Dell hell, continued: Self-service
: So Dell knows that my hard drive is broken but after two days, I still haven’t received a reply to the latest email, in which they said they’d set up a service call to get it replaced, whatever that means.
I was thinking about this service process, in which Dell and other computer makers make us suffer through service with them. They take some S&M glee in making us wait on hold and talk to their people for hours (costing them money, by the way).
In what other consumer product or service do we have to have such a role in service?
When my car breaks, I drop it off and tell them what’s wrong and leave. They fix it. They verify it’s fixed. They don’t make me get into the greasepit with them.
When my electricity goes fritz at home, I call in the electrician and tell him what’s wrong and he fixes it and tests it and I pay him and thank him. I don’t have to hang out with him and hand him wirestrippers.
But with computers, we are expected to suffer through the process; we aren’t allowed to say, “Just fix it: The machine you made is broken so fix it and make sure it’s fixed.”
Why the hell do we tolerate this?
