I had an unusual customer service experience with Dell on Thursday.  I purchased a large flat panel monitor about nine months ago and was having some issues with it shutting off randomly.

I called  Dell’s support number and had a difficult time trying to get through to a person.  The automated system kept asking me for a number that I didn’t have since I had only bought a monitor.  ( I had the serial number but not this other number they were asking for.)  After about 20 minutes of getting passed around from menu to menu and finally to a person who told me I was in the wrong area, I got irritated and hung up.  Frustrated, I posted a comment on a Twitter account that I use to rant about things from time to time.

This is where things started to change.  I got a response from a person who asked if they could call me to resolve the issue.  I replied with my phone number, and a support rep from Dell called me.  (Yes he called me!) The rep asked me for my serial number and upon giving it to him he said that he saw I had purchased the unit on XX/XX/XXXX date, to which I replied, “yes that’s the one.”  He walked me through some steps to try to resolve the issue, and we ascertained that in fact it was a hardware issue and the unit was still under warranty and they would replace it.  (This was late in the day on Thursday mind you.)  The support rep then informed me that a new unit would be shipped to me and explained the return process to me.

This is the awesome part .  I worked from home on Friday, and at about 10 AM I heard a knock on the door.  It was FedEx standing there with a new monitor box.   I opened the box and there were simple to follow instructions on who to call to schedule a pick up after switching out the monitor.

Bottom line… this was a customer service issue that could have been a lousy experience, but it was resolved quickly and easily due to a simple posting on Twitter.  I just wanted to pass a good experience on.  Thanks Dell.