Dell is Hell. In the last 2 weeks I’ve been on the phone with Dell reps for well over 7 hours total. A few weeks back we ordered a 1U server and we needed it before the end of February. The highly praised Dell “just in time” business model gave me a ship date of Feb 26th with overnight delivery. A day after completing the order, I checked the status and the ship date jumped to March 12th.

I called Dell support to see if the order could be expidited to arrive before the end of February. Indian tech support reps told me they would expidite the order to March 9th. Dell’s response was, “We can remove all shipping charges and get you the server by March 9th.” After explaining several times again that the server was needed by end of February I finally had to cancel the order.

Cancelling the order should be easy, however my experience was almost worse then trying to cancel AOL. In hindsight, I wish I recorded these calls with Dell. I was routed through 4 representatives before getting to sent to a manager’s voicemail system. I called back, went through 3 more reps and then canceled the order. Ordeal over, or so I thought.

Then on Friday the 23rd, the server arrived at our office. I refused the order and called Dell back. Rep #1 couldn’t help because they were home sales and we were business. Transfered to rep #2. They couldn’t cancel the order because the server was on a business lease and business leases had to be canceled in another department. Transfered to rep #3. They canceled the lease but they need someone else to cancel the order after the lease has been canceled. Transfered to rep #4. Sorry this rep was in home support not business. Transfered to rep #5. Order canceled and money credited back to our account.

After receiving an email notification that the order was finalized I now believe the order to be truly canceled, but that remains to be seen.

I can’t be the only one out there dealing with Dell Hell. We ended up taking our business to AVA Direct. Thus far we are very pleased and I won’t be ordering from Dell ever again.