Have you ever found yourself at the end of the line of some horrible customer service? Your electrician says he’ll be down Monday, he doesn’t show – you feel like cutting his throat. Hair dryer breaks down 2 days after you bought it, but the store has a no refund policy. Blockbuster won’t let those overdue rates slide when you want to rent Britney and Kevin: Chaotic.

For Pat Dori, enough was enough. After buying a laptop from Dell, it broke down. Pat was understandably aggravated. He called Dell, but found no answer. So Pat called again. And again. The hours passed, and then days. Days turned into weeks, before weeks found himself giving birth to months. 5 months in fact. Yes, 19 phone calls and 5 months later, Mr Dori still had no answer.

Who the hell is running Dell these days? 5 months, 19 phone calls and you can’t get a response? No call back, no email, not even a “I’m sorry but Dell would rather be finding new ways to screw our consumers over then attend to your calls.”

Having received more abuse then a controller at a Super Smash Brothers tournament, Pat decided he wanted to get even. Not the crazy even – throwing his burning laptop through their offices, or kidnapping the CEO’s wife, oh no, Pat was taking the smart option.

He decided to sue Dell for failing to adequately address the problem.

At first, it does seem ludicrous. Sure, we can all see Pat is in the right, but how was he going to prove that to a judge, pitched against Dell’s high priced lawyers? By bending the rules. When one is being sued, one receives court papers, telling them why they are being sued and when to appear at the courthouse.

Herein lies the beauty of Pat’s plan. He didn’t send the papers to Dell’s headquarters in Texas, he delivered them to a Dell shopping kiosk at his local mall, most probably to some attendant who thought nothing of it and threw the papers out before even reading them.

Of course, nobody from Dell turned up on the date, so Pat won a default $3000 judgement. He also obtained a ruling allowing bailiffs to close the kiosk and seize items if his $3000 was not paid. Finally, Dell got wind of Pat Dori and settled the case out of court for undisclosed terms (ie: paid Pat a lot of money to shut up).

Mr Dori thinks “any regular person can do this,” as long as “you have the law on your side.” For anyone wanting to do their own ‘Dori’, Pat offers this advice. “Get their money first,” which will invariably be followed by “getting their attention.”

Nicely played Mr Dori.

- Aaron Kleemann