No More Dell For Me

I’ve decided I will not being doing business with Dell any more. And probably not for the reasons you might suspect.

Technically, I did not actually buy anything from them and never have. My mother-in-law was recently in need of a new PC and since I have heard good things about Dell desktops in the past, I suggested she get a Dell.

Knowing how full of crap these big-name PCs are when they send them out to customers, we had the PC shipped here so I could remove it before she began using it. Stuff like free trials of various software packages and those ever-so-useful AOL junk. I don’t want to even get started on AOL, so I won’t.

With regard to the aforementioned crap, they have many of these programs set up to run in the background each and every time the PC is turned on. The problem with that is that every program that is running in the background is using up resources and potentially degrading the performance of the PC. That’s the main reason I remove that stuff.

She has not been using a PC that long so I also wanted to set up her Internet connection and e-mail for her.

The PC arrived on schedule and I set it up without encountering any problems. She’s had it now for a few weeks and everything seems to be working fine for her so far.

The problem I have with Dell was that they just called me on the telephone. Never mind the fact that they have been sending their extended warranty offers to the e-mail address I set up for the purpose of placing the order online. An e-mail address that will soon be deleted, by the way.

I guess that just wasn’t enough, so in addition to spamming me with new offers via e-mail, they decided to give me a call. The woman on the phone was friendly and courteous and I was not rude to her, but made it clear that I was not going to be purchasing any extended warranty.

She then tried talking me into some ‘getting started’ books since I had mentioned the fact that my mother-in-law was new to using computers. I told her that we provide all the help she needs, so she does not need any books. At that point, she gave up one me and ended the conversation and wished me a nice day, etc.

I hate telemarketing and always have. There is no excuse for it as far as I’m concerned. I consider it extremely rude and inconsiderate to ring someone’s phone and essentially demand their immediate attention just to hit then with a lame sales pitch.

The ‘Do Not Call’ list has been working extraordinarily well for us so far. It has virtually eliminated annoying telemarketing calls here for all but the infrequent call from some kind of non-profit or political group.

There is however a loophole which allows a company you have done business with to contact you via telephone for some period of time after the transaction if memory serves me correctly.

Cleverly, the saleswoman from Dell referred to the call as a ‘courtesy call’ at least twice and at first tried to make it seem like it actually was by asking me if everything went OK with the new PC. That was as long as the ‘courtesy’ part of the call lasted.

You’d have to be pretty dumb to not realize that these calls are not really ‘courtesy calls’ at all and are actually sales calls. They know that a recent buyer is one of the best prospects for another sale on the back end. I really wish they would have been content to send the e-mail spam and not interrupt me (I was in fact busy at the time of the call) with a sales call.

Being a veteran of the high-tech industry, I never buy name brand PCs for myself or anyone in my household. I always buy my own parts separately and assemble the machine myself and always end up with PCs that are just as reliable (or even more so) than the ‘name brand’ boxes that they like to stuff full of proprietary parts which you can only purchase from them.

There are cases however, when someone asks me about buying a PC and not being in the PC-building business, I will recommend one of the ‘name brand’ PCs since they can get it quickly and it will arrive all set up and ready to go. That way I avoid ‘owning’ any problems that might come up with a PC that I built for someone and feeling responsible for it. Something I simply don’t have the time to be involved in.

From now on, I will not be recommending Dell PCs. For some people, aggressive sales tactics are a big turn-off, and as you might suspect, I am one of those people.

Sorry Dell, as far as I know, you build a decent PC for the money, but I don’t like being bothered with telemarketing calls from anyone at any time for any reason.

If you dislike telemarketing calls as much as I do, I suggest you steer clear of Dell when you are in the market for a new PC.