Hey Dell, here's an idea: empower your employees to actually give a crap about customers, start shipping your products ON TIME, and stop wasting money on recruiting celebrities:

Dell Enlists Celebrities to Beg for Customers

A few months ago I purchased a 20" 2007WFP monitor, a keyboard for an older laptop, and another keyboard for one of my other boxes. The laptop keyboard was from their refurb site, and so was the other keyboard (though it was brand new). The monitor shipped fine and on time. My keyboards just seemed to 'hang' in limbo. Then I got a cryptic email from (let's say) Laura at Dell. The email said that there had been a problem with my order, and I needed to call Dell's customer service.

100% sounded like a scam. Didn't even have dell logos or 'letter-head' in the email - just a 2 sentence email. But my stuff hadn't shipped, so even though this looked like a phishing email I decided to call. The people on the other end of the phone wanted to know my Social Security Number - without that they couldn't help me.

No way was I going to just dial a number I got in an email, and then fork over my SSN. (It's the perfect recipe for a phishing scam - just spam everyone with an email that there's a 'problem' with their order from Dell, and get anyone with a current Dell order to bite... )

What GALLS me is that this was REALLY, 100%, Dell. Not a phishing scam - just Dell's amazing customer service trying to 'help' me.

They had let the $300 monitor go through fine, but were forcing me through some sort of fraud protection on the $43 and $13 keyboards - to ensure that I was really me, and had really ordered the stuff in question. Gee guys, glad you've got my back on the $60 stuff...  

When I demanded to speak with a manager after being asked for my SSN (and refusing to give it) I was told that I could speak with a manager after giving them my SSN, and was actually hung up upon by 2 of their reps. I finally managed to squeeze another number I could call out of one of the reps - which was the actual Dell service #... and after 40 minutes of computerized menus and about 3 phone transfers I finally was able to get the story on how fraud prevention had intercepted the order....

But by this time the refurbed laptop keyboard was out of stock. Dell still wanted my $ at this point - did I want to apply that $$ to another purchase?

I told them to stuff their keyboards where the sun doesn't shine, and canceled the order.

But hey, Burt Reynolds, Ice-T, and other celebs think that Dell's a pretty cool gig. Maybe I should reconsider....