I hit upon the idea that I could revitalize my laptop by replacing its keyboard. The old one had gotten a little worn, and some of the keys don't feel right any more. Besides, the rest of the machine was working fine. So I called Dell and and spoke with a nice lady in India who happily took my order. I was told I would be receiving the keyboard in about three days.

A few days later, a machine at Dell called and informed me (in a typical monotonic voice) that my order was delayed and I would be receiving it in early January. OK, not that big a deal. It's just a keyboard.

Yesterday, the machine called me back again and told me the order was delayed (again) to the end of January. In addition, if I did not contact them, they would automatically cancel the order. The recording gave me a phone number to call to un-cancel the order, but it never repeated the number and I didn't have a pen handy, so I missed it. It also gave me an email address, so I sent a message asking that they NOT cancel my order.

An automated response to my email told me I could not cancel or change an order via email (uhh?), and gave me a phone number to call. I called the number but got a busy-wait signal.

The next day my order was cancelled. Leave it to Dell to make it so difficult to BUY something from them. Three things they should fix:

1. The automated message informing me there is a delay in my order should let me press some number to indicate I don't want to cancel.
2. If they give me an email address to let them know not to cancel, then they should accept such messages at that address!
3. Don't give me bad phone numbers.

Next time I get a laptop, it'll be from someone else. Does anyone still have good support?