Adventures in Dell customer service...

I went to Dell's webpage, logged in with my Dell Preferred account, and went to order 2 256MB RAM sticks for this XP Pro memory hog of a machine. They come to my house. I install them. The BIOS tells me it's the wrong type of memory for my computer.

I then spend ONE HOUR on the phone with Dell, at least half of it on hold. First to technical support, who then transfers me to the wrong customer care center, who then transfers me to the correct customer care center, who speaks so mush-mouthed I have to get her to repeat nearly everything she says. This is why you should never out-source your customer support...

When the survey comes in about my online buying experience, Dell is gonna get reamed a new one. So is the customer care support people, since she kept having to put me on hold for minutes at a time just to get a reference number. She said, "We're having a network slowdown." I'm thinking the problem is mostly in-between the chair and keyboard.

So now I get to mail the memory back. Normally, Dell sends someone to pick it up at my house, and I had a hard time convincing the woman that if they couldn't be there between 8am and 9am they wouldn't find anyone home. Supposedly I will be refunded for the postage. I'm just hoping they refund me for the price of the memory.

Will I buy more memory? Eventually... maybe... might not be from Dell...