Dell, ASP .NET, and programmer fun.
Apparently, Dell uses an ASP .NET application written in C# for at least part of their site. I'm in the process of ordering a new laptop--nothing fancy, just something to do some light-weight at-home development, and play Baldur's Gate on. I called Dell to order a dock station for my new laptop, spent some with the customer service rep (she was very helpful, but the language barrier made it a lot harder to find what I needed than I really think it had to be), and then tried to check on my account status using the web site. Well, the site wouldn't let me log in, and exposed the error to me, along with a very helpful stack trace.
So, I wrote what I hope will be a helpful email to the webmaster explaining how the error occurred, copied him on the stack trace, and explained how to prevent the end-user (myself) from ever seeing an unhandled error. In my own ASP .NET applications, I almost always create a routine in Application_OnError to send myself an email with any unhandled exceptoins. I also create a custom errors page which I'll redirect the user to, apologizing for the error, explaining that I've been notified of it, and that we're going to get it fixed as soon as possible. What other unhandled error strategies do you use? As an aside, I found it kind of fun to be “in the know“ on what was happening. Probably the programming advice I gave was going to be implemented anyway--or some variant thereof. Still, I got my geeky kicks out of it.
The overall customer service experience was good. I'm ordering an inspiron, but I really like the latitude docking station and monitor stand. The latitude docking station is incompatible with the inpiron, and I couldn't find a similar bundle for the inspiron (hint, hint, to those Dell guys.) After we broke through the language barrier, the customer service rep was a champ. She really went the extra mile. She went to her supervisor and got them to break a monitor stand out of the latitude bundle and send it to me with the docking station I had picked out for the inspiron.
That attitude in customer service really has a huge impact. Even though my initial experience was frustrating, and even though their site broke, my general feeling about this experience with them is very positive.
Dude, I'm getting a Dell! (Okay, that last was extremely cheesy, but what can I say?)