Dell What the Hell Happend To Your Customer Service?

I've been in the market for a new laptop for a few months now to replace a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 9300. Now its not that the old laptop is broken, aside from a dead battery it works but it lacks the horsepower I need to do any significant 3D or graphics work anymore.

After much deliberation I found a pretty good deal on a Dell Studio 17 laptop via Costco. While I am not as impressed with the video card, I hate ATI cards, the machine isnt bad and comes with some serious horsepower. Best of all it comes in at that nice sweet spot price range, the machine is regularily $1450.00 but is currently $150 off to bring it to $1300.00 which is a pretty decent deal considering that the same configuration via the Dell.ca site comes out at $1800.00 with a $150.00 off deal to bring it to $1650.00.

Obviously you can see the same discrepincy as I could, so I thought "Hey Dell gave me a deal on my Inspiron 9300 last time when I called them up and asked them to be more competetive on the price (along with one of those Dell super warrenties), maybe I can do the same?". I called up their 1-800 sales number on the top of the page and after a few seconds I was directed to a very obvious India call center. I should note I normally don't have an issue with call centers in India as long as they are easy to understand and dont treat me like a jackass... sadly this wasn't the case with Dells India Call Center.

After dealing with their telephone system to choose the options I wanted I had to wait and talk to a sales guy, unfortunately this first sales guy simply was there to redirect my call, which he did after collecting some information on me for some reason to an associate of his. This second associate was a real dick. I explained my situation "I have an old Dell Laptop", "I love my old Dell laptop, but its old" and that "I was looking to see if he could be more competative on his pricing than whats listed on the Dell.ca website such as what I saw on Costco and what Dells competition offers". I explained that price of the machine on Dells site and the same configuration via Costco which was no where near the same. It was pretty apparent early on that the guy didnt look because he sniped back "thats $1450!" to which I retorted "no its $1300, if you look you will see theres a $150 rebate". He muttered a bit and then responded "Ok I can give you the laptop for $1450.00", which is the same price Costco offers the laptop for before rebate... Dell was still $150 off on even meeting the price.

He clearly wasn't impressed by me correcting him and sponded with a comment of how the Studio 17 laptop comes with a eGo 320gb portable HDD and 15 months of Antivirus support and that was well worth the price difference. Unfortunately he forgot he wasn't dealing with some idiot, I just purchased a Seagate 500gb 7200 rpm portable HDD for $50 that weekend (much more superior than a 320gb 5400 rpm drive), I did not need a pre-bunled McAffee AV software Dell gets paid to bundle on the PC (plus there are plenty of much better FREE AV solutions from AVG and MS; McAfee is one of the WORST AV SOLUTIONS on the market; and I usually get a Norton AV bundled with a copy of Systemworks) and if you paid attention to the Dell vs Costco pages, you will see that Dell only offers 1 year of warrenty while Costco offered 2.

Still not content with the price I told him so and said that this doesn't even match features or cost of what their competition offers. Annoyed he responded "Like what?". I tried to tell him about a fantastic laptop Acer offers (the 8940G-6683) which was more feature rich and cheaper than what he was trying to offer me. I must have hit a sore spot here because the sales associated sniped back "You cannot compare a Dell with an Acer. Ours is much higher quality...". While I will agree that a Dell is more than likely better built than an Acer, I knew that already and was planning on buying at least 2 if not a 3 year warrenty support program to ensure that regardless of the laptop manufacturer that I wouldn't be really worried about construction problems.

At this point I had had enough of this guy. He was giving me the run around and massive excuses and still was not able to price match the same machine, made by Dell but sold through Costco. I really did not appreciate him trying to justify the price difference that he couldnt match due to at best $50 of hardware and software. But what really annoyed me was his quick dismissal of the machines that his competition offer, effectively calling them crap. So I cut the associate off right at the point he was fired the shot across the bow about Acers workmanship and said "You know what? I changed my mind. I don't want the machine anymore, I dont want to deal with you". There was a bit of silence on the other end, and I am certain that he wanted to say something back but I hung up and ended the call. I wasn't just angry at this jerk of a sales associate, I was angry at Dell as a whole, I did not want to buy a Dell machine if this was any indication of how their customer service was going to treat me after the sale was completed.

Now I wish I could say that this was a rare occurance, but checking on Twitter with the #Dell hashtag, I found that the whole day of search results that I got was full of angry and irate Dell customers who were treated like crap by Dell's Call Centers.

So what's the end result of all this:
1. I did not purchase a Dell at all. I instead purchased an HP laptop for less than the price Dell quoted me and with much better features. Dell lost out on about $1600.00 worth of sales (with 3y warrenty added in) and ended up with an angry user who will think twice about ever buying a Dell for himself or his workplace. Yes I might be a small fish, but in today's marketplace where consumers are socially connected, bad opinions and negative word of mouth go a very long way thanks to thinks like the Internet and Twitter.
2. Dell clearly isn't competetive anymore, even with themselves. You can find much better deals on preconfigured devices if you shop around. Worse yet, Dells sales associates are using poor excuses of bundled "extras" you normally do not want or can get cheaper at your local computer store to justify their prices.
3. Customers hate dealing with companies that slag their competition instead of being competetive. It looks low. Dell is supposed to be the top computer seller in the world and relying on low-end antics makes me think that perhaps Dells quality isn't perhaps all its cracked up to be.
4. The sales period is probably the most vital part of a person deciding whether or not they will buy your product. Its an indication of how your relationship with the company will go, and when you are buying a laptop with warrenty you are commiting to multi year relationship where you are stuck with that machine. Which IMHO is a critical item if you are considering buying any computer nevermind a laptop that you will have an use for years to come.