Dell Customer Support: at least they mean well.

Twice in the past two months my family has actually had to use Dell's customer support.

The first was for my HDTV -- the one I had was broken. It was a painless procedure; they verified my warranty was valid, overnighted me a replacement HDTV, and let me ship the old one back in the same box. Even was able to get DHL to pick up the heavy-ass box at my doorstep.

Good deal!

My mother recently ordered her two grandchildren mp3 players from Dell -- they were those new Creative Zen Stone, the Plus version. The mp3 players came to our house, first, then she mailed them off to the grandchildren with a birthday card, etc. However, after that, my mom decided to get them a Napster subscription so their mother, my sister, wouldn't go broke buying them music.

Except that the Stone mp3 players don't support subscription music.

So she rings up Napster and asks; they try to sell her on the pay-per-mp3 model. Then she rings up Dell, explains her situation; says she needs some MP3 players that support Napster's subscription music, that she needs them overnighted to the children so they arrive by their birthdays, and that she needs to return the other Mp3 players -- which are now located in Texas, a million miles away.

Dell is surprisingly helpful! The shipping is free; they'll overnight it to my sister to save time, and they even schedule a pick-up with UPS so that all my sister has to do is give the old mp3 players (in the box, with all accessories included) to some dude in a brown shorts when he comes to the door, and all will be well.

Well, unfortunately it didn't work out that way. The package arrived here, instead of in Texas (so now it'll get there late) and my dopey sister didn't have the packages ready to be picked up by the UPS guy.

Compared to what I've heard about Dell support, it was a pretty good experience.