As you may know, I have a lot of clients. I work with Dell on their behalf a lot. I have a great sales rep, he bends over backwards for me. So when a client of mine asked if they could get dual monitors, I thought sure - this should be pretty easy. I happened to be at a conference last week, and I got the alert on Thursday (March 27) morning that they needed to spend the money stat before the end of their fiscal (March 31) or they won’t be able to spend it. Alright, my guy to the rescue! I figure, its a Dell desktop and if there were anything “funky” needed to get dual monitors to work they’d know. My emails were pretty clear: the client needs two monitors and doesn’t know what he needs to order to accomplish it, please take care of it.
Unfortunately, my usual guy, only dealing in new system sales and not upgrades, passed it on to another of his teammates. I don’t find this out until Thursday evening, that I should be getting a phone call from someone on Friday. Well, I never received a phone call, so I sent another email letting them know I couldn’t take a call because I was at a conference and to please just handle it. So the Jerk calls me during my conference session (I don’t take the call… hmmm… wonder why) and leaves a message. I’m thinking he’s not going to take care of this, so I email my colleague to step in, but he happens to be in a meeting and can’t take care of it either. Great… well let’s see what happens after I get out of the conference session.
Turns out Dell did call my client. I was relieved until Monday when the stuff arrived. What this new guy ended up selling to my client was a new video adapter and a VGA monitor. Not ideal… especially since the computer has the capability of dual monitor support with the built-in video adapter! OK, so I complain about it, talking about how it was the wrong equipment, but end up agreeing to install what they sent. But, the computer doesn’t have any expansion ports, being an ultra small form factor. I can’t replace the built-in video with the video adapter sent.
All they had to do was sell the guy a DVI LCD monitor and it would have been fine. They didn’t ask him what his service tag number is, but I clearly stated that he didn’t know what he needed. So apparently they asked him what sort of system he had and he got it wrong (isn’t that what service tags are for, identify systems?) so they sent the wrong parts. If I’d been in town, I might have been able to just pop over his office and say “Buy DVI” but I wasn’t, I was at the conference and they wanted to buy fast. I thought it was taken care of. haha, boy, was it ever. When you want something done right, DIY!
April 6th, 2008 at 11:29 pm - Edit
OK, so I talked to Dell and let them know the mixup was the difference between a small form factor (sff) and an ultra-small form factor (usff). I figured I’d just let him gently know the error, and let the situation resolve itself without calling attention to his lack of detail (i.e., not getting the service tag number). The Jerk ends up calling my customer at my request. He tells my customer that I ordered the wrong parts. Me! I didn’t order any frakkin’ parts. He’s the one ended up ordering the parts based on a conversation with the mutual client - whom I stated didn’t know what he needed. I reiterate that all the Jerk had to do was get the Service Tag number from the customer and he would have sold him the right monitor. On top of that, he tells the guy that it’ll be $300 for a new monitor. I have a quote from them listing the monitor at $245… so how does tax plus shipping equal $55???! I’ll be calling his manager this week. I’ll let you know how that goes in another post. My client was livid, he basically just said “process the return” for the parts that can’t be installed and not to order another monitor. I’ll just pick up a simple DVI monitor at a local electronics store.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:49 pm - Edit
Mr. W, another colleague, purchased a DVI monitor locally for the client yesterday. Works like a champ, simple. This whole thing could have been avoided if they’d just asked the damn service tag. What galls me the most is the passing of blame, not the screw up. As my client said, its not a matter of if you screw up or not: we all screw up. It’s how you deal with the screw up. In this case, Dell handled it badly.