The following morning I waited for the phone call but it didn't arrive.

I emailed Dell using their website and received an automatic response saying that Dell would get back to me within 24 hours. 

They didn't.

In fact I sent 3 or 4 emails. All of them prompted an automatic response saying that they would get back to me in 24 hours.

Guess what? They didn't.

I called 8 - 10 times. 4 of these calls involved me going through the automated telephone system and being held in a queue for 45 minutes - that's a total of 3 hours. 

It became very clear that the only way Dell would let me talk to a real person was when they thought I was going to spend money with them. The moment it became clear I wanted to complain I was put through to the automated telephone system, often without any warning or explanation.

On 2 occasions just asking not to be put through to the automated telephone system resulted in me being through to the automated telephone system. On the second occasion I called back to complain and was spoken to in such a rude way that I felt the only option I had was to resort to bad publicity. Click here for how I used email