Dell Hung Up On Me - Secret Shopper 4 Part 1

[Plouffe]

It's 2025 and, with the current state of the PC market we decided to secret shop EIGHT different system integrators. In our first episode we'll be ordering the computers and rating the sales teams from Dell, iBuyPower, Cyber Power, HP, Starforge, Maingear, Lenovo, and Origin!

 

 

[TetraSky]

Please, PLEASE add "Secret Shopper 4 Part 1" to the title on youtube. People will end up missing it thinking it just a Dell video.

 

Edit : Thank you! The title should've included that part from the start, but at least someone made an effort to get rid of the horrible title afterward.

[JamesTheFolf]

Also next year please add Build Redux, they have one system under $1400 USD. Wonder if by the time they do this again they'll have more systems available for that price.

 

[plurus]

1 hour ago, TetraSky said:

Please, PLEASE add "Secret Shopper 4 Part 1" to the title on youtube. People will end up missing it thinking it just a Dell video.

Yeah, I get the hour 1 clickbait, but missing the ongoing series title? that's a hilarious swing and a miss. 

[Lurick]

2 minutes ago, plurus said:

Yeah, I get the hour 1 clickbait, but missing the ongoing series title? that's a hilarious swing and a miss. 

You need to order the "Extended Title Service" at $49.99/month for that

You can use it for big nerd games as well!

[ajaxburger]

Is it me or did the budget go down after the first call? I thought it was $1400 US and then they seemed to be sticking to $1200 US in all following orders.

[goodtofufriday]

how come this isnt on floatplane?

[Skipple]

Umm... Is this James Strieb's sister? They look *exactly* alike.  It's like I'm looking at a female version of James and I'm uncomfortable.

[VixAAT]

Hey does anyone have the rankings of the systems of the previous secret shoppers? Would kind of be helpful as a recap. Maybe an idea for the finale, a progress report through the years.

[RunnerUp]

3 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Please, PLEASE add "Secret Shopper 4 Part 1" to the title on youtube. People will end up missing it thinking it just a Dell video.

Yeah agreed, I love this series and I want it to remain an annual thing. This current title could hurt the numbers for it!

[jaslion]

2 hours ago, ajaxburger said:

Is it me or did the budget go down after the first call? I thought it was $1400 US and then they seemed to be sticking to $1200 US in all following orders.

Moreso that nothing was available. Currently system integrators have no stock of gpu's from nvidia like at all. There's more range with amd gpu system sometimes even now and thats super rare as normally you'd be lucky to have a desktop or 2 if at all.

[DeerDK]

Weee, I love secret shopper!! 

Gotta admit, I have a soft spot for HP due to them being the brand of my first labtop back in 2004 which lasted for 6 years until it fell on the floor which killed the motherboard. 

RIP. 

So it was sad to see them miss the bar with 100 cad for a killer system. 

Ahh well, the market is a pile of manure at the moment. 

[MarkPol88]

3 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

how come this isnt on floatplane?

It is since 2 days ago for me.

[atxcyclist]

Big Nerd Gaming©

[OhYou_]

why such a small budget? this is unrealistic.
PC gaming is not for poors, the budget should be 7500cad
any self respecting gamer spends at least that on a new pc every year

[smcoakley]

6 hours ago, DeerDK said:

Gotta admit, I have a soft spot for HP due to them being the brand of my first labtop back in 2004 which lasted for 6 years until it fell on the floor which killed the motherboard. 

I have a spot for HP, but it ain't soft. In between their deplorable practices with printers, and my first laptop ever being an HP where the mainboard literally burnt itself up one day... I've never ever bought any kind of computer from HP since that day. That was around 15 years ago.

[DeerDK]

4 hours ago, smcoakley said:

I have a spot for HP, but it ain't soft. In between their deplorable practices with printers, and my first laptop ever being an HP where the mainboard literally burnt itself up one day... I've never ever bought any kind of computer from HP since that day. That was around 15 years ago.

I don't have HP anymore either. It's pure nostalgia, but I've generally found their pcs to. Be decent and in the last two secret shoppers they performed okay, but a bit quirky. Like the sales reps with an audible rooster in the background 

[KidKid]

17 hours ago, JamesTheFolf said:

Also next year please add Build Redux, they have one system under $1400 USD. Wonder if by the time they do this again they'll have more systems available for that price.

 

Build Redux is one of LTT's sponsors, but they might do it anyway.

[fabians_life]

I have to be honest, the pricing is kind of confusing. So switching between Canadian Dollar and US Dollar is already confusing, especially for people who aren't from north America and can't relate to either. Than the thing with taxes and shipping. In minute 4 Plouffe says that 2000cad is including Taxes and shipping but than later they have computers like the HP with a total cost of 2240cad (compare minute 22). They said that they wouldn't go more than 50cad over budget, so that is just confusing, because when a normal person buys a computer on a fixed budget, that includes taxes and shipping. I don't think anybody would exclude taxes from their budget, if they buy something for personal use. Maybe that is a German thing, because taxes are always included in the price, but I personally think, it is weird to exclude them. At least in the later value comparison, everything should be included.

[JamesTheFolf]

3 hours ago, KidKid said:

Build Redux is one of LTT's sponsors, but they might do it anyway.

Yeah they are, but I'm pretty sure all of them have sponsored segments at some point. Plus wouldn't be the first time they secret shopped their own sponsors.

[Ha-Satan]

I understand that these customer support jobs are probably shit, low-paying jobs (and obviously outsourced to south Asia in some cases) but it still amazes me that they manage to be so profoundly unhelpful. Like, most of the posters on this forum would probably do a better job than most of these reps, even with little to no training.

 

To be clear, I'm blaming the companies, not the reps themselves (for the most part, a couple of them were genuinely bad of their own volition but for the most part they were mostly bad in a way that is clearly the fault of the company for not training them well).

[sub68]

What is funny to me Dell is double edge.

This is accessable from a non dell account just as normal person

Like there pro/enterprise stuff like latitudes and optiplexs are easy to get support and guides from.

But there consumer stuff is big pain and nothing easy to get.

[hu4d]

Honestly, not to be that guy, but I really do wonder how different these experiences would be if they used a man as their spy in the future. They've used a woman for every season so far. Normally I wouldn't make a note of this, but Katie's experience was pretty weird this time. The HP guy was definitely over-excited to be talking to a female streamer, and I wonder if the cyberpower guy would have behaved the same to a man.

 

Never gonna happen, but a side by side where they use 2 spies of different genders could be really interesting for season 5. But of course there's no way to make sure you get the same sales rep so

[bluehawk]

It's quite the challenge building a gaming PC for that price especially in today's market 

[LumpyCrumpet]

She was way too generous to some of those people. I remember being aghast that she rated the guy who all but said "piss off and use the website" higher than someone who was at least trying to help within what was available to him.