News: Dude! You're Getting A Runaround!

[Meehowski]

By The Farmer in the Dell

Dell has pulled another tech support boner that will affect a LOT of people. First they set up a phone bank in India that is staffed with people who seem more interested in transferring callers than helping them with their problems, and now they've instituted a policy that keeps us from educating customers and helping them resolve a major problem - spyware.

According to the policy that's been recently released to the support folks, we can no longer mention 'spyware' to a caller, get them to visit a site like doxdesk.com to see if they have parasites installed, or recommend a spyware removal program. If a caller has any problems that might be spyware-related (home page hijacked, pop-ups, slow connections, PCs that start dialing out by themselves, etc.), we can only refer them to their ISP for help.

The rationale behind this? Spyware removal programs might violate the license agreement of another program they have installed (Kazaa, iMesh, etc.) and Dell doesn't want to be responsible for that. Never mind that SpyBot and Ad-Aware tell you that this is a possibility when you run them, Dell will not let us tell people about the programs or discuss the ramifications with the callers.

I brought up the issue of Dell asking a user to accept a license agreement they have never read when I first saw it in Lockergnome (9/2/2003 Gnome Report), and after forwarding the information to 3 supervisors and discussing it with them, there is still no official resolution. I have tried to get approval to help callers uninstall the crap that various file sharing programs install, and have been told that we cannot support that. And now we are being told that even if we know what the problem is, we cannot tell callers what that problem is or how to fix it.

My solution? I am going to refer people to my little site as long as I am still doing (what passes for) support at the call center - but that will not be for much longer. I can tolerate the micro-management of the call center if I can actually help people, but it is fast becoming a blame game where we have to refer people to someone else whether they will be able to help or not.

And when the ISP refers people back to us because the Internet connection is okay, the customer will be the big loser since we can't even tell them what their problem is.

Dude! You're getting a runaround! Here's a recent office memo that I think you'll all get a kick out of. Enjoy!

Good morning all:

The below e-mail was communicated to the floor yesterday. I have agents flooding me with questions on how they are supposed to handle these types of issues. We will probably want to get something out to the floor fairly quickly on what they should do with these types of calls. Are we not supposed to mention it at all? If we tell them to go to google or dogpile and search for spyware are we not then endorsing those browsers? I can't find any information on support.dell.com or delltech on this issue. Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks,

Piett

Subject: Spyware: What we can say to the customer

Dell does not support or endorse the use of spyware removal programs.

NOTICE:

Use of spyware removal software may conflict with user license agreements of other applications installed on your system. Please consult your user license agreements for further information. Dell does not endorse the use of spyware removal software and cannot provide support on these products.

This means we do not take callers to download.com or doxdesk.com, nor do we recommend spyware removal programs, nor do we advise callers on the use of spyware removal programs. This includes using phrases "We don't support the removal of spyware, but I use... "

http://channels.lockergnome.com/windows/ba.../20031126.phtml

[rainbowdemon]

I have a Dell. I always thought their tech support was pretty decent. With one exception. They seem to want to reformat away most problems. I don't need them for that. I know how to reformat. I've never had to use them for spyware problems, so this is new to me. But it sucks.

[HolyMoly]

I have a Dell. I always thought their tech support was pretty decent. With one exception. They seem to want to reformat away most problems. I don't need them for that. I know how to reformat. I've never had to use them for spyware problems, so this is new to me. But it sucks.

Until my dying day, I will never buy a computer from a retail seller, online or storefront. I'll go to a local-area "computer builder" and have a system built with interchangable parts ... and a "guru" I can call during office hours ... or visit during office hours, even if the computer I end up with costs more money and comes without all the retail-hyped "Great software we just know you'll love" as part of the "package."

Gurus have solutions. Companies have "policies."