In today’s world of instant delivery of software via high-speed digital downloads it’s incredible to find a major corporation that supposedly is in the technology business that doesn’t support instant downloads. To my dismay that’s exactly what happened today when I purchased a 3 pack of the McAfee Anti-virus 2013 from the Dell website. The order placement was straightforward enough, but then well nothing….
Let me explain, I buy a ton of online software and 99% of the time you pay for the item and are immediately directed to download the software. Heck I have a website (www.mobimadness.com) and that’s how we do it and have been for the last decade. My personal favorite way of purchasing software is via the Steam system (www.steampowered.com) for all my kids gaming needs. So it came as a huge shock that after paying for my software all I got was a your order is processing message and nothing. About 10 minutes later came an email from Dell and I’m thinking great here comes the software, but wrong again, it was simply an order confirmation with another annoying “order processing” message.
Now I’m starting to get genuinely pissed. I just loaded the new Windows 8, which I really like by the way, and I wanted to get the latest anti-virus, so where the heck is it. Maybe there was a problem with my payment? So I go look at my bank account and nope Dell already took the funds so that’s not it. Time to make a call.
Call the Dell Order Support line (800-624-9897) and get immediately stuck in the seventh level of voice recognition hell. To be fair I already hate these freakin systems and so I begin my non-stop repeating of “operator” or “associate” and after about 15 renditions of these I finally get a barely nice young lady who barely speaks English. Lovely now we get to do the translation thing on top of the frustrated customer thing.
Miss Dell India goes on to apologize profusely that the Dell digital software ordering system sucks and then explains my order may take from 4 to 24 hours to process. WOW are you kidding me? Dell’s idea of digital delivery starts with a 4 to 24 hour processing time? How the @!$#@# do they justify that? If they had put that in bold letters during the checkout I would never have hit the purchase button.
Given this latest gem of corporate stupidity my internal mood meter went from annoyed to thoroughly pissed off, so my next comment is to cancel the order. What happens next is classic customer service gone wrong, the Dell India girl transfers me into some non-existent phone system that tells me that the number dialed does not exist and hangs up on me.
Great back into voice recognition hell again. This time Mr. Dell India answers and immediately apologizes profusely that not only does the Dell digital software ordering system suck but so does the equally pathetic phone system. (Does Dell make phone systems? If so my bet this one is the latest model.) Like the second coming a miracle happens and this time when I asked to cancel the order I actually get another nice Indian person on the phone who also apologizes profusely for the fact that everything sucks there and cancels my order. BUT not before offering me a $5 discount on the order if I will kindly wait. Not a @#$@# chance lady, show me the money.
Ok so it’s apparent that I’m a pretty bitter angry old dude, but here’s the kicker, I actually like Dell computers. Heck I’ve got a ton of the danged things in my house for myself and all 18 of my kids (joke) and even my work computer is a Dell. I’ve got nothing bad to say about the Dell computers which is why I was totally shocked to find out that they have no flippin clue how to deliver digital software in this day and age.
Well enough for this rant, now let’s see how long it takes them to actually refund my money? My guess is 4 to 24 hours. 😉
P.S. If you just installed Windows 8 and miss your Start button, then head over to www.stardock.com and grab Start8, which is a seamless Start Button replacement.