The insanity Dell gets you to go through during tech support

[lawilson97]

How insane is this? The monitor I purchased is in my account's order history with all its details available. Yet I have to go through this interrogation for even the most basic warranty support.

 

"Good Day,

Kindly reply to the email with these documents below :

 

i)Picture at the back of the monitor with the serial number

ii)on a white paper please write in your name, today's date and the case number that I have emailed you.

iii)Picture of the invoice that you have purchased the monitor from Dell.

iv)Together with your address details. 

v)Full view picture of the monitor.

 

Thank you for choosing Dell."

[starsmine]

this doesnt seem excessive at all. 

[da na]

This is quite standard practice. 

[whispous]

What would you feel is an acceptable set of requests you'd rather they asked you?

[NumLock21]

If I have to go through all of that just for some warranty, I would be annoyed. I get the invoice, but for everything else, forget it.

[lawilson97]

58 minutes ago, whispous said:

What would you feel is an acceptable set of requests you'd rather they asked you?

How about respond to the email with the information in type since ALL of that info is available under 'owned products' on my Dell account, rather than having to rip my setup apart to get to the back of the monitor to take a photo. And having to dig out an ancient physical receipt to take a photo of. And seriously, writing down my details on a piece of paper with today's date? That is just archaic.

[lawilson97]

34 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

If I have to go through all of that just for some warranty, I would be annoyed. I get the invoice, but for everything else, forget it.

Exactly. The monitor is under warranty and I have a digital receipt tied to the Dell account account I ordered it with. That is all they need to know.

[whispous]

12 minutes ago, lawilson97 said:

How about respond to the email with the information in type since ALL of that info is available under 'owned products' on my Dell account, rather than having to rip my setup apart to get to the back of the monitor to take a photo. And having to dig out an ancient physical receipt to take a photo of. And seriously, writing down my details on a piece of paper with today's date? That is just archaic.

It's to verify you're not sending a mismatched product.

[NumLock21]

2 minutes ago, lawilson97 said:

Exactly. The monitor is under warranty and I have a digital receipt tied to the Dell account account I ordered it with. That is all they need to know.

I'm trying to think why they would want a customer to go through all of that, but I can't think of any reasons for it. Maybe there are some that took advantage of the warranty system, which leads them to do this. IDK.

[NumLock21]

Just now, whispous said:

It's to verify you're not sending a mismatched product.

How does  sending a pic guarantee one will not sent the wrong product?

[Erioch]

Proof of life photo?

[Lurking]

2 hours ago, lawilson97 said:

How about respond to the email with the information in type since ALL of that info is available under 'owned products' on my Dell account, rather than having to rip my setup apart to get to the back of the monitor to take a photo. And having to dig out an ancient physical receipt to take a photo of. And seriously, writing down my details on a piece of paper with today's date? That is just archaic.

Don't forget to also add a picture of today's newspaper to proof you are not sending some old pics when you still were alive. 

[NumLock21]

inb4 Dell goes to the extreme, where they want you to record yourself, with their live captcha that their AI randomly assigns to you.

 

Record and send a video, by saying your account info and the model serial number of the product you wish to RMA, while you're breakdancing.  Attach this along with the code I sent to you in the email.

 

[Mark Kaine]

7 hours ago, starsmine said:

this doesnt seem excessive at all. 

 

7 hours ago, da na said:

This is quite standard practice. 

yet, on Amazon all u have 2 do is call say my stuff don't work and they either refund u or send a replacement. 

 

u don't even have to say ur name, they have all ur data, because they actually have a working warranty process. 

[aisle9]

24 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yet, on Amazon all u have 2 do is call say my stuff don't work and they either refund u or send a replacement.

Have you had to do this lately? Amazon has started asking for copies of photo IDs to process certain types of return/exchange.

 

Maybe "asking" is the wrong word. It's more like, "Send us a copy of your photo ID to aid in our investigation. If you do not send a copy of your photo ID, we will not be able to issue you a refund." Reddit's on fire about it.

[Mark Kaine]

27 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Have you had to do this lately? Amazon has started asking for copies of photo IDs to process certain types of return/exchange.

 

Maybe "asking" is the wrong word. It's more like, "Send us a copy of your photo ID to aid in our investigation. If you do not send a copy of your photo ID, we will not be able to issue you a refund." Reddit's on fire about it.

well,  yes, as of a few weeks ago.

[overbuilt_gaming]

You can thank all the previous scammers who screwed them out of stuff; is why we can't have nice things anymore.  Don't forget to take the picture while standing on one foot, and when I went through my warranty claim a few months ago I threw in today's newspaper in the return box as well!!!  

[cooky560]

It seems excessive, a serial number + service tag should give them all the information they need.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, htimsenyawed said:

I haven’t returned anything of value lately. I did return a DeWalt 20V 1/2” compact impact in October though - but in the self help/guided return I said that I wanted store credit and I was ordering the DeWalt Atomic model because that one just didn’t do it for me. 
 

When UPS picked up the package from the drop off, I immediately had my store credit refund and ordered the more powerful model. 

right when i returned my wolverine v2 (on Amazon)  they sent me the replacement immediately, even before i sent mine actually. 

[Mark Kaine]

30 minutes ago, htimsenyawed said:

 

Interesting. That's 1/3rd the value of the impact I returned so I would say, "hey, it's because it was less than $100" but my woman recently returned some mis-ordered dog bands for our senior dog (they were too big) and the refund was still issued when UPS picked up the package... So I don't know what's going on there.

i dunno maybe different for warranty returns,  as said they sent it immediately,  i had 2 weeks to sent mine back... i had the replacement literally 2 days after i called them.

 

other time, asus router, long out of warranty,  called them, got my money back and didn't even need to send it in.  

[aisle9]

1 hour ago, htimsenyawed said:

I haven’t returned anything of value lately. I did return a DeWalt 20V 1/2” compact impact in October though - but in the self help/guided return I said that I wanted store credit and I was ordering the DeWalt Atomic model because that one just didn’t do it for me. 
 

When UPS picked up the package from the drop off, I immediately had my store credit refund and ordered the more powerful model. 

Lots of people think this is in place forever. Given the timing of it, I'm not sure that it isn't Amazon's way of discouraging people from buying something on impulse during the holidays, then returning it as defective to avoid paying shipping. I am 100% guilty of this on many occasions in my life so, hi, it's me, I'm the problem?

 

I love that meme, even though I've never heard one millisecond of the song.

 

I guess we'll see in February or so, once the free return period ends, if Amazon thought it was successful enough to keep it up forever. My hunch is that it's here to stay because it's no secret that Amazon, and especially Amazon's sellers, have been bleeding on free returns for years. If they do keep the policy in place, my guess is that the next step will be to actually chip away at free returns by doing things like tightening the return window on some categories (electronics, clothing), requiring that you pay shipping on all returns and then refunding it if your claim is legit (less likely--they'd have to actually inspect returns to do this), deducting partial value of the product on buyer's remorse returns (no longer needed, wrong size, wrong color, etc.), or requiring photographic proof of any defects or inconsistencies with the website description before a return can be opened. Things like that.

 

When considering why Amazon's becoming more spartan on returns, consider this: AWS is very strongly believed to be running the company now. Retail, media, that all exists to subsidize the ultra-profitable AWS. I wouldn't go anywhere near saying that Amazon no longer cares about retail, but the attitude towards it has shifted from "this is the core business" to "this is necessary to fund the core business". Once a decision like that is made, it has the sort of ripple effects that show up in the form of worse service, less friendly policies, all the stuff we're seeing now. In reality, Amazon has been America's AliExpress for a long time. It's just really showing up now AWS is running the show and regards retail as a necessary evil.

 

 

[WildDagwood]

Must be different if it's bought through a premier account, on some level anyway (I believe everyone goes through the same process on the Dell Support site for submitting).

 

Never had to do any of that before and I'd likely refuse anything I know isn't necessary, explaining the ridiculousness of it.

[Mark Kaine]

5 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Lots of people think this is in place forever. Given the timing of it, I'm not sure that it isn't Amazon's way of discouraging people from buying something on impulse during the holidays,

on the contrary they give you 2 months return instead of the usual 1 here during holiday season. 

 

im not sure if there was a recent change, most likely not here, making returns intentionally harder would be against several EU laws too.