Oh god yes.
I mean no disrespect to those phone bank folks, but I just can't understand them.

american or indian or anyone else...i dont have issue till the time i am get my work done....resolve my issue....dont give runarounds....

I just can't take the accents any more, no offense...but it's just hard to understand and if I was not tech savvy, I would be dead in the water trying to talk to the techs.

I realize offshoring supposedly saves money, but the impact on customers is awful - didn't Dell bring back business customer service because of that?

I don't think they have to have english as their primary language, and in fact I think Dell is one of the better companies out there - but paying for some individuals who have very heavy accents to spend some extra time in english language school would be helpful. Everyone needs a job, but there's no need for the anger that oftentimes flares up because of the difficulty in communicating.

Every call I have had with any India Call center has gone bad. All they can go is read a script. As kcandko said take a hint from corporate customers and bring back the call centers to the US. I have nothing against other countries, but for what ever reason they can only read scripts and even their managers don't care to help me. I have even had them hang up on me (different company) when they could not solve my problem. I will be loyal only if I can get help.

Lack of understanding and anger should not be mixed... r u telling me that the customer service you receive from US support has been top notch... as far as the problem of communication/talking to people with a heavy accent I agree, because it does nothing but add to the frustration

Although there is a bit of a language barrier with tech support, the training must be improved. Direct questions cannot be answered. We begin with making sure the machine is plugged in. My XPS 400 has blue screened every few days since I purchased it (18 months ago). I tried to give the error codes and also asked about solution options that have been suggested to me. I am then promised a call back, which never happens. So, I have learned to enjoy blue screens while looking for another computer.

Keep pushing them jonann. It sometimes takes time, but if you push hard enough Dell likes to help you out.

I had an issue with customer support...I was never given the proper documentation required to get a $100 rebate on my Inspiron. For a solid year, I got every sort of runaround from the Indian customer support team. Luckily, I kept detailed documentation of each interaction so that when the time came, I had all the "evidence" of their abysmal customer service at my fingertips. I will tell you what finally broke the stalemate. I told them they could take care of the problem or my next communication would be with the Dell legal department. I didn't even have to wait for the check in the mail, they credited my rebate directly back to my credit card within 10 minutes. Don't tell me that you can't get those Indian customer service people to move.

I will never buy another Dell product again. It's not the product. It's the service, dummy.

The service does truly stink. The first Dell computer I purchased because of Dell's reputation for great customer support. Now, I get people who can't fix the problem, can't understand my questions (it is like having a conversation with someone with echolalia-the tech keeps repeating my sentence but doesn't comprehend the content), don't speak my language, refuse to transfer me to a supervisor without a fight, and STILL, I can't get my server fixed. I will need to buy a new server, not beause it can't be fixed (it can per my computer tech) but because to individuals answering the phone can't understand either Tim nor I well enough to send the part we need. I agree, it is not the product, it is all about the service. Fix it or lose your company.

Absolutely, not only can I not understand them, they can't understand me, and the connection is always bad to boot. I have also had a series of frustrating experiences with US sounding techs. One guy kept me on the phone for more than an hour and insisted I do something that took hours to repair. Every contact with Dell tech support has required hours and tons of frustration.

The one day onsite service is great.

I have been using Dell products since the days when Dell was a small(er) and responsive company. I loved Dell because of the great service and fair prices. Not any longer.

Since Dell has delegated its so-called "customer support" to people who do not speak or think like Americans, I have had virtually NO service requests resolved with the first contact, whether by phone, chat, or e-mail. This is in no way meant to denigrate the intellect of foreign-based techs; I'm sure they are well-tested and intelligent, but Dell (and others) need to learn that communication has other, more subtle dimensions.

It seems as though the entire focus of those representing Dell these days is to convince users that a) whatever the problem is, it is not Dell's responsibility, b) there IS no problem (like the Windows installation disk I paid for but could not use because the Product Key glued to the bottom of my laptop was incompatible with the version of Windows that Dell installed was not a problem -- after about ten futile tries, I solved this through Internet research with no help from Dell), or c) a canned answer to some question other than the one being asked will make you shut up and go away.

The representatives are uniformly articulate and probably bright, but communicating with them is a struggle, no matter how hard I try and no matter how patient I am. Possibly Dell is saving money (in the very short run only) by these practices, but in the long run it is driving away loyal customers like me. I would gladly pay more to talk to service representatives who spoke my language and who could communicate using mental processes similar to mine. Until Dell realizes this and acts on it, they will no longer by my vendor of choice for computers and related equipment.

will36, could you promote my idea in this case :)

With products and prices so closely matched when it comes to computers or any other consumer good, the place for a company to stand out among its competitors is customer service. It seems so simple, yet I can only think of a few instances where a company has taken full advantage of this.

I personally work for a company that, by all accounts, make a superior product than another competitor. Yet, the competitor has a far greater share of the market. The reason for this is that the competitor has committed to much better customer service than the company I work for. And so they, "cover the world."

When I email or phone Dell customer support and get a canned response that barely addresses my problem, it tells me that once Dell got my money, they weren't as interested in keeping me happy.

I agree fria, would you mind promoting my idea?

When I first bought my Dell I had excellent tech support. Then, all of a sudden, either I couldn't get through to anyone or I was talking to someone overseas who was clearly intelligent but barely intelligible. I'm no xenophobe--I can handle myself fairly well in French, Latin, and German and even some Italian but PC's are hard enough to understand without having to keep having to ask people to repeat themselves--which made me feel a combination of rude and stupid. One day I snapped, gave the thing away and bought an iMac. I haven't regretted it for one second and I will NEVER buy another Dell or, for that matter,
another PC. And I absolutely agree with will36 and could hardly be more articulate. Patience is not always a virtue--especially when your ibuprofen intake increases every time you have to talk to tech non-support.

lol, even if you guys don't plan on buying more dells, could you try to promote the idea, i'd like to get up on the top with this plan.

One reason that I seldom use offshore tech support, is because most of the CSR's are just wannabe techs! They just seem to read from a script. I would never buy a Dell if I had to depend upon offshore help.
I get most help from google.ca or other non-vendor sites.

Somebody in this country is going to make a fortune when they start up a Tech Support company based in the USA and manned by English speakers who speak English as their native language. I'm a PC Tech and, quite honestly, most people get lost when you start talking about RAM, processors, motherboard, etc. Add to that accents that that are so thick (I'm from NC ya'll) neither party can understand one another and you've created a recipe for disaster. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or a top down restructuring) to figure out why sales are down. People in the USA simply do not want to buy from a company that outsources its support to a non-English speaking country. What's it going to take to change this practice? On the other hand, my business is booming. Don't change a thing.

Lots of good posts here. I have traveled the same road as will36. I began buying Dell >10 years ago because of their reputation for quality and after-sale support. I wasn't wrong back then but times seemed to have changed. I still feel Dell makes a quality product but no matter how well you make your widget, sooner or later one will break. This is the "make or break" (excuse the pun) for a company, as fria correctly pointed out. You can treat me badly after you get my money, but you won't see any more $$ from me or all the people I referred to Dell over the years. As any good business person knows, it takes far less resources to keep happy customers than to get them back after you lose them. Dell has a lot of work to do and they better get started quickly. My Dells have always performed well, but when I do need help I want to be able to understand the technician.

If you don't fight for what you want, you have 0 chance of getting it. And quite honestly, I think many many people from those other companies would change to dell only based on a better english speaking support team. At the very lest Dell, please make the interview process include accent harshness. Because we obviously don't want to have to reconfirm EVERYTHING.

Get rid of the overseas tech support. I know it's cheaper to pay them than an American in America, but this is another reason I left dell to a competitor. I couldn't understand the people in India and they couldn't understand me. They are given a manual and they read out of it to find the answers. The training needs to be improved and tech support brought back to the U.S.A.

I couldn't disagree with you more cairolovin. What's more important than spending 45 minutes on the phone with someone who purchased your product (I really can't believe you wrote that)? The problem here is attitude (your's, their's). These companies are dictating to their customers about the quality of service they can expect to receive. They're simply not listening. Without customers you have no inverstors and without investors you have no company. Don't you remember the old saying, "the customer is always right"? Somebody's going to come along and do it right. It's just a matter of time.

cairolovin, I understood you quite clearly. However, there's nothing more important than a customer in need of help...regardless of the problem. There is no difference. A customer is a customer. By the way, when did Dell start hiring MIT grads to answer phones in tech support to help home users? Sounds like you're blaming the customer to me. The typical home user doesn't know a lot about computers (including drivers and antivirus software) because they don't want or need to. They want to be able to use their Internet browser, check their email, and use their word processor. I guess we can just agree to disagree. One last question out of curiosity. Do you work for Dell or for a company that outsources?

@ Cairolovin- I understand what you're saying but your also confusing who would actually take those tech jobs. I'm not concerned about the level of support they give us, just the fact that I can't understand them. Also, your assigning someone who wouldn't take the job, to the job. An MIT grad would not ever think of being a dell tech phone operator. So I don't care if i get a mid to low level english speaker.

as suggested what is needed is people with better "people skills". No doubt that outsourced techs have all the knowledge to fix my issues. What is needed is them to understand me batter and viceaversa, and make sure that we both are on same page and working for the solution.

Instead of relying so heavily on tech support, how about including instructional videos with the sale of every PC? Include subjects like: What are Windows updates? How to obtain Windows updates. What are viruses? How to update your antivirus program. What is spyware/adware? How to update/install your antispyware/adware software. How to improve the performance of your PC. What is system memory? How to install system memory. I deal with users every day and many simply do not understand any of this. Educate and inform your customers to reduce the number of calls to tech support. Then bring support back to the US where the length of time for each call will be shortened significantly due to clarity of conversation and a better informed customer. Tech Support will be able to handle a larger call volume due to time saved on each call. The company will continue to show a profit and investors will realize a good return on their investment.

Sorry, I've had nothing but great assistance from everyone I've ever linked up with in Dell's tech support division ! They've gone out of their way to get my stuff back up and running. I had one guy stay online for over an hour, after my problem took longer than expected to fix , he stayed even after his shift had ended. I will admit we had a few misunderstandings , each spelled out or another way of looking at it , or thinking about it got both of our minds running in the same direction. I will give you the benefit of the doubt , maybe your situation was different. I judged the person on the other end of the phone , from the outcome of the job , the effort put forth on my behalf , the manner in which it was done and in many other ways to get to my like and dislike of the tech support. It may depend on your state of mind and the problems you are having. That's my two cents worth.

It's not that I can't understand them. It is that as henrieb said, they can only read from a script. They have no ability to diagnose anything, and when all of the script options are exhausted, can't help you other than to try to shift the blame. I had a bad video card, they tried to tell me it was a software problem, or a bad Windows reinstall disk. Finally after three fruitless days with India, I called back again and got Texas/ The guy was able to figure out that I actually needed them to honor my warranty and send someone out with a replacement video card. Oh, and this was WITH the supposed Business Support, next day service. What a joke! Next day apparently means " spend three days taking your computer apart and reinstalling Windows over and over again, then get lucky and get thru to Texas".

It's more than just a language barrier; there appears to be an even larger cultural barrier here. The Indian tech-support I have dealt with seem to have a very bureaucratic mindset. They aren't interested in connecting with you as a human being and understanding the problem you are having. Even when they understand what you are saying, it's like they aren't listening, and just want to walk you through some stupid script. Guess what? If that's Dell's idea of tech support, then they could just automate the whole thing and put it online, and let the users click their way through the stupid script themselves. Then they could *really* save some money, right, cairolovin? No need for any human tech support at all, because in essence you have outsourced it all the way back to the customers themselves. Stop giving us this "tech support theater" of mindless drones reading from a script, not listening, and acting like they are helping. Give us people who not only speak English well, but who care and are motivated to actually fix our problems. Make it easier for us to escalate the problem, especially for experienced users that shouldn't need to wade through pages of drivel about settings when we have an advanced, and already well-defined, problem that we need fixed. Any CSR that refuses to allow a customer to speak to a supervisor or otherwise escalate a tech support problem should be fired on the spot. Give us a chance to grade the CSR and the tech support experience - and compensate the CSRs based on the grades they receive. Provide and promote other forms of tech support such as forums and email.

However, bringing tech support back to the USA isn't the answer, if it's as rude and useless as the experience I had with Dell a few years back. I bought an Inspiron 7500 laptop that came with W98 installed. About six months later, W2K was released and I wanted to upgrade. I first went to dell.com and downloaded all the W2K drivers for my Inspiron - by that time the new 7500s were shipping with W2K as an option. Then I checked for any updates needed for my software. Finally, I backed up all my data to external media, re-formatted and installed a clean W2K OS. Everything went great, all the drivers I had downloaded worked fine, except one issue - I could not set the proper resolution for my LCD display. IIRC the correct resolution was 1440X950, but the only options available were 1280X768, 800X600, etc. So I had a big black band around the edge of my display - it didn't fill the screen. So I went to the dell website, but couldn't find a driver (.inf file) for my LCDr. Tried Google, no luck. After a couple of hours trying, I call Dell tech support. I explain the problem, and this complete a-hole (American, this was before tech support was outsourced) very snottily asks me right away who gave me "permission" to upgrade to W2K!?!?! I mean, WTF?!?, I bought the machine with my money, I own it, I can do what I want with it! Further, I wasn't asking to do something that Dell didn't support; obviously W2K was supported on my machine because new 7500s were shipping with W2K at the time. And I'm not some n00b moron; I'm an experienced computer user that did everything right, and I just needed to know how to set the display settings. But this jerk just berated me, absolutely **REFUSED** to help me, told me that by re-formatting and installing W2K I had voided what was left of my warranty, told me he was putting a note in my file that my warranty was void so I wouldn't receive any more help, and when I protested, he said maybe I should complain to Michael Dell personally if I didn't like it. Well, guess what, I have not and will not *EVER* buy another Dell again. AFAIC, you can take all your precious computers, and stick them.

P.S. The solution to the display problem, which I happened upon after another hour of Googling, was to click the "Advanced" tab and uncheck the "Hide display modes that this monitor cannot display" box, and then the correct 1140X950 resolution appered in the list. I don't know why Dell didn't have the common sense to write a monitor .inf file for the Inspiron 7500 to address that - sure would have saved me time and aggravation, or why that imbecile at tech support couldn't have just told me that.

So, Michael, all these years later, I *AM* finally complaining to you personally. want to get your company back on track?
STOP TREATING YOUR CUSTOMERS WITH UTTER CONTEMPT.

Dell does not necessarily need to not use foreign call centers.

However, they DO need to make absolutely sure their reps know what they are talking about!

This means regular training, exams to be passed and so on. not scripts for scenarios but actual training on how computer hardware and software function. As a corollary, break support up into specialized teams (like laptop versus desktop) to keep the amount of material manageable.

For example, on the exam have the support tech accurately identify every component in the PC and what it does, along with the particulars on currently available parts.

I know most boutiques handle this by making their support reps work on the floor assisting in building PCs as well, but obviously Dell does not have that option.

Its sad when u have to wait a month and a half trying to get ur darn Serivce tag to work to get vista...i almost spend 4,000$ on a great computer ... u would think u would have great tech serivce... calling and calling... Spell ur name slow .. T as tea R as rabbit.. u would think they keep this stuff on record from the first time? omg if u have a long email name with numbers or lower and high case.. u might as well make a smallest /easy email for these people. like everyone esle i dont have a problem with this people... but i know one thing they dont care about us... they geting pay still when we are happy or mad when we get off the phone with them.. You know it funny at the end i found someone who reset my tag less in two days .. after that i get emails from the oversea techs saying it was my cookies or something about it was on my end..i do agree that they need to bring it back to North america... Now i have to wait 4-6 weeks for dell to ship out my vista... dunno if i will buy a dell again..

I too have had nothing but GOOD experiences with Dell's Indian techs. I had the same experiences as internetsurfer2. Yes, sometimes it was hard to understand the accent, but we kept at it, and after an hour, that difficulty wore off as our ears adapted. At first they followed scripts to make certain they didn't waste a bunch of time only to find it was something simple, like unplugged. Once past the basics, they were concerned, committed and (as soon as they found ou t I was friendly) - very friendly. That said, I do believe customer service is part of the problem facing DELL - more training (in communication as well as tech issues) is always good, and maybe more people will have the experiences I have had. However, there is more to customer service. The basic committment to our happiness does have to be there. It could start with living up to the ad that says they build the computer to consumer specs. NOT SO - my computer would be very different if I could have really been able to get what I wanted. NO Internet Explorer, no unneeded commercial addons. Half the problems one has with any PC is Windows related. Maybe DELL could get more into Open Source offerings and offer on-line courses in Linux, etc.

I am sorry... but the weird thing is we all have accents. Do you want Dell to discriminate and say you can not hire phone people who have accents that dont match the trad-mid-west accent that America has taken as their national accent? I always wonder that when people complain about the accents. I totally get the "they are working off a checklist" issue. Having done tech support, it helps if you are trained in why certain issues happen instead of just going off a checklist. Considering the high-tech trained reps they could hire are out there... I think they should pay attention to degrees and cert's and experience more than accents.

Ok, bliz, I can agree to some extent, but I can not say that accent's are not important. Most of the people who buy Dell and are not tech savvy, so when someones talking about something you don't know, in your language but barely understandable, people get very frustrated. I get frustrated and I have become very tech savvy over the years. As you can see, many people here like the idea of less accented and North American techs.