You know the commercial where the dad calls Dell about getting his daughter a PC and then whirls around town in his Barcalounger while in his pajamas? As I found out, that’s pretty much bullshit. If only things were that simple with Dell.

My trip down Dell Hell Lane started out with a trip to their website to buy a flat-screen monitor for my folks. I pictured myself taking my own little trip around town in my PJs with a smug look on my face as I whizzed by unhappy Christmas shoppers.

Unfortunately what actually transpired was nothing like that. If I were to sum up my experience, it could have been something like this: Barcalounger takes off, after going on and endless number of dead end streets, I get deposited on some train tracks and then I get run over by train. Let me explain.

I went to Dell’s website, added the monitor to my shopping cart and clicked the button to purchase what was in my cart. I get prompted with a pop-up window (usability warning 1) that wants me sign in {{sigh}} (usability warning 2).

This is to be expected, but seriously? How many passwords and accounts are consumers going to have in the world, one for every store? I wish every retailer that does business on the web would take a page out of American Eagle’s book. Their system allows you to buy stuff from them without being nagged about creating an account.

I go through the garbage motions of making an account to buy one monitor and then go through the entire process again (usability warning 3); go to main page, navigate to monitor page, add to cart, sign in, proceed to check out. Here is where the Barcalounger takes the first of many dead end turns.

The next page that I’m presented with reads “You have no items in your cart.” WTF? I just added it to my stinking cart. Repeat process. Same result. I think for a second that perhaps Dell’s website doesn’t like Apple’s Safari browser, so I crack open Firefox and give it a try. Same thing. Is this for real?

I imagine that most of Dell’s sales come from their website and for it to be failing in a consistent manner means hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars in lost sales. I imagine people getting fired left and right for this and look to see if there is some other way that I can order the monitor.

As if my prayers were answered (I didn’t really pray, unless you consider the stream of curses that came out of my mouth a prayer to some dark god) I saw the following text: Need Help? Chat with a Product Advisor from 7am to 10pm. I looked at the clock, 9:30 PM. Hrrrmmmm, perhaps my Barcalounger and I were going to get off “Dear God Help Me Street” and get to “Why Worry Lane” after all.

Nope. I clicked on the link and another popup window (usability warning 4) came up that reads “Get live answers from a Dell Product Advisor.” Underneath that there is a drop down box with some answers but no submit button or anything. I look beyond the dropdown box and I see this:

“Thank you for your interest in Dell Chat. All product advisors are currently assisting other customers and have become temporarily unavailable. Please close this window and check back in a few minutes to see if an Advisor has become available. Product advisors are available from 7am to 10pm…blah blah blah.”

Are you frackin’ kidding me? Let’s see how many usability warnings/atrocities they’ve managed to rack up here.

• If all of the people are busy and I’m in between the available times then put me in a queue like thousands of other customers that are using IM to connect with their customers. DO NOT tell me to check back. I won’t and most people won’t either.

• If I’m outside the available times, then DON’T SHOW THE LINK AT ALL.

• 7am to 10pm. PST, MST, CST, EST, UTC, R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to me. What time zone are we talking about, geniuses?

3 warnings. Not bad. We’re up to 6.

So I pick up the phone. Dial the number and somehow I don’t get a nice lady like in the commercial. I get one of those stupid machines that makes you talk to it (usability warning numero 7). Please stop making us embarrass ourselves by talking to a recording.

Going through the automated menu system, I finally think that I’m making progress. Unfortunately, I’m wrong yet again. My poor Barcalounger and I are deposited on the train tracks with a train barreling towards me.

After I hear a couple of rings, I get a recording that basically says that Dell Sales are closed from starting at 10PM CST (Central Standard Time not Carlos Slacking Time). WTF!?, Dell actually closes and at 9 PM PST during holiday season to boot?! Why make me talk to a machine if no one is going to answer later? Just tell me up front; “Dell Sales is closed at this time.” I should mention that this is the only way that I figured out that the times on their website actually mean Central Time. If I had not made that call, I might not have ever figured it out. Let’s double-ding them for that. That’s a terrible rookie mistake for a big operation like Dell.

That makes 9 usability warnings.

Nine is way too many times to be disappointing your customers. Most customers would have given up by number 4. If there is a company that desperately needs to read Steve Krugs’ Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability it’s definitely Dell.

Oh well, maybe I’ll just get ’em a Mac instead. At least they are open 24 hours.