the backyard of my mind » Work

On the road again

phil — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:02:07 +0000

I’m on the road again, cruising the highways for a while. I took this picture of Pilot Mountain in North Carolina from a rest area/scenic overlook on US-52/I 74.

Well, Dell got back to me today…

phil — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 04:18:26 +0000

but I’m a little confused. I saw a button on the Dell site that said “Unresolved Issues”. On the main page, no less. That’s a sad commentary on their service problems if they have to put a prominent button right on the main page for resolving them.

Anyway, the email I got was short, and to the point (I’ve redacted this a little):

Hello,
My name is XXXX and I am with the Resolution Expert Center here at Dell, Inc. Thank you for contacting our e-mail support team regarding your unresolved issue. I have received your issue and will be taking ownership of it from this point forward. I am sorry that the service tech did not come to you’re home and do the repair, however I feel this is not a reflection on Dell. What I am prepared to do to make the unresolved issue right by you as a customer is to give you a system exchange, and a 725 all in one printer. You’re DPS number for the exchange is 0XXXXXXX6. When you get you’re system exchange put you’re old one in the box the one I am sending to you comes in and ship it back to Dell. System Exchanges ship in 5-15 business days. Please reply back and let me know you have you’re system exchange.
Thank You

I don’t know there, XXXXX, old buddy. Dell sold me the service contract as part of the system purchase on the Dell website, branded it as Dell service for 2 years, and now wants to disclaim it when it didn’t work because of a bad third party technician? I’m sorry, but I’ll have to disagree with you there and say that it does reflect on Dell, on many, possibly too many, levels. Certainly more subtly than your training may lead you to believe.

You say you want to do right by making a system exchange. Does that mean I have to start from scratch and reload all my stuff? I’d rather have the inconvenience of just the simple repair. I’m not trying to score something here, I just want to get the service I paid for, sans hassle.

And what’s the deal with the 725 all-in-one printer? Again, not something that addresses my issues, just a pot-sweetener for the uninformed, I guess.

*Sigh*

A long short week on the road

phil — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 03:52:51 +0000

For a week that’s supposed to be slow, the week before Easter was a long one for me. Monday, I ran to Greensburg, IN and back to Indy, before loading up for Taylor, MI. Tuesday, I picked up in Shelby Twp, MI and ran over the border to Oldcastle, ON, then back to Shelby and picked up for Washington, MO- about 636 miles as Google Maps routes it. I delivered that load about midnight, and Wednesday morning, was getting my oil changed when the call came in to go to Ripley, TN (283 miles from where I was) and pick up a machine tool die and take it to a tooling company back in Oldcastle, ON- literally around the corner from where I had dropped Tuesday noon. I had some trouble with the Customs paperwork and didn’t actually drop it off until 10 AM or so Thursday morning. Drove back to Indy Thursday night, having driven 2416 miles in 4 days.