There are no bad owners, only bad dogs

2004-10-05

Michael Dell is a booger eating bed wetter

Because corporate geniuses the world over have spawned a whole new industry in cubicle-rearranging, I have a new cubicle. I don't like it. It's an "open plan" office, which means that anyone can come up behind me and look at my screen. That's going to make goofing off on the Internet more difficult. Not impossible, though.

I nominate Dell for an incompetent bunch of morons award. Trying to get a replacement power cord has been an exercise in futility the likes of which I haven't seen for two or three days. Because I experience futility a lot.

First, the adaptor doesn't do a very good job of adapting, because it sent so much electricity into my power cord that it blew up. Then I went onto the Dell Web site and ordered me up a new cord guaranteed to fit my laptop on one end, and the British electricity system on the other. That takes a good two weeks to arrive from Ireland, which is about an hour away. I opened the box with breathless anticipation and saw that indeed one end of the cord would fit into a British electrical outlet. The other end didn't match any hole anywhere on my laptop. So I tried to have a "live chat" with a techie from Dell, but their Web site wasn't working and kept sending me snotty messages.

So, that avenue closed, I looked again on the US Web site and saw that they had an adaptor kit that was supposed to make British electricity safe for American laptops. I would still need a new power cord, but I would whine to the tech services people until they sent me one, attach it to the adaptor kit, and be back in bidness. I ordered the adaptor kit, and tried to get them to ship it to me here in the UK. Nope. They don't "export." So I have to have it shipped to the US, then shipped again here. When I got my email confirmation of the order, I saw that it was supposed to arrive in December. Granted, it is December of this year, but that's still too long to wait. I yelled obscenities at my screen and re-read the confirmation to see how I could cancel the order. No info. Looked all over the Web site. No info. Finally, nested in some FAQs about order status, I found instructions about cancelling an order. I cancelled the order. Someone in the states ordered me an adaptor kit from Best Buy, got a new power cord, they are on their way now.

Today I got an email from Dell telling me that my adaptor kit is on its way. To my office address. In the US. Fuck. My favorite part of all of this correspondence with them is that the emails are signed Harathi Chinthalagiri and Muralidharan S. I wonder what Muralidharan S's last name is that it's too scary to even write down. Award winning customer service? Huh?

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