LoadWB's Journal: Why Dell Financial Services SUCKS

Dell Financial Services (DFS) SUCKS for several reasons. First, my personal experience with them.

Last year when I first openned my office, I ordered some equipment on a 60-days same-as-cash deal. I gave them my business information, my business address and contact information. It took a couple of months to get all of my equipment, but I eventually got it. Mind you, the keyboard and mouse I ordered DIED within a couple of months. I digress. I did not hear from them until December when they contacted me about the billing. But they had the wrong address!

What? Yes, somehow they linked my business account to a personal purchase from almost five years ago. I corrected their error, and got off the phone thinking everything was fine.

Except that I had to do this again in January.

Then in March, I start getting calls from Tritium Card Services about my several months of past due invoices. What? I haven't received any invoices! Well, we've been mailing them, and you must have gotten them. Blah blah blah, and suddenly it hits... they have not only my home address, but a home address from which I moved a few years back. Dammit!

I tell them that this was THEIR screw-up, I never received any invoices because they have been sending them to the wrong address, AFTER I corrected them TWICE. As far as I am concerned, I made the effort to fix this mess.

NO, no no. See, you have a responsibility to pay. You knew you were in a credit arrangement, blah blah blah. That's all well and good, but I pay my bills when I get an invoice. Staples invoices me, Cingular invoices me, etc. As a one-man operation I don't have time to chase down all of my bills, and I certainly don't bring in enough money to suddenly pay four months of past-due bills! Not good enough. This can ruin your credit, and so forth.

Fine. I'll take my case to the FTC, Texas Dept of Business Regulation, Florida Attorney General's office, and the BBB. I won't be extorted because of DFS/TCS's screw-up, and I won't have my credit held hostage for the same. We'll compromise. Adjust my billing to start on the date that you first sent me an invoice, and I'll continue to make the regular $92.43 payments per month.

Nope, not good enough. Pay it up, including the late fees. Well, I'll do my best to make the payments, but I'm NOT paying late fees.

This goes on for months, until finally in July we make an agreement for me to make the few months back payments in exchange for dismissal of all late fees. And then the fuckers charged me a late fee for the automatic draft which covered all of the past payments and current! But, as a one-time customer courtesy, they waived that fee and discussed the due-date with me again.

So, now on to my girlfriend. She bought a laptop from them about a year ago after hers got stolen on a business trip. I won't make excuses for her, she sometimes pays bills late. Fine. But these assholes call SEVERAL times a day, starting on the day AFTER it's due. Seriously! In one day I counted 12 calls! And they LIE about who they are. "This is Josh, I need to speak to xxxx." "What's this about?" "Oh, she knows me." "We don't know any 'Josh'." "Well, she knows me, and it's personal." "Well, this is my phone line that I pay for, and she doesn't get calls unless the caller properly identifies himself." "Well, I'm afraid it's business, and I cannot discuss it with you." "I thought you said this was a personal call? Is she screwing around on me?" "Uh, this is personal business." "Those are mutually exclusive. Look, unless you identify yourself, you won't get past me." "Well, I'll just call be in two or three hours." "Fine."

And they do. Each time with a different name in that same annoying accent. Let's see, they give you fake American-sounding names, lie about who they are, call numerous times in a day, refuse to identify their purpose... sounds a lot like harassment to me. I know the economy is down, but hell... if Dell needs to money that bad, I wouldnt' mind letting them hold a couple of bucks here or there if it meant that they wouldn't harrass their customers the day after a payment is due. It's like having a crack addict as a land-lord... "You got the rent??! I NEEEEEEEEED IT!"

Then they give us this bullshit about "Once we speak to the person, we stop calling." BULLSHIT BULLSHIT! She talks to them this month about her payment. It was an automatic draft (which they almost insist on) but it hit before her paycheck. Whoops. So she talks to them. They want $10 to process a payment over the phone, which they say they will credit back on the next bill. Oh, and this is after they ALREADY charged a late fee. She said NO. I've already been penalized, so I'll send in two month's payment next month, plus the late fee. And the calls haven't stopped.

Oh yeah, don't ask for a supervisor, because they're always in meetings or otherwise not available.

So, that's why DFS sucks. And that's why I don't recommend Dell to my clients anymore. Used to be I wouldn't even try to compete on system builds. Now, I don't care. Sure, my builds cost twice as much, but I give much better customer service.

Well, that's the end of that. Pizza's here and I'm damn hungry. Until next time.

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