What the Dell is going on here?

SOUNDING OFF:Ripped off? Stunned by good value? Write, text or blog your experience to us

A reader contacted us last week after experiencing some very poor customer service from Dell Computers. She gives training and development courses so needs a laptop and projector to do her job. In April she ordered a new Dell Vostro laptop and specified that she wanted Microsoft's XP software, as opposed to Vista.

"A laptop arrived within four days, but it had Vista on it," she writes. She phoned the company and was told to try it out and see how she got on. She did and phoned again a couple of days later asking for a laptop with XP - as she had ordered. She received it within five days and was told Dell would organise collection of the unwanted computer the following week.

"When I used the new Vostro I found I was making lots of typing errors. This was because the last line of letters on the keyboard was out by one letter."

For four days in a row she phoned the named individual in Dell who had sold her the computer, but he did not return her calls. Eventually, she spoke to someone else in customer care who said there was a problem and her model was sent out with incorrect keyboards.

"The man I spoke to said he would have a manager phone me. I never got the call. I rang on several more occasions and again no one returned my calls."

She also sent e-mails, but only got uniform responses that did not address any of her concerns. She then found out that, incredibly, she had been charged for both laptops.

"I was more than livid."

She phoned customer care and was promised another call-back which never came. She rang again and was told that she could not be given a refund for the second laptop until they picked up the first one.

"I said that the man in sales was meant to be doing this and created havoc and, eventually, after another four days got the money back.

"I then started getting calls from a company in the UK that Dell were using who would fit my new keyboard." She says she got many, many of these calls promising they would fit the keyboard, but warned her that Dell had none in stock. In May she was finally given a date for a new keyboard to be fitted but, despite waiting at home on the appointed day, no engineer called. In early June she was told to expect another engineer but, again, he did not show. She was let down again on June 20th.

She got a call on June 24th to confirm that an engineer would call on June 27th (the day she contacted us). He did call.

However, when he showed her the Dell order he had been given there was no mention of a replacement keyboard being needed and, you'll not be surprised to read, he did not have one in the van. So away he went.

"Several times I asked Dell could they not just send me a new laptop and the answer was 'no'. I have not been offered anything by Dell in the way of compensation at all. I have made between one and three phone calls almost every day since I ordered my laptop back in April," she writes.

We wish we could say her problems ended there - for her sake - but they didn't. She was also, she says, sold an overhead projector by the company last November and, suffice to say, it is not what she was told she was getting.

"I have, as of now, a laptop I can't type on and a projector I can't use for training purposes to show a training DVD. This is one very, very frustrated, annoyed and unhappy customer."

We got in touch with Dell last week to find out what on earth was going on.

In a statement, Dell thanked us for highlighting the issue and said a member of its customer relations team had been in touch with our reader and had worked closely with her to resolve the issue. "Unfortunately, the procedure around the initial process for resolving the customer's problem with the keyboard and projector did not meet our usual high standards of customer care," the statement continued. Dell said it had apologised to her for this situation and for any inconvenience caused. "The issue has now been resolved. As a company we pride ourselves in the level of service we deliver and can only apologise for this untypical incident."