Honestly e-mail CNN with a story about how hard it is to deal with issues like this when you are out of country in the service. You can even file an iReport. If they run with the story I think you'll find your laptop showing up in record time with a heartfelt apology from Dell.

I'd suggest you first pick up a telephone and have a real-time conversation with somebody.

Excuse me. No. We respect your service, and he has every right to ask for help from people he trusts. That apparently is us. They said they'd send a replacement.. but didn't. So now we are discussing resolutions. You had no right to make those assumptions.

Because, as a non-american, I don't support the war, and i don't support his actions.

Why should he get preferential treatmetn for living in a country that sends him to war for no reason? Why should he get preferential treatment because he was idiotic enough to sign up for the military in the USA?

Another thing to ask is if they ever shipped it and if they did what the tracking number is. At least this way you can try to work out whether the blame is with Dell or the internal courier service used by the military to get it there (I imagine this how it works). Once you can work out where the computer should be you will know who you be dealing with.

and Bin Laden's typing his myspace profile on it right now. Go get him!

Seriously though, what are we supposed to tell you? Contact somebody higher up the chain, preferably by phone. Yeah it may be hard, but so is delivering a $2k package to a 3rd world shithole.

The fundamental problem is with people accepting poor customer service. If the average customer will accept the cheapest customer service, it generally works out in the business' favor to go with that lowest-rung option.

You can't blame a businessman for running the most profitable business he can.

If the supervisor thought I was wrong in requesting that somebody who asked me for my operating system version four times in a row when replying to an e-mail in which I explicitly stated my operating system version, then he should be fired too.

Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. If this guy can't figure out that I am telling him my operating system version four times in a row, then he needs to find a new line of work. If there are somehow procedures which require him to ignore my answer and ask me the same question every time I reply, which I highly doubt, then whoever created that procedure needs to be fired too.

But let's be honest, there is no such procedure. Don't defend this idiot. There was nothing which required him to ask me the exact same question repeatedly after I gave him the answer to it repeatedly.

You're a special kind of asshole, you know that?

May i humbly suggest that your time is better spent reading some books, to enlighten you as to why you're in the position you are, and just how the hell you and your countrymen arrived there.

He needs a laptop so he can stay in contact with loved ones and to be able to STUDY, you know, better himself as a human being while doing this horrible thing that the rest of us don't want to do.

Trust me VISA will not be eating it. The ability to reach in and take it from Dell is 100%.

Visa is never actually even a party to the transaction, they're the only winner in the case of a chargeback.

Every Visa card is issued by a bank.

Every merchant that can accept Visa cards has a merchant account with another bank.

When you pay for a purchase with a CC, the transaction is processed by the retailer's merchant account.

The merchant's bank uses Visa's network to record the transaction.

The amount is charged to the buyer's bank, and a commission paid to Visa is deducted from the proceeds, before being deposited to the retailer's account.

The commission is a percentage plus a base ammount, and it is not refundable in any case.

No, but sophisticated support is expensive. For the most part, they can retain loyalty by simply providing a good show, even if the resolution process is long and more riciulously painful than it should be.

People who can read a flowchart and talk the customer through pre-ordained troubleshooting steps can be paid in small piles of pennies, whereas qualified support engineers would demand heaps of gold.

Most consumer buyers of computer products don't have good hardware knowledge, let-alone the ability to execute even remotely complex troubleshooting directions correctly.

It's called, either fix the common error, with one of the top-10 canned techniques (like reset to factory defaults, reboot it, etc), or replace the product with one that isn't broken.

The actual hardware is cheaper than paying hordes of skilled hardware professionals who can listen and tell the consumer precisely what complex tasks to take that can pinpoint the problem and get everything perfect.

It sucks, and doesn't make Dell look very good to some consumers, but i'm sure they've justified to themselves the path they take.

(The easiest way: lots of other big corporations are doing it with their product support)

I wouldn't. Insurance by the postal service is worth almost as much as no insurance at all. It takes literally years of fighting past insane bureaucracy to get reimbursed, and even then they will try to weasel out of every single penny they can.

Dell would probably treat you better than the USPS.

I had an APO address for three years at Ramstein AB (ie, the place that *all* APO mail headed to Europe and SWA goes first). The OP's representation of the amount of time it takes to receive mail from the US is misleading at best. It takes 7-10 days to receive letters from the US. I have received packages in that little time, but the average was perhaps 4 weeks, and 8 weeks was not unusual. A few times it took up to 10 weeks. The package is being sent to a *war zone*, have a little patience.

My brother was stationed in Iraq for a very long time. He probably got a $1700 laptop cause he wanted a gaming laptop. When you are going to be stationed overseas it is a pretty good idea to get a nice laptop considering that's your sole form of entertainment and one of the only real luxuries a soldier can have.

When my brother was stationed in Iraq we gave him a nice laptop and an Ipod and trust me he appreciated it.

It disgusts me that a huge company like dell would do this to a soldier. This is pretty much PR suicide. It's extremely weird that the didn't even give him a military discount. Now in' days EVERYONE gives some sort of military discount. Airlines, Movie Theaters, etc.

Shame on you dell. You should be honored to provide a service to our men overseas and instead of making it hard you should be doing your best to make it easier and to try not to tarnish your reputation by pulling this.

No, mod parent "never had to get internet connectivity from the Army". It may be better now, but when I was there email was about all you could manage through that high latency, low bandwidth, "here now for 1 minute but then gone for 10 minutes" connection.

You still sound like an pompous ass.

You start by outlining what soldiers on the front lines have done in past wars, then chastise him for not acting like a front line soldier when he's obviously not? Do you think guys processing paperwork in the finance office in London or Saigon were writing home about the horrors of war?
And it's "REMF", not "REM".

Pffff. Maybe if you want to read hundreds of boring pages about the Washington bureaucracy and the ineptitude of the CIA and the State Department, and then a copy-paste of 20 other history books with a hysterical screed against Bush at the end.

So really, I'm not sure what it is you think he needs to be educated about. You start with the observation that he's not as concerned with the "awful conditions" at the front as you think he ought to be, and then suggest he read a bunch of political nonsense by a Washington Post inside-the-beltway gasbag?

At any rate, chastising him for pursuing an education instead of learning to hate Chimpy BusHitler or whatever is pretty lame.

Not to mention the difficulty of scheduling a possibly several hour phone conversation during business hours PST when you're in Iraq.

One of the companies we work with is in Israel, and getting tech support through anything but email is a real pain. Business hours in Israel are 1 am to 9 am our time...

No.

I've always been of the opinion that if you're a jerk to me, I don't need to out of my way for you.

That is the Walmart Effect in a nutshell. That store only delivers what its customers want. They want low low prices, and easy returns. The products don't have to be high quality or made in the USA. The cashiers don't have to be too friendly, or even too quick, just quick enough. The stores don't have to be too clean, just not disgustingly dirty. If the average consumer wanted to spend a little more for service, maybe we'd actually get it

Mumbai recently had the attacks. He ordered his computer in September. Blaming the attacks for this makes no sense.

"Unless of course, you're a REM who's several hundred clicks from any forward operating post, and have ready access to 24x7 electricity with no spikes, aircon and constant net access. Apologies if I've called that one wrong, but you're not exactly giving the impression of being at the sharp end of business out there."

If you knew anything about this war, other than what you have read in books, you would know that there is no such thing as a front line in OEF or OIF. Your arrogant statement exposes your ignorance. This Soldier just wants a product he has paid for. Why does it bother you that he is trying to obtain what he has already bought?

I was in a tiny FOB in the middle of the Triangle of Death. I've been blown up and shot at. That still didn't preclude me from buying and receiving an Alienware laptop while I was in Iraq, and yes, it worked perfectly despite all of the "bumps" and "dust."