Dell Tech Support - Did They Try To Sell You Something?
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During my surf today I stumbled upon an article over at The Consumerist in which they are asking the questions:
We’re curious whether anyone has had to call Dell’s tech support line in the new year—and if so, did they try to upsell you on unnecessary add-ons, devices, accessories, service plans, etc.?
Seems that they had previously received a posion pen email from some one who stated they worked at Dell and that tech support was now being told they had to sell stuff to would be callers. See the email stated:
I work for Dell as a tech support specialist, starting after the first of the year, we are going to sell you stuff when you call in for Tech support on your system. Not only are you going to be requesting for tech to trouble shoot your system, we are now going to be required to sell you items that you don’t need just to make more money for Dell Inc. it’s not bad enough that you spent money on a system that is not working but also have to hear a sales pitch on products that you can find else ware cheaper on web or at a local store.
I’m not sure why The Consumerist finds this of interest since it seems that this is a fairly common practice among most businesses these days. Or is it?
Anyway if you would like to participate in the discussion drop by the link below. 
Comments welcome.
Full article is here.
Tags: dell, tech, support, discussion, selling, stuff, common, practice,
7 Comments
the oracle
January 10th, 2008
at 12:18pm
I’d say the problem arises if the support personnel become more focussed on the sales, and forget about the support.
It so happens I am on hold now with business support, as they are giving the place I have been working for a difficult time about replacement parts. Apparently a proper Dell ’seal of approval’ is needed before they will release parts.
I find this very strange. Other corporate accounts I have worked with simply send what is asked for, then the ‘defective’ parts are returned, and any that are not truly defective get a percentage of their price added to the customer’s bill (sort of a dummy tax).
G.T
January 10th, 2008
at 3:59pm
thats interesting.. i never had to call or use Dell. Since HP has taken over Dell as the top selling pc, Dell has been in trouble. As a marketer, I find this very odd because Dell was known to have the best customer service. They are taking away their comparative advantage from their business model. They are also changing their business practice from a solely online retailer into a multi-channel retailer.
There is only one reason for this that makes sense.
Dell is desperate and they are losing grounds badly against their competitor. (Not to mention Apple’s increase in their computer market share)
Denny
January 10th, 2008
at 5:00pm
HAY—Ron…..
Thats kinda hard for me to Believe….
After you get done on the Phone With Dell Support…….
Your So Mad That You Will Probably Never Buy a Dell Again……
Let Alone Something New There Tryin To Sell Ya…!
—Denny’s 2-Cents>>>{;-)
Ron Schenone
January 10th, 2008
at 6:22pm
Heh Den,
I find it hard to believe as well.
James
January 11th, 2008
at 6:52am
I have recently bought three customised PCs from Dell and phoned my order and at the start of the conversation I said that I know what I am talking about and I don’t want them to try and sell me things such as extended warrenty.
Because I had been online to look at the range of PCs available I made my choice and printed off the customised systems and phoned them up to order them. As long as you know what you want, so research first you will be ok.
I also had to phone up their support line to find out the conditions of my warrenty as I had to reformat my system as XP had invalid entries which I traced to the Dell software. And they tried to sell me a new version of XP!!??!!! They also asked me fill in a feedback form which I filled in and sent off saying similar things to what is in this post.
GOOSE
January 11th, 2008
at 10:40am
I just don’t have the time to tell you what I think of Dell support…..
Christopher
January 11th, 2008
at 7:40pm
They didn’t try to sell me anything, But I do believe the people at Dell and their tech support are nitwits.
That is just stupid though, people are getting so desperate, and more retarded by the second.
I went to online tech support , and I was on there for 30 minutes, and i was telling this retard , My laptop is broken. I am on my desktop.
And the dodo goes, get on the laptop and remove the video card’s drivers, when I had been telling her that the dang thing wouldn’t even come on.
It just goes to show that any ideas on selling non correspondent products, and their tech support, is dumb.