of 2006 and fried 1 year and 3 days later (yup, 3 days out of warranty) and it too was another HP laptop. I have had it with HP laptops, AMD processors (for now), and nVidea based motherboard chip sets. I have no idea which one or combination of those was the cause but enough is enough. I also am not a big fan of extended warranties, but perhaps the writing is on the wall and I should consider it.
So, this time I decided to spend a bit more money and to look around. So I called Dell and got a quote on a laptop but it was a little more than I had intended to spend and still was not a Mac – something I have been wanting for the past couple of years. A couple of weeks later I decided it was too good an option to pass up (it came with a 3 year on-site warranty). I called the sales rep but he was on vacation for a couple of days which did not sit well with my “I want it now” personality. This lead me to poke around on the Dell website until I found a way to pull up my quote and finish processing the order. Keep in mind that Dell was offering no interest on new purchases for a year which would make placing the order a bit easier. So during the order processes I filled out the credit request and was approved…..at 26% interest; but hey, I am going to pay it off this year using tax money so what do I care! But after the order was processed I started thinking about this some more and realized that at no point did I see any form of confirmation that I had been given the no interest promotional. I called DFS (Dell Financial Services) and was told that my order didn’t qualify for the special. Now I am irritated, not only is my instant gratification personality suffering due to a mail order laptop, but now I am going to be racking up 26% interest. Furthermore, I am told by the DFS representative that they can’t fix it. I am then transfered to the standard sales department (my initial sales rep was from a particular business devision). My new sales rep tells me to cancel my order and he would personally rebuild it for me for the same price. I then call the department that will help me cancel the order but after 15 minutes or so find out my order cannot be pulled up because it has not yet been processed. However, my Dell support specialist tells me that he is 99% positive that the laptop I purchased qualifies for the no interest for a year special so I should verify the next day before canceling. At this point I have been dealing with Dell for probably a couple of hours, switched from a land line phone to a cell phone with which I had already used up all my minutes for the month and therefore called it a night.
The next day brought me better news, my laptop order had been processed and it did indeed qualify for the no interest offer. Oh wait, remember the “instant gratification” personality I have? Well I see the estimated ship date is listed as March 3rd, with delivery being another 3 – 5 days later (almost a month from order date)! I’m dying at this point. A few days later I see that my laptop has been built and now shows shipped – SWEET! Then I notice the ship to information and I see the Company name is correct but not the city or zip and I am unable to see the street address. Since DHL is the delivery service (ya I know, it keeps getting worse) I am a bit worried about their ability to figure out that they need to redirect the package from one town to the other town about 10 miles down the road. But hey, Dell is big enough that they should be able to get my package redirected. After all, they were the ones that screwed up the ship to information even though all of my paperwork showed it correctly. So I call a Dell support specialist and find out DHL will not allow Dell to redirect packages, only the customer can. If it had been FedEx then Dell could have done this for me but since my package went DHL “I” have to fix the Dell mistake!
The good news is that I have fixed the Dell mistake (allegedly – delivery will be the validation of success or failure) and await deliver of my laptop this Friday or Monday. So perhaps in a couple of weeks I will again become more consistent in my sporadic blogging!
