My Experience: Purchasing a Dell Desktop Online

It was December 2009, my exams were still going on and I was restless in finding a good configuration for my next best PC!

My plan was: If I order the Computer now, it will be processed, built and sent to me by the time my vacations start. Nice plan. But nothing happened as I expected.

It was December 26th 2009, and I called up Dell Customer care to place my order. Someone luckily picked up the call(after trying 3 times) and talked to me. I was very happy, but they told me to hold the phone until they transfer my call to Dell Sales person. I was hearing some instructions, recorded sales pitch and the call got disconnected.

Same thing went on for the next 3 days. Finally I was connected to a Dell Sales Manager in Delhi – and he answered my call quite satisfactorily. He called me the next day, but I was writing my exams and couldn’t respond the call.

After my exams finished(02/01/2010) I took some more time to review the configuration and decided to purchase a high configure, costly computer. So I went on to mail some of my friends for help and finally settled with this configuration:

Dell Studio XPS 8000
8GB RAM
i7 process 2.8GHz
1GB nVidia GTS 240
24″ monitor
Win 7 etc(which comes with the XPS 8000 package).

Finally I called up Dell on 08/01/2010 and placed my final order. And on 09/01/2010 I sent them the DD[Demand Draft].
It wasn’t a surprise that the delivery will be slightly delayed, so I was mentally prepared. On 19/01/2010 I got an email confirming the payment, and I got my Order Number and Customer Code to track my product status.

I was checking the status daily and one fine day(after a week of waiting) I got a call from the same sales manager and he told me that Studio XPS 8000 is out of stock and I need to wait until Studio XPS 8100 comes to India(within 4 days), orelse I can get my money back. But since I had already waited so long, I decided to wait for 4 more days. After waiting for 4 more days, he called me and I sent him my final quotation:
studio-xps-8100-design1
studio-xps-8100-design3
Dell Studio XPS 8100
Processor i7 860 2.8GHz 8MB Cache
Dell ST2410 24″ Full HD Widescreen Monitor.
8GB(4x2GB) DDR3 SDRAM
500GB SATA 3.0 Gb/s Hard Drive
Wireless mouse and Keyboard
Windows 7 Home Premium
Blu-ray disk drive
nVidia GeForce GTS240 1024MB
Dell 2.1 Multimedia Desktop Speaker System
and a bunch of added legal software packages.

There was a little difference in the amount for XPS 8000 and XPS 8100 and I sent the remaining amount the next day. On 21/01/2010 the new order was placed.
Estimated delivery date was 03/02/2010 and there was further delay due to key board and mouse shortage and then finally on Feb 01 I got a mail and I thought it was another excuse – but it was not. Dell had already handed over my system to BlueDart. By 04/02/2010 my computer was in my home. But had to wait for 2 more days, as the product needs to be opened and installed by a dell representative only.

Everything went well, except for the multiple delays, which I can forgive and forget, as I am still satisfied with the system performance.

What I want to tell is: I had read a lot of bad review about Dell, and almost decided not to go with Dell. And started searching other PC vendors, but I found similar reviews about most of the companies, so I decided to give Dell a try and it was all a happy ending.
I am not saying that, there will be no problem if you order Dell computers online, it all depends on the circumstances – but I appreciate the honest efforts of Dell to serve its customers. In most of the bad reviews I read that, at the end they were able to replace their damaged product.

Have you ever purchased a Branded Computer? Please share your experience with all of us.

I will review Dell Studio XPS 8100 shortly.