Travel Technology - Dell intentionally deceives in its "estimated ship dates"

I ordered an Axim a couple weeks ago, which was supposed to ship today. Today they sent me an e-mail saying, "sorry, it's not shipping today. Here's your new estimated shipping date - three weeks away."

Nice that they waited until the last possible moment to tell me. The Web site and telephone systems had been telling me as late as last night that it was shipping out today. Reminds me of the airlines that know your flight isn't on time hours in advance because the aircraft hasn't even left the previous airport yet.

Except it's worse than just a last minute surprise - Dell was knowingly lying to me for at least the past week about the shipping date. I called in last week because I saw they had me down for ground shipping instead of overnight. I said to the agent, "it says a ship date of June 1, but the delivery estimate is June 5-8 - that doesn't sound like overnight shipping."

She said under her breath that it was showing a ship date of June 21 on her screen, but that she needed to have another agent switch it to overnight shipping.

I didn't think much of her off-hand comment about the June 21 ship date because the next agent and the Web site kept up with the June 1st estimate. It wasn't until today when I got an e-mail saying my new estimated ship date was June 21st that I realized that it said right on her screen that this thing wasn't going to ship on June 1st, but they lied to me for another full week before they were forced to fess up. :mad:

I checked the Web site to see what the estimate is on new Axims purchased today - June 9th. The agent I spoke to today assures me that it's a main component of the Axim itself that is the hold up, not any peripherals. So Dell is now lying about the estimated ship date to new customers, as well.

I realize that it's an "estimate," but Dell's practice is flat-out and intentionally deceptive.

Ordered a Canon SD630 from Dell last week. It shipped out of Waco before the estimated ship date, and arrived via Airborne/DHL Ground a day earlier than estimated (3 days in transit instead of 4).

And I'm still awaiting a tracking number ("In Transit to Local Carrier") for a computer I already received. :D

Weird absoultly every machine I've ever received from Dell has been delivered before it's estimated ship date.

Several years ago the FTC imposed regulations requiring all mail order and e-commerce customers to be provided with estimated ship dates. Further, it required all of the companies to send revised ship dates should they not be able to ship as originally promised. The FTC calls this regulation "The Rule." It's what drives companies to do these silly estimates that half the time don't make sense.

Companies had to update their systems to accommodate The Rule quickly, so most plopped in some quick and dirty code that doesn't really integrate well with their existing processes or systems.

That's why we see the things we do with these estimates. Most companies do attempt to base their estimates on something realistic, but it doesn't always work. ;)

Weird absoultly every machine I've ever received from Dell has been delivered before it's estimated ship date.

Pretty much the same here. I try to avoid Dell to be honest as I dont care for them on many levels but I have a few clients that are sold on them and I dont remember a machine shipping after the ship date.

Sadly I had a worse experience with Axim. They "delayed" the shipping date a number of times then cancelled the order b/c I didn't respond within a few days (I was out of country and didn't have access). They knew all along that they wouldn't be able to fulfill the order b/c it was during the phase out of the previous model - so my cancelled order could be replaced - but at an additional cost to me of about 100% over original price...... Yech!

Last month I ordered an Axim X51V on a Sunday; I got an estimated ship date of some 2 weeks later. I had in my hands by Thursday night the same week, though. Go figure . . .

I ordered a special build desktop from Dell about a year ago and it arrived 2 days before its scheduled arrival date.

MisterNice

I just recently, last month ordered a laptop from dell and it shipped nearly a week early, however they shipped it to the wrong address and took a month to finally get a replacement shipped.

By the way their customer service in india sucks!!!!
every answer is " sir you can relax your problem has been solved"

Maybe Dell just doesn't like me then.

What I can't explain, however, is why they're telling new Axim customers on the Web site that their estimated ship date is two weeks earlier than mine, after I've already been waiting over two weeks in the first place.

I've asked the agents a number of times if there's an accessory that's holding me back and they keep saying no.

I seriously doubt the are INTENTIONALLY deceiving you, that would mean someone at Dell HQ has decided to pick your order and mess around with you... These things are all automated, and clearly something is messed up with (part of) the order.

I have ALWAYS received my orders on time, usually at least a couple of days before the expected shipping date.

I ordered an Axim a couple weeks ago, which was supposed to ship today. Today they sent me an e-mail saying, "sorry, it's not shipping today. Here's your new estimated shipping date - three weeks away."


A hundred miles from the coprporate HQ in Austin, with orders filled from the warehouse there, my last three Dells have all arrived before or on the designated shipping date, the last one actually before the e-mail advising me of the shipping date.

All in all, I can't fault Dell over almost 15 years of buying from them, one of the first times from the old, now gone and lamented, Austin "retail" store where the "reconditioned" machines and surplus peripherals were discounted. I bought a system, carried it home, discovered a missing component, called and had it arrive the next AM.

I wish I could be as comfortable with the shipping practices and "dates" of some others, including the receipt Wednesday of a small mail order from March 13, delay unacknowledged during the 2 1/2 month lapse (but on one of the few occasions when I had to use a "paper" check, at least the check wasn't presented until the order shipped.

Rumor has it that on a couple of occasions, "new" Dell models have been delayed in shipping after a bug was discovered and all similar machines in the logistics trail underwent a bench test or "fix". That's a simple enough answer to make sense, but not as simple as a more likely cause, a late arrival of a VLCC at Long Beach or cargo container delayed/temporarilty lost in rail or truck transit.

I wouldn't say this is intentional.
I think they have estimates (and of course we think that things that are DELL branded would have the best estimates) but these are based on trends, inventory, manufacture time, promotions, etc.

For dell products like computers, their timing seems to be spot on. For PDA's that are coming from other sources, I think it can slip.

And it OFTEN slips when there is a perfect storm deal, like 25-35% off and then come $$ off 100's coupons that make the purchase and purchase PRICE a no brainer.

All the accessories products, canon cameras, routers, etc. that are coming from third parties, where I have gotten simply CRAZY deals, I expect them to take time. Even though one day on order the canon 20D digital SLR says, ships in 24 hours, then the next day there is a CRAZY deal it is costs 1080$ instead of 1500$, I get in on the deal and expect it to take a WHILE to arrive. Dell just gets totally overloaded with orders and responsibility to fullfill.

Add to that that the system is in NO way perfect. We think, that there is some perfect connection between the orders system, the warehouse or fullfillment center and/or manufacturing, but there just isn't.

As noted by many, and I am no exception to this, the dell status site will show DELAYED, or IN PROCESS or something other and yet, I HAVE THE ITEM IN MY HANDS!

If the delay gets really bad, give them an email and they will email you a 35 or 100$ off coupon for your next order. these are GREAT items to get, for no effort other than waiting.

For mission critical items, or a camera I would have to have for a holiday or trip, I would place my dell order, but have a backup somewhere.

the dell DEALS are great, but to get the deal one has to sometimes wait.

Most people have mentioned that they have received their Dell systems on time. Same here.

But I had similar delays as the OP when I was trying to buy an Axim in December 2004. I ordered it about two weeks prior to a five-week vacation, with an estimated ship date that would have gotten it to my door in plenty of time. Like the OP experienced, the estimated ship date was pushed out at the last possible minute, and the delay meant the Axim would arrive after I had already left the country.

Also like the OP experienced, a brand new order had an earlier ship date than the revised date of my original order. Since time was running out, I ordered a second (identical) Axim with overnight shipping.

The second one was shipped about a week before the first one. I got it the day before taking off. Fortunately I didn't need to use it much (it was a vacation, after all) but what a mess.

I should note this was right around the debut of the X50v, so I could expect some supply chain issues, but nobody at Dell seemed to have a clue.

I just recently, last month ordered a laptop from dell and it shipped nearly a week early, however they shipped it to the wrong address and took a month to finally get a replacement shipped.

By the way their customer service in india sucks!!!!
every answer is " sir you can relax your problem has been solved"

I have found their Indian customer service center much easier to deal with (and with more successful outcomes) by using online chat instead of the phone.

I wouldn't say this is intentional.
I think they have estimates (and of course we think that things that are DELL branded would have the best estimates) but these are based on trends, inventory, manufacture time, promotions, etc.
There are two things that make me think it's intentional. First, the agent I spoke with last week said that it was showing on her system as having a June 21st ship date, which is exactly the date that they e-mailed me at the last minute.

Second, they're still giving new customers an estimated ship date that's a week and a half earlier than mine. If they're telling the truth to new customers, why are they making me wait? The other explanation is that they're telling me the truth and they're lying to new customers. (A final explanation is that there's something about my order that's delaying it, but the CSRs keep telling me that it's a problem with the Axim parts, not accessories.)

I have found their Indian customer service center much easier to deal with (and with more successful outcomes) by using online chat instead of the phone.
I tried to use the online chat, but I kept getting a message saying that says my account isn't OK'ed to use that channel of communication or something like that. :confused:

Doppy is 100% absolutely correct. I can certainly say that I have experienced EXACTLY the same thing TWICE!!!!

I will never attempt to purchase another Dell product ever.

The fact is that Dell employs one of the most sophisticated just in time purchasing, inventory, and manufacturing systems in the world. At the time I've clicked purchase on an order, they know at that milli-second what my approximate ship date will be. If it was a day or so off, I'd be fine. But like Doppy, they had no intention of ever meeting that date. Instead, they decided to extend my ship date to three weeks from that date because they probably thought, "Well, he's waited this long. He'll surely wait another three weeks because we're Dell and he's going to get a Dell product!" WRONG!!

Dell computers can go bankrupt for all I care. I'll continue to buy my computers from companies that don't lie to their customers.

There are two things that make me think it's intentional. First, the agent I spoke with last week said that it was showing on her system as having a June 21st ship date, which is exactly the date that they e-mailed me at the last minute.

Second, they're still giving new customers an estimated ship date that's a week and a half earlier than mine. If they're telling the truth to new customers, why are they making me wait? The other explanation is that they're telling me the truth and they're lying to new customers. (A final explanation is that there's something about my order that's delaying it, but the CSRs keep telling me that it's a problem with the Axim parts, not accessories.)


I don't know why I'm defending them, but it all actually makes total sense to me. Consider this. You have 4 departments...

1. Customer service. They answer the phone, look at the screen, and talk to you.

2. Planning. They order the products and try to guess when stuff will show up in the warehouses and how many will be available.

3. The people/system who manage sending out the messages when orders won't be shipped out on the date originally given.

4. The people/system who manage updating the web site with new estimated ship dates.

- Customer service is totally in the dark. They are entry level employees who will not know how to read the dates. They need to be able to provide more information to customers, so methods for looking in the system to see information in ways the other departments higher up in the chain than them see it begin circulating among them. This information will not be consistent with what customers have been told previously.

- The planning group has an impossible job. Supply chains are so complex these days, with thousands of components all going into a single device. A shortage on a sticker that goes on the packaging can delay an order for a week. Also tking into account that the products are manufactured in China or Taiwan adds another level of complexity. Contracts and business agreements mysteriously change midstream. (i.e. now that we have 150 pallets of your product loaded, we'll need an additional sum beyond what we agreed to to ship them.) Some companies ship certain products by boat, and that's totally unpredictable. Then, there's Customs. Also, you've got typhoons and earthquakes going on all the time at the regions manufacturing the stuff. Planning might as well throw a dart at the calendar half the time to try and figure out when stuff will be available to ship.

- The systems that process orders contain several layers. One layer may have one set of dates, but another layer may have another set of dates. Even then, none of those dates may be accurate, since the department that fulfills the demand may override the way the system fulfills demand. They probably have only a little bit of interaction with the Planning people and likely no interaction with Customer Service, yet CS has started digging around into all the layers in hopes to give a customer more detail than they have on the surface.

- The Web is a semi-detached façade from most order processing systems. It's going to be the last to be updated with new dates. I would bet the people who manage the Web site have no interaction with the planning group or the Customer Service group or the group fulfilling the orders.

Amidst all of this chaos that is any large enterprise, the government has decided to require companies to tell customers when they're getting their stuff. Wouldn't the companies like to know. ;)

I happen to know that Dell uses SAP, and SAP happens to be my specialty. SAP has inherent limitations that make it hard to give accurate leadtimes in real-world use. (For the eggheads: SAP's ATP logic depends on a FIFO model, but most companies aren't willing to permit SAP to allocate FIFO during constraint situations.) It also makes it very easy for a Customer Service agent to see conflicting dates. If training is not thorough and reinforced, then CS agents will mislead customers with inconsistent info.

Since most companies are going to be keeping metrics of the leadtimes they give to customers, they're going to engineer them to be overestimates rather than underestimates if they can, to make themselves look better. However, they're going to get nailed with an unforseen delay in supply every now and then, and the systems and processes simply aren't dynamic enough to reallign themselves instantaneously.

For any company to intend to mislead customers in hopes to win their purchase requires a level of sophistication so far ahead of where they are now that it's an impossibility. I seriously doubt that's going on.

We have a ton of people who used to work for Dell running around my offices, and their sausage making is as scary as anyone else's.

They do have some aspects of their business model that are more evolved than other companies, but most of that is smoke and mirrors to make investors feel better. In reality, all of the major players in the industry have just as advanced business models (perhaps with different sets of strengths and weaknesses).

Ugh. This thread is bringing me WAY down since I bought my first Dell lappy this morning with their massive sale. I bought in to the upgraded 2-3 biz day shipping since I need it by Saturday, but my emailed ship date is eight days from now (after I'm out of town). I've heard stories about early arrivals, but I'm very tense about it not arriving in time. :eek:

I will never attempt to purchase another Dell product ever.



Neither will I.

Ugh. This thread is bringing me WAY down since I bought my first Dell lappy this morning with their massive sale. I bought in to the upgraded 2-3 biz day shipping since I need it by Saturday, but my emailed ship date is eight days from now (after I'm out of town). I've heard stories about early arrivals, but I'm very tense about it not arriving in time. :eek:
**Update**

Order Processing: Monday, June 05, 2006
Pre-production: Monday, June 05, 2006
Shipping Prep: Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Ship Date: Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Arrival should be on Friday.
Four days from assembly to doorstep. Not bad.

Like many others here I have received every item from Dell earlier than estimated arrival, be it a computer product or not. In fact, every item that was to ship 2 day air I received next day morning. I have had no shipping problems with Dell to speak of. Now there customer service is a different story.

update:
yes, I ordered a canon sd700is for a friend, got a SMOKIN' deal from dell, about 35% below list price. Was to ship in two weeks, fine. Others read that their orders were to ship in THREE weeks, okay,

Mine arrived three days ago, no announcement.

In no WAY can I complain, it was not a time sensitive purchase, but to pay 370 for a 500$ item brand new, is key

I don't know why I'm defending them, but it all actually makes total sense to me.

Well, because not everything has to be a pro-Apple post... ;)

I like DELL products for what they are...but I DO NOT rely on them if I have a time-sensitive purchase. Period.

I just ordered the Dell Monitor 2407 (HDMI...yeah :D). According to the website I should have it in 3-5 business days and it should be ready to ship.

NOT.

When I finished the purchase online, I was told it would ship next Monday. When I got the email confirmation, it was not to ship till Monday, June 19th.

I have times when I got killer deals on hard drives from Dell and Dell did keep pushing back the dates and forcing one to reconfirm. I honestly do think that sometimes Dell does use the 48-72 hour response from customer rule to break orders that are just too good in terms of pricing...

Anyways, DELL is good for driving down prices and good product. But as a business, I wouldn't rely on them...I'll pay more for IBM etc.

I like DELL products for what they are...but I DO NOT rely on them if I have a time-sensitive purchase. Period.

I just ordered the Dell Monitor 2407 (HDMI...yeah :D). According to the website I should have it in 3-5 business days and it should be ready to ship.

NOT.

When I finished the purchase online, I was told it would ship next Monday. When I got the email confirmation, it was not to ship till Monday, June 19th.

I have times when I got killer deals on hard drives from Dell and Dell did keep pushing back the dates and forcing one to reconfirm. I honestly do think that sometimes Dell does use the 48-72 hour response from customer rule to break orders that are just too good in terms of pricing...

Anyways, DELL is good for driving down prices and good product. But as a business, I wouldn't rely on them...I'll pay more for IBM etc.


Ok. So I just got an email from Dell saying the monitor has already shipped.
That's great, but really...no rhyme or reason

Three weeks later, Dell pulled the same crap, waiting until the last possible minute to announce yet another delay.

They've done a great job of turning the large, positive goodwill account they had running with me into a severely negative one.

Years ago Michael Dell was running around telling anyone who would listen what a just-in-time logistics genius he was. I ordered this thing six weeks ago. I guess this is another case of business hype turning out to be a lot of bluster.

I've never had a delay with dell shipping. I did, however have one incident:
Ordered an Axim. They shipped it just fine. What I received instead, however was a laptop that was worth about 3-4 times as much. I look at the label on the laptop box, and lo and behold, the distribution center put two labels one on top of another - mine being the top, another person's being the bottom one.

So I call dell... get India, took a while to explain what and where and how and why....It took them a while to send me a replacement. Then it took 'em about a month to generate a label for me to send them back the laptop. And they kept bombarding me with letters saying they didn't receive the laptop until I called them and gave them the tracking number that they generated initially, showing that they received the item a long time ago.

All I got in return for the hassle was a measely 30-dollar coupon.

Got a third notice of delay today. Another last minute one. This one is for three more weeks.

A Dell agent finally told me that the problem is that the Bluetooth keyboard is on backorder. That's why it's been over six weeks and I still don't have an Axim. I've spoken to about a dozen agents over that time, always asking if the problem was an accessory so we could just split the order, but they kept denying that it was, which turns out to be more lies or poorly informed agents.

Apparently Michael Dell and his self-proclaimed operations management geniusness can't figure out how to ship the main unit and accessories separately in situations like this, so they wanted me to wait at least three more weeks for the thing to ship out (for a total of 9 weeks of waiting), if they could get their hands on a keyboard that I can get overnight from Amazon.com. They had to cancel my original order entirely, then wanted to place two separate orders, one for the Axim, one for the keyboard. :rolleyes:

I don't know why I'm defending them, but it all actually makes total sense to me. Consider this. You have 4 departments...

1. Customer service. They answer the phone, look at the screen, and talk to you.

2. Planning. They order the products and try to guess when stuff will show up in the warehouses and how many will be available.

3. The people/system who manage sending out the messages when orders won't be shipped out on the date originally given.

4. The people/system who manage updating the web site with new estimated ship dates.

- Customer service is totally in the dark. They are entry level employees who will not know how to read the dates. They need to be able to provide more information to customers, so methods for looking in the system to see information in ways the other departments higher up in the chain than them see it begin circulating among them. This information will not be consistent with what customers have been told previously.

- The planning group has an impossible job. Supply chains are so complex these days, with thousands of components all going into a single device. A shortage on a sticker that goes on the packaging can delay an order for a week. Also tking into account that the products are manufactured in China or Taiwan adds another level of complexity. Contracts and business agreements mysteriously change midstream. (i.e. now that we have 150 pallets of your product loaded, we'll need an additional sum beyond what we agreed to to ship them.) Some companies ship certain products by boat, and that's totally unpredictable. Then, there's Customs. Also, you've got typhoons and earthquakes going on all the time at the regions manufacturing the stuff. Planning might as well throw a dart at the calendar half the time to try and figure out when stuff will be available to ship.

- The systems that process orders contain several layers. One layer may have one set of dates, but another layer may have another set of dates. Even then, none of those dates may be accurate, since the department that fulfills the demand may override the way the system fulfills demand. They probably have only a little bit of interaction with the Planning people and likely no interaction with Customer Service, yet CS has started digging around into all the layers in hopes to give a customer more detail than they have on the surface.

- The Web is a semi-detached façade from most order processing systems. It's going to be the last to be updated with new dates. I would bet the people who manage the Web site have no interaction with the planning group or the Customer Service group or the group fulfilling the orders.

Amidst all of this chaos that is any large enterprise, the government has decided to require companies to tell customers when they're getting their stuff. Wouldn't the companies like to know. ;)

I happen to know that Dell uses SAP, and SAP happens to be my specialty. SAP has inherent limitations that make it hard to give accurate leadtimes in real-world use. (For the eggheads: SAP's ATP logic depends on a FIFO model, but most companies aren't willing to permit SAP to allocate FIFO during constraint situations.) It also makes it very easy for a Customer Service agent to see conflicting dates. If training is not thorough and reinforced, then CS agents will mislead customers with inconsistent info.

Since most companies are going to be keeping metrics of the leadtimes they give to customers, they're going to engineer them to be overestimates rather than underestimates if they can, to make themselves look better. However, they're going to get nailed with an unforseen delay in supply every now and then, and the systems and processes simply aren't dynamic enough to reallign themselves instantaneously.

For any company to intend to mislead customers in hopes to win their purchase requires a level of sophistication so far ahead of where they are now that it's an impossibility. I seriously doubt that's going on.

We have a ton of people who used to work for Dell running around my offices, and their sausage making is as scary as anyone else's.

They do have some aspects of their business model that are more evolved than other companies, but most of that is smoke and mirrors to make investors feel better. In reality, all of the major players in the industry have just as advanced business models (perhaps with different sets of strengths and weaknesses).

If you need to spend this much time trying to explain how a company works, then that company is completely fricked.

Getting through to ask a simple sales question to Dell is a joke - you spend more time pressing this number to get to that extension than you need to have a stupid question answered.

But it's a corporate goon's wet dream for all kinds of management mumbo-jumbo that ends up becoming an end in itself rather than just getting stuff taken care of.

"I've got an MBA, let me make sure you know I know how to use it..."

A meeting at that place must be the scariest place on earth.

"PARADIGM! YOU FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THE PARADIGM! AND VISION! I READ A CASE STUDY ON VISION!"

Ordered an Inspiron for my pop and the computer arrived before the estimated date, though the router, which was shipped the same day, arrived two days later. The printer was estimated to arrive tomorrow, so we shall see.

I guess it's a crap shoot. My Dell got here 77 hours after I submitted the order. My only regret was not buying the larger battery.

I odered June 9. The computer keeps getting delayed with the notice coming on the day it is supposed to ship. :td:

A friend of mine ordered a new Dell desktop last Saturday at 10 PM and it shipped on Monday. Their original estimated ship date was 9/28. This has been the case for every computer that I have ever purchased from Dell. ^

A friend of mine ordered a new Dell desktop last Saturday at 10 PM and it shipped on Monday. Their original estimated ship date was 9/28. This has been the case for every computer that I have ever purchased from Dell. ^

I have had pretty much the same experence as you, I honestly can't remember a time when Dell has not beat the date. I would say I have ordered between 200-250 computers over the last 5 years. However most of them were pretty basic and didn't have any exotic video cards or physics cards.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320) Opera 8.60 [en])

We ordered a fully loaded Dell 9150 with a 10 business day delivery timeframe. It arrived after 5 business days, which worked out to be a week early.

I have made eight orders to Dell in the past 17 months, and five arrived on or before the commitment date, and three arrived after.

The five arriving on or before were standard boxes or components, nothing too fancy or amazing.

The three arriving late included the following.

- one great pricing deal: I suspect they ran out and had to backorder
- two fast AMD systems: I suspect that they ran out and had to backorder

Maybe their pricing model doesn't comrehend big demand on certain items, so we all order them, and then they don't have enough supply.

I have made eight orders to Dell in the past 17 months, and five arrived on or before the commitment date, and three arrived after.

The five arriving on or before were standard boxes or components, nothing too fancy or amazing.

The three arriving late included the following.

- one great pricing deal: I suspect they ran out and had to backorder
- two fast AMD systems: I suspect that they ran out and had to backorder

Maybe their pricing model doesn't comrehend big demand on certain items, so we all order them, and then they don't have enough supply.

I wasn't aware that Dell ships AMD system until today officially.

The Dimension E521 and C521, offers AMD Sempron/Athlon processor with nVidia NF430 core logic.

I haven't been a fan of Dell for some time now, I think they sell good kit but in my experience they let themselves down with customer service & support.

Going back to the OP regarding intentiaonally deceiving, I can't stand the way on their website they show models 'starting at £599' - so you go through the process of selecting the model you want, then click 'customise & buy' and instantly the price appears as £679! OK, sure if I go through and downgrade some of the optional components I will probably be able to get that price but as I customer I really can't be bothered!

Just my 10p worth :)

The computer keeps getting delayed with the notice coming on the day it is supposed to ship. :td:

I've ordered several Dell XPS desktops but hadn't ordered a laptop from them before. Since I'd been fairly lucky (even with the last XPS shipping a week out from the original estimated date, it wasn't a critical issue so that was fine).

Three weeks ago, I ordered an Inspiron E1505. The original ship date was set to 9/15, so I called up and explained I needed it by 9/19. They said no problem, they'd change it to overnight shipping.

They called again on 9/5 and said, "No problem, it'll be shipped on 9/12 now, so you'll have it in plenty of time!" The ship date of 9/15 on the order tracking never changed, but that didn't bother me as I had previously had good experiences like so many other folks have mentioned.

Yesterday morning, I get an automated call telling me my new ship date is 9/22. I contact them again and point out my laptop was in the "boxing" stage of their process and had been for the past two days (can you tell I've been checking it anxiously?)...did they run out of boxes? They offered to send it wherever in the world I would need it since I'm traveling or I could cancel the order, but there was no way it could ship prior to 9/22.

I canceled the order, went to a local computer shop and bought a laptop. This was pretty disappointing to me as I did feel, as the OP did, that somewhere, someone had been pulling my chain, after several assurances that I'd get the order by 9/19. :( Made me sad.

I've ordered several Dell XPS desktops but hadn't ordered a laptop from them before. Since I'd been fairly lucky (even with the last XPS shipping a week out from the original estimated date, it wasn't a critical issue so that was fine).

Three weeks ago, I ordered an Inspiron E1505. The original ship date was set to 9/15, so I called up and explained I needed it by 9/19. They said no problem, they'd change it to overnight shipping.

They called again on 9/5 and said, "No problem, it'll be shipped on 9/12 now, so you'll have it in plenty of time!" The ship date of 9/15 on the order tracking never changed, but that didn't bother me as I had previously had good experiences like so many other folks have mentioned.

Yesterday morning, I get an automated call telling me my new ship date is 9/22. I contact them again and point out my laptop was in the "boxing" stage of their process and had been for the past two days (can you tell I've been checking it anxiously?)...did they run out of boxes? They offered to send it wherever in the world I would need it since I'm traveling or I could cancel the order, but there was no way it could ship prior to 9/22.

I canceled the order, went to a local computer shop and bought a laptop. This was pretty disappointing to me as I did feel, as the OP did, that somewhere, someone had been pulling my chain, after several assurances that I'd get the order by 9/19. :( Made me sad.

I wonder if there is a "catch" in their ordering process? Did you make any changes to the standard configuration? Add anything "weird"?

I wasn't aware that Dell ships AMD system until today officially.

The Dimension E521 and C521, offers AMD Sempron/Athlon processor with nVidia NF430 core logic.

I didn't know that - I guess it explains the reason they haven't shown up yet!