Thursday, April 06, 2006
Dell's Website SUCKS!!!
(note: this blog has moved. See current content at CenterDigit.com)
So I go to order my brand-spankin-new Dell 20" widescreen LCD monitor. I already have one at work, and I love it so much I decided to grab one for the home office. Thus begins the craptastic odyssey that is the Dell web experience.
First, at the opening page of Dell.com, there's no obvious way to see a list of products or product categories. Instead, you're supposed to identify what kind of customer you are. Why not at least show me something up front, a la the Apple Store, and give me an option to click in to a discounted product listing if that applies to me? I'm not sure what kind of customer I am, but I see they've got a handy search bar, and since I have one at work I know the model number. So I type in "2005FPW" and click the search button. BING! That takes me to this page, and the first item listed is the bad boy I'm after. I'm in business. So I click the item and get this crap:
We're sorry that we could not find anything that matched your search.
What the hell? Click browser back button. Click item again.
We're sorry that we could not find anything that matched your search.
Now I'm getting frustrated. I look at the rest of the page, and while there's no place to choose a "product category" ('cuz that would be too easy), there's a box titled "Essentials Links":
Basic Desktops
Entertainment Desktops
XPS Desktops
Basic Notebooks
Entertainment Notebooks
XPS Notebooks
Dell TVs
Dell Printers
Electronics & Accessories
Gaming
Awards
Days Of Deals
Windows Vista
Where the heck are the monitors? Well, a TV is like a monitor, so click... back button... Hmm...
I decide to try the "Electronics & Accessories". Finally!!! A picture of a damn monitor! Click... At the time, the one I wanted was not listed on the monitor page, but it is now. Apparently they run a nondeterministic web server over there at Dell.
Anyway, I select my bad boy, add it to the shopping cart, go to check out, and create my account. Now, I want this shipped to my office, since I work 30 miles from my house and don't want $500 worth of monitor sitting unattended on my front porch all day. So I type in my shipping address, assuming that since every other webstore on the face of the planet does it, Dell will give me the opportunity at credit card time to put in a different billing address. And it does, but not well.
See, if you go to Dell and place an order, every single page you navigate to is absolutely covered in crap. It's the web equivalent of a restaurant where they keep trying to up-sell you on other stuff. "You want this to go with that? How about some of these? Don't forget those!"
The pages are so busy that after about the 4th click, you're subconsciously beginning to filter out information and ignore parts of the page. By the time you get to the form that lets you enter in your credit card number and such, you've been trained to ignore everything but the form itself. And that page is what killed me. I entered my number, failing to notice that hidden in my "clutter blind spot" was the shipping address, with a little hyperlink that said "click here to change this address".
At this point, I'm expecting to see the billing address simply be part of the credit card form, but it's not. Why do I expect this? Because every other store I've dealt with does it that way!!! I get to the end of the form, and hmph... that was awful short. Maybe the billing address will be on the next page. Click...
And it tells me my order has been submitted and to wait for an email confirmation. Thoughts of billing addresses get overridden by dreams of having my new monitor, and I blithely go back to what I was doing.
Then the credit card rejection notice shows up in my email. What the hell? I call Dell. They say call the bank. I call the bank. They say it's just a security precaution because I recently changed my address, and to go ahead and resubmit. I call Dell. They resubmit. Declined. I call the bank again. They tell me I'm on fraud alert because somebody's been trying to ram my card through. I say yeah, that's me. I want my freakin' monitor! They ask me a billion questions, seem satisfied with the answers, and tell me to get Dell to call them. I call Dell. Tell Dell to call bank. Hang on the line while all sorts of messing around goes on, can barely hear anyone talking because the 3-way isn't working so hot, sit on hold for 20 minutes, and FINALLY get my monitor paid for.
Now don't get me wrong. I think Dell makes a decent product. In the case of this monitor, they make an excellent product. But their web page SUCKS. I shop regularly at the Apple Store, NewEgg, and of course Amazon. I have NEVER had this kind of issue with them, because their interfaces are uncluttered, they make it very easy to enter separate billing and shipping addresses -- even assume that you will -- and they make it easy to find the stuff you want in the first place. Next time, I think I'll pay a little more and get it from a 3rd party vendor. If there is a next time.
So I go to order my brand-spankin-new Dell 20" widescreen LCD monitor. I already have one at work, and I love it so much I decided to grab one for the home office. Thus begins the craptastic odyssey that is the Dell web experience.
First, at the opening page of Dell.com, there's no obvious way to see a list of products or product categories. Instead, you're supposed to identify what kind of customer you are. Why not at least show me something up front, a la the Apple Store, and give me an option to click in to a discounted product listing if that applies to me? I'm not sure what kind of customer I am, but I see they've got a handy search bar, and since I have one at work I know the model number. So I type in "2005FPW" and click the search button. BING! That takes me to this page, and the first item listed is the bad boy I'm after. I'm in business. So I click the item and get this crap:
We're sorry that we could not find anything that matched your search.
What the hell? Click browser back button. Click item again.
We're sorry that we could not find anything that matched your search.
Now I'm getting frustrated. I look at the rest of the page, and while there's no place to choose a "product category" ('cuz that would be too easy), there's a box titled "Essentials Links":
Basic Desktops
Entertainment Desktops
XPS Desktops
Basic Notebooks
Entertainment Notebooks
XPS Notebooks
Dell TVs
Dell Printers
Electronics & Accessories
Gaming
Awards
Days Of Deals
Windows Vista
Where the heck are the monitors? Well, a TV is like a monitor, so click... back button... Hmm...
I decide to try the "Electronics & Accessories". Finally!!! A picture of a damn monitor! Click... At the time, the one I wanted was not listed on the monitor page, but it is now. Apparently they run a nondeterministic web server over there at Dell.
Anyway, I select my bad boy, add it to the shopping cart, go to check out, and create my account. Now, I want this shipped to my office, since I work 30 miles from my house and don't want $500 worth of monitor sitting unattended on my front porch all day. So I type in my shipping address, assuming that since every other webstore on the face of the planet does it, Dell will give me the opportunity at credit card time to put in a different billing address. And it does, but not well.
See, if you go to Dell and place an order, every single page you navigate to is absolutely covered in crap. It's the web equivalent of a restaurant where they keep trying to up-sell you on other stuff. "You want this to go with that? How about some of these? Don't forget those!"
The pages are so busy that after about the 4th click, you're subconsciously beginning to filter out information and ignore parts of the page. By the time you get to the form that lets you enter in your credit card number and such, you've been trained to ignore everything but the form itself. And that page is what killed me. I entered my number, failing to notice that hidden in my "clutter blind spot" was the shipping address, with a little hyperlink that said "click here to change this address".
At this point, I'm expecting to see the billing address simply be part of the credit card form, but it's not. Why do I expect this? Because every other store I've dealt with does it that way!!! I get to the end of the form, and hmph... that was awful short. Maybe the billing address will be on the next page. Click...
And it tells me my order has been submitted and to wait for an email confirmation. Thoughts of billing addresses get overridden by dreams of having my new monitor, and I blithely go back to what I was doing.
Then the credit card rejection notice shows up in my email. What the hell? I call Dell. They say call the bank. I call the bank. They say it's just a security precaution because I recently changed my address, and to go ahead and resubmit. I call Dell. They resubmit. Declined. I call the bank again. They tell me I'm on fraud alert because somebody's been trying to ram my card through. I say yeah, that's me. I want my freakin' monitor! They ask me a billion questions, seem satisfied with the answers, and tell me to get Dell to call them. I call Dell. Tell Dell to call bank. Hang on the line while all sorts of messing around goes on, can barely hear anyone talking because the 3-way isn't working so hot, sit on hold for 20 minutes, and FINALLY get my monitor paid for.
Now don't get me wrong. I think Dell makes a decent product. In the case of this monitor, they make an excellent product. But their web page SUCKS. I shop regularly at the Apple Store, NewEgg, and of course Amazon. I have NEVER had this kind of issue with them, because their interfaces are uncluttered, they make it very easy to enter separate billing and shipping addresses -- even assume that you will -- and they make it easy to find the stuff you want in the first place. Next time, I think I'll pay a little more and get it from a 3rd party vendor. If there is a next time.
Posted by Tom @ 3:38 PM 
