I purchased a Dell laptop online in 2008. No complaints about the product. I purchased it using my name as the person to be billed, my credit card (my money), with my name on it. Unwisely as it turned out, I put my husband's name for it to be shipped to, as it was a present for him. Immediately Dell's software made the whole account over to him. I tried to have this corrected and was told they couldn't or wouldn't. More recently I bought a desktop online from them. I never logged in, my computer said "hello Anne" up in the corner, and I proceeded to fill in my name everywhere, to be shipped to me, using my credit card etc. again. When it arrived the invoice had his name all over it, not mine. Apparently their system recognized the address and email and immediately assigned it to this old account, now in his name, and nowhere on the online screens did it suggest to me it was doing this. Their response: "you should have known". When I pointed out it appeared that he was buying things using my credit card, their response was: "husbands do".
To me it defies logic that the person who is paying the bill and whose name is on the credit card should not be the holder of the account. It also defies logic that their system apparently will accept payment from a credit card with a different name to the person holding the account. Surely at some point their software should have asked me if I was Ramesh (the husband in question), and offered me the chance to register as myself. And surely it should have provoked a question about my name on a credit card paying for something to be ordered by my husband.
Dell assures me that they have me listed in their system as the owner of the computer, though they also encouraged me to file a "transfer of ownership" form online, which I did. But I am absolutely certain that that means nothing legally, and if I ever had to prove my ownership here, all I have is an invoice with his name all over it. They declined to replace that by the way.
As a final note I must say, I have spent a lifetime trying to be more than someone's wife, someone's daughter, someone's mother, and to be demoted yet again by unrefined and poorly designed software run by a company that couldn't give a damn, is infuriating and insulting. I am a separate individual, with my own funds, my own credit, and my own existence. Whether or not I still reside with my husband is neither here nor there. I could have had it shipped to Jack Spratt at this address, and apparently Dell would have just assigned him the computer, and billed me and my credit card.
In the end the offered me a $100.00 rebate which I was very reluctant to accept. I wanted to just return the order and tell them to go to hell, but since my complaint was not technical, they had no parameters to fit it, and were going to penalise me to the tune of $50.00, or possibly $75.00. So in the end I took the rebate, but declined the other offer of a $150.00 coupon, and the opportunity to set up a personal account over the phone. I shall NEVER use them again.
No economic or physical consequences have arisen from this. The feeling of being diminshed and demeaned yet again is hard to assess, and the question of proof of ownership is just hanging in the air.
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