Dell Customer Service is like a slow moving train. I say that because they have a script to go through to find out whats wrong with your computer and then they finally figure out what is wrong with your computer or not. Some people hate their service because they have moved to India. Hold times are sometimes horrendous and then you have phone transfers where one might lose you and then you have to start the phone tag all over again.

Through personal experience and friend's experiences, I have found that you can spend from 30 minutes to an hour on the phone on hold to do something as simple as change an address or check the status of a shipment. The subpar service might have to do with Dell's outsourcing customer service to India. On the bright side, Dell kept making the same mistake on my friends order of a LCD flat panel screen, so they ended up giving him ANOTHER screen just like it free of charge and a rebate for a digital camera. If you are patient with them you just might be rewarded!

If you say your computer is frozen, they tell you to get a lighter. If thats what the customer help paper says. No sense of any computer literacy was actually noticed nor common sense either. Most of the time you will find yourself repeatedly asking "what, huh?" because of the very fact that you can't understand what your saying. Even though Dell prizes them selves on how highly their customer service is on TV but in actually I find it very disapointing. But go onto other services such as mac help line you will talk to a knowing and understand computer expert. From personal experience I have spent 15 minutes waiting for someone to come on and another 2 hours before my phone died and yet still no progress in helping my computer at all. This so called computer experts have yet to impress me or even pass my standards of calling their department costumer service. After speaking with a "so called computer person" it took the company 3 days before calling back with someone of more knowledge and ability to help and yet they still couldn't find the problem in my computer. To this day my old computer sits in the corner of my room with dust on it considering im now on a dell laptop. Their products are top of the line yet their service does not match the standards everyone expects.

What customer service? Those words are foreign to DELL. One hour or more waiting on the phone is not customer service.

The March issue of Consumer Reports, which came out last week, included a survey of 4,100 consumers, who gave Dell 62 points out of a possible 100 for its support on desktop PCs. Although it still managed to top competing brands Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, which scored 54 and 51, respectively, Dell's rating represented a decline from the magazine's last desktop support survey, published in June 2003, in which it received a 64. Apple Computer led the pack, with 74 in the recent survey, while Gateway scored 61. A score of 80 would mean that respondents were very satisfied, while 60 is described as fairly well satisfied. Differences of more than four points in the survey were meaningful, the report said. While the most recent changes appear incremental, Dell's overall tech support scores for desktop PCs have dropped substantially since 2001, said Jeff Fox, senior project editor at Consumer Reports. Dell scored a rating of 74 in December 2001 and a 65 in September 2002.