We have a $50 Dell Gift Card that came with a previous purchase. It doesn’t expire for another eight months and is branded by AmEx. I tried to use it online last week to purchase an APC surge protector, but there was no place to enter a gift card—only coupons. I tried entering it as a coupon, but it said it was invalid.

So I tried the website listed on the card and the site isn’t there.

So I call the 800 “call to order” number and… the rep can’t use the card, either (he only has a coupon entry spot and he also gets the invalid error). He has NO idea what to do and suggests I call the other 800 # on the card.

So I call the ‘other’ American Express 800 Customer service number, explain what happened, and the rep says something to the effect of “you need to talk to Dell regarding this card, here is the sales number.” She doesn’t care I was just talking to them and they sent me to her.

So I call the Dell 800 # she gave me and am routed to sales, where I get another Dell rep that has no clue. She suggests I call back again to hopefully get a rep who will know how to deal with it! Of course, each call requires me to go through the phone number/name/address confirmation.

So I call again and…you guessed it, another Dell rep that has no clue about the gift card (“Are you sure it’s not a coupon?”). This rep suggests I need to talk to Dell’s customer service and NOT sales. She forwards me.

So now I’m waiting to talk to customer service and I’m very irritated at this point. And guess what? The customer service person says I need to talk to Sales. NOOOOOO! I told her “I’ve been with sales (home and business) multiple times and they are clueless and gave me to you!” Okay, she says, let me put you on hold and I will get a new number for you to call. Fine, whatever. Minutes later, she calls and gives me the number… to the AmEx customer service line that I called in the beginning!

How can NO ONE at Dell or American Express have any idea how to redeem a gift card?

On Monday, I decided to try my luck ordering online again. Imagine my surprise when there was now a spot to enter a gift card! Interestingly, there was apparently $100 credit on my “$50” gift card (my purchase was approximately $90, giving me a $10 remaining balance). Because this paid for the entire order, I did not have to enter a credit card.

When my boss received the confirmation email, it showed we had ordered THREE Back-UPS units for a total of $290 (although the gift card was still listed as the only payment). Of course, this was one of the only times I hadn’t printed out the final order confirmation screen… so I had to call Dell and they say “Why yes you ordered three” and I say “I did not” and I was told that since they hadn’t been invoiced yet (or wherever we actually are in the ordering/billing/shipping process), it was possible to alter the order. By the end of the call, the rep said it was too late to alter the order so we would be receiving three items and we should send back two. She gave me a case number and said she would call to check up on the items’ arrival and return.

I then learned that someone from Dell called my boss last night to say the shipping address didn’t match the billing address… Interesting, since we didn’t technically have/use/need a billing address due to the gift card. But even so, we’ve ordered from Dell multiple times with the same shipping/billing information, so why the problem now? Anyway, the rep said something to the effect of “You have ordered three items for a total of $290” and my boss said “No, we didn’t, plus we used a gift card.” He said “Do you want to use your preferred account for this?” No, we wanted to use the gift card. So he was clueless and was supposed to call back, which he never did.

Then we get an email saying that “While processing your order, we were unable to obtain credit card authorization from your bank or credit card company for this purchase.” Well, it wasn’t a credit card transaction, but I called the CC processing center to try and fix it. Of course, since it wasn’t a CC transaction, she transfers me to the gift card section. Of course, the gift card rep can’t help me (since I apparently have to redo the order, only ordering ONE unit), so she transfers me to sales—except somehow I can’t get sales or get put on hold and I hear this (after 10 minutes):

We’re sorry, we cannot continue to process your call. Goodbye.

Of course, each transfer requires me to go through the name/address/billing information. And when I called the regular 800 number back to get sales, I had to go through everything again. I told the rep I wanted to change the order to one unit. Fine. I want to use the gift card. Fine. Except that—are you ready?—he can’t get the gift card to work. He tells me he can place the order, but I will have to call the gift card people to get it working/figured out, and then I will have to call him back. And he tried to give me a case number.

At that point, I lost it. I told him to cancel the entire order and I would not be ordering.

Is it too much to ask that Dell teach their customer service reps how to use gift cards? Or to ask that reps could handle all issues, instead of being transferred eight times—and still not getting a resolution? What is the point of handing out Dell Valued Customer gift cards if it’s impossible to use them online and no one knows how to use them?

My boss (whom I was trying to order from) loves Dell, but after this experience, we will no longer be ordering from Dell. We certainly don’t feel like a valued customer after this experience.