State of Support

My children are/were happy! Their Christmas present this year are the Dell Streak 7s, and due to circumstances, they actually received them a month ago when we took a Thanksgiving trip to to see their granddad in Midland. A 6 hour car trip is absolutely what the Android tablets are designed for! It was a good purchase at a very good price: $125 from Newegg....refurbished. I'm not going to go into the reason I bought those here since I did that in a previous post, but I'll say that I've been impress so far.

That was until a couple of weeks ago. One day my son brought me his tablet saying that it wouldn't charge. So, I tried using the cord and adapter from my daughter's Streak 7 and still no go. I was pretty hot figuring that it was something that he did and now he'd killed his Christmas present.....before Christmas week even! However, after I cooled off, I took some time to look up the issue and it's apparent, that the charge connector going bad is pretty common with this tablet. So I called Newegg, who said that although it was beyond their return period (which of knew already) of 30 days, it was an official "refurbished" product, therefore covered by Dell for 90 days and I could just contact Dell myself. And since it was December 21st at that point and I bought it on September 22nd, I called Dell immediately. The person I talked to said that I would need to send them my proof of purchase and they would be able to put me into their "Mobility Support" system. I did that immediately. Two days later (last night), I received a call back saying that they had received my proof of purchase and they were processing my request. I would need to call back the next day (today). So I returned their call this morning to be told that the tablet was "out of warranty" and since it was an "end of life" product, they couldn't extend it. My reply was that it was not out of warranty where I initiated the call, so therefore they were still bound by it. After having that customer service rep tell me the exact same thing 3 times, I asked him to "escalate" the call, at which point I got the "Floor Manager", who told me the same thing 3 more times. My response at that stage was to explain to him, that since the product was in fact within the original 90 days when I initiated the case, that in fact what he was telling me was that Dell is refusing to honor the warranty for a product because it was "out of production". The response was another round of telling me that they couldn't extend the warranty. After the second time I explained to him what he was saying, the response was silence. Then he said that he would have to pass this on to his superiors who would call me back within two days. That's where it stands at the moment.

On the other-hand, my experience with Lenovo/ThinkPad brand went like this..... As you guys know, I bought a broken tablet that was still under warranty by Lenovo. I received it, and called them the same day. The following day, a pre-paid box arrived and the tablet was sent off to EZ Serv, in Memphis. A week later I was told that they didn't have the part necessary to repair the tablet "within an acceptable period of time", and that they would discuss this with the associated division within Lenovo as ask that a replacement be sent to me. The following day, I was called to say that Lenovo had agreed and would send out a new tablet to me directly from China. 10 days later, a brand new, never-been-opened tablet of identical spec to my original arrived. End of story. 

I would find out later that this model of tablet, is in fact an end of life product for them as well, having decided to move to Windows 8 on their Tablet 2. So, what's the difference? Is Lenovo that much better than Dell? Is it because I had to deal with one of the dreaded, India support centers? I believe that answer to both questions is an unequivical...."NO"! The difference? .....is that the ThinkPad was supported on the "corporate support" side of the business, and the Dell is being supported on the "consumer" side of their business. That's why the Dell center I was directed to was in India in the first place! Businesses routinely don't put up with "off-shore" support. I don't have any issues with Indian support centers per se. I have found them to be excellent in providing polite, and patient service. On occasion, I struggle with their accents, but I'm certain that they struggle with mine as well. 

The real issue is that corporate support philosophically wants to keep the customer happy at all costs. The caller could very well be a high level IT professional with the ability to influence if not make the decision on 100s of thousands of dollars worth of purchases based on their experience. I know; I was that guy once. On the other hand, consumer support quite typically is dealing with a "single purchase" consumer who quite often cause the problem themselves and the philosophy for these big firms is to minimize the damage to the company in terms of $$$. We all know what that means. Which is why I almost always recommend a professional (corporate) level product is there is a choice! 

We have some friends who are looking to buy a tablet for their teenage daughter......any guesses what I recommended?