Dell, you can die in a fire.

Ten days after getting the new monitor setup for my home office, one of them started frizzing out. I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with Dell tech support, but generally had no complaints as they promised to send a replacement and I would ship the defective one back. I was clever and had them ship it to our home rather than the office this time, because trying to take a ginormous box of expensive, fragile electronics home on public transit is not the best idea for several reasons.

They promised to ship it within three business days. This would work out well - it would arrive before we left for Oregon the following Friday, and there would be time to get everything set up before working from home today.

However. Dell's business model is apparently predicated on making service so painful that you hang up in disgust without using it.

They never sent me a confirmation with the tracking information. I called Wednesday (three business days later). I spent an hour getting transferred four times (!), eventually ending up back at the original number I actually dialed. All to get one e-mail that perhaps took the foreign tech ten seconds to send. It showed that the delivery was scheduled for Thursday. Was that so hard?

...Except that they completely ignored everything I had said in the original call and sent it to our office. Where I actually was on Thursday, but because no one else was there I didn't have the front door unlocked for the delivery guy to come in. And I can't hear tentative knocking, so they left a sticker on the door and went away. I called FedEx and they assured me they'd re-deliver on Friday. Which, may I remind you, was July 4 - a financial holiday on which the markets and our company were closed. "No problem," said FedEx. "We have a special delivery set up." Um, you're missing the point. No one will be in the office. And because I was taking Monday off (as was a cow-orker) no one would be in Monday either. Which meant that they would unsuccessfully deliver three times, and then ship it back to Dell. Whereupon I would have to spend more hours getting transferred and on hold to get my damn working monitor.

So I called Thursday evening. Three transfers and 45 more wasted minutes (along with a tech hanging up on me!) later, the tech promised to contact FedEx and not have it delivered Friday. I reiterated my desire to have it delivered to our home address as originally promised, and gave them the information once again.

Monday we hadn't gotten a delivery, and while one of us was staying home we potentially needed to go out. So I checked the tracking number... and of course they had delivered it to the office. Fortunately an officemate was there and signed, but aargh.

So Wednesday I drove in to pick up the monitor and send it home with the wife. That evening I set it up and got it working. All done. Ready to package up the defective one and send it back.

Except that Dell has not sent any information about that. No packing slip, no packaging, nothing. I searched through everything. I steeled myself for another hour of hold music and forced transfers. And then... I thought better of it. I had an e-mail from one of the techs informing me that the ticket was closed as they had sent the replacement. I e-mailed him back stating that I would not be wasting any more of my time on this issue, and unless Dell contacted me with information to send back the defective monitor, I was not going to do anything.

Screw you, Dell. I will have no more contact with you ever again if I can help it.