Well, here's my saga with Dell and this deal...
I placed the order on 9/25/04 (right before Hurricane Jeanne came through and made it so that when it rains, it now rains in my house
).
On the following day, 9/26/04, an e-mail message was sent confirming the order, stating that the drive was on backorder, and giving an estimated ship date of 10/06/04. I really didn't mind since Jeanne was in the process of wrecking a large part of my neighborhood. So I waited.
Well, wouldn't you know it, on the night of 10/06/04 I get another e-mail stating that the new estimated ship date was 10/25/04 (a full month after my order). I'm really ticked off at this time. If they think that it will probably be almost 3 more weeks, why do they wait until the expected ship date to inform you of this delay? So that night I call the Dell customer care line to cancel the order.
I speak to someone in India who says that she will try to cancel the order for me. I say, "What do you mean try?!?!" She says that depending upon the status of the order, it may not be able to be cancelled. I tell her that since the part is on backorder and not expected to ship for almost 3 weeks, it better be able to be cancelled. Finally after several "I need to put you on hold to work on you request" (why did she need to put me on hold? was she talking with someone else? how hard should it be to cancel an order?), she confirmed that the order was cancelled and the order status page would take a couple of hours to update. So my job done, I go to bed.
Around noon on 10/07/04, I get a chance to check the order status. It still shows 'In Production'. I plan on calling Dell's customer care again that night when I get home, but I get busy doing other things. So, I figure that I'll call on 10/08/04.
But, lo and behold, around 9:00 AM on 10/08/04 I get an e-mail from Dell stating that the drive had shipped on 10/07/04. I'm really confused and aggravated at this time. I'm wondering what the status of my order really is. I keep checking the order information all weekend which shows that it shipped, but doesn't give any 2nd day tracking information. I decide to call on Monday to get some clarification.
So, when I get time to call Dell's customer care again on Monday, 10/11/04, at around 1:30 PM, the person tells me that it did ship out by DHL on 10/07/04 and was delivered at my house around 12:30 PM.
At this point, I just let the customer rep have a good piece of my mind. What lousy customer care and support Dell has!!!! I did wind up getting my drive, but I'm one of the growing masses who have a very bad impression of Dell's customer service and support. I mean that it's great that the drive shipped close to the time originally estimated and it is what I wanted; but it took several hours of time, telephone calls, and heartburn when it should have been a very orderly, straightforward process.
Even though it was a good deal, I don't think that I will be ordering from Dell again!
), but it does seem just a tick quieter. The 4200, of course, was very, very quiet also.
