Dell Support nightmare

Ok,

You may have read my earlier thread on the palmrest issue on my Alienware 17, bought earlier this year.

Here's an update on this travesty of a repair, after three visits and despite requesting a different technician, the same character turned up today with a motherboard, a dvd drive and a palmrest which he eventually 'fitted' after pulling my 17 apart no less than three times.

The outcome? No keyboard lighting and no network connection! This guy has created more issues with every visit, and my patience has now reached its limit.
I declined any further repairs to the guy, and stated clearly that I am requesting a replacement unit, and immediately got onto Dell Support in Slovakia. I explained the sorry chain of events and stated my requirement for a replacement and was told that as I had bought from a Dell authorised reseller that I had to return the item to them, and they would have to then send it to Dell who would send them out a replacement.

They stated that this was procedure and were completely intransigent - despite the Dell appointed technician being wholly responsible for the state of the machine. I requested a call from a manager by close of business and surprise surprise - no phone call.

I am now in a position where I have a very expensive and quite useless ornament on the desk, what started of as a simple cosmetic issue that a retarded slug could have remedied has ended up a total nightmare; a shoddy and pathetic excuse for customer service which I find wholly unacceptable. I intend to contact Dell at Bracknell tomorrow and suggest that unless they supply me with a replacement unit I will have no alternative to seek a remedy through the court system, with all the expense that will incur.

You would have thought that Dell would have effectively trained subcontractors to work on equipment costing as much as these do, and as I see it this is quite simple. This is no longer a repair issue, it is their appointed agent acting on their behalf who has damaged my property. And unless they replace it, that is the basis I will be proceeding on

I hope that alienware-L_Porras sees this and does something to prevent this escalating into a messy court battle which I will without doubt win, together with the attendant negative publicity that will certainly be engendered......

To anyone thinking about buying one of these, save your money and buy a brick. It's more functional.

Dave

PS, if anyone here has contact details for a Customer Relations Manager at Dell UK please let me know, it will save me going through the wringer in the morning - thanks

 

had a similar issue but with my screen, the technician who was representing DELL from a subcontracted company didn't even know how to put the screws back after taking out my screen to replace it. He failed after 2 attempts at which point I went to the place I bought it and screamed at everyone to get a replacement unit. I told them THEY should deal with DELL not me the customer who paid an arm and a leg for a laptop with a screen that has a lot of light bleeding. Forget court, it will takes ages and not worth your time. Go to the store you bought it, speak to a manager, and tell them you understand the warranty from DELL but you bought the laptop from them as a amputated reseller to protect you in such cases of lousy support. This will cost them nothing as they WILL get a replacement unit from DELL but it would take time so they can just give you a replacement and keep you as a happy customer. That's what happened in my case

 

I have found the email address for the President of Dell EMEA and dropped him a line and I've also advised the telephone support bunch what I've done, the guys name and position and that I've dropped their names in for a bouquet for great customer service, I will go the court route, I've all the time in the world - to me this is not the warranty issue now, it's more than that. A person contracted by and acting as an agent for Dell has damaged my property and I am giving them an opportunity to effect remedy. If they choose not to be nice and do the right thing it will cost them money to defend the indefensible and they will lose. Chances are they will wait until 24 hours before court and offer to settle. I've dealt with such organisations professionally before and they try to take it to the wire. Its indisputable that the Dell tech has damaged the thing, and proveable, I have every email on file, every response. At the end of the day it will be cheaper for them to put their hands up, sort it out and regain some goodwill. They will pay for every hour a clerk works on the papers, every second the lawyer is in court and for every piece of correspondence sent. All over a 1500 quid laptop that one of their clowns has damaged.

 

Every bad story I've heard is of customers outside of the United States. I think Dell needs to start taking better care of their international customers, too. They should not favor one over the other. In a perfect world, we'd all get the same level of support and care, but we live in an imperfect world - it actually could not be more imperfect. I wish I could provide further support to you, but I don't think there's much anyone (on this forum) can do at this point. You need to keep bothering Dell until they give you a new system.

Good luck, Dave.

 

It isn't even just even just outside the US thing, it makes me wonder if any time and effort goes into screening who is doing their repair work. It seems like they just subcontract out to whatever monkey they can get to rip apart a computer and they don't have time or patience for it. The guy that they sent to do my repairs was in awe of the machine .... he had never seen one, which didn't inspire confidence right out of the gates and low and behold be broke it more times then I can count. But at least I got a new 17 out of it....

Now it is completely unrealistic to think that Alienware would have their own trained service techs in every city but I think they should be having training materials or at least a training system that they can ship out for these people to work and learn on vs just sending someone in blind to fix an issue they have no clue how to deal with or fix.

 

Quite honestly folks if I didn't have the typical British stiff upper lip I would be crying my eyes out, I have only now summoned up the courage to take a look at the thing and the imbecile has also damaged the replacement palmrest slightly by attempting to use a 2.5 x 8 screw where the hole is clearly marked 2.5 x 3; broken palmrest tabs on the carpet, and missing screws upon reassembly.

I have taken legal advice and it is a clear case of negligence by the service partner acting on behalf of Dell, and that establishes their liability. I would have no problem going to court and winning but hope that the President of Dell Europe will step in and do something so I don't have to go through all the hassle of filing papers etc. although it's a simple process in the UK.

Thanks for the support I am getting here guys and girls; it matters!!

Dave

 

Do not let Dell's contracted technicians remove the thermal grease on your CPU and heatsink. He that would apply paste on my cpu removed absolutely all thermal grease on my cpu and heatsink. He was very efficient used the screwdriver on my heatsink. The result was catastrophic(nightmare ), I called Dell and explained what the technician did with my Alienware 17, then I was provided a new heatsink I installed my self even with an approved warranty from Dell.

View attachment 116316

Having fixed the job by myself, the result was much better with the new heatsink and Liquid Ultra.

View attachment 116317

 

and I can't seem to land a job doing just this. I'm in the US though.

 

You really do have to wonder how these people are trained; you would expect that Dell would want so-called technicians who are (whilst employees of sub-contractors) 'The face of Dell' to be competent to a degree, at least to the point where they don't damage clients property, I'd be really interested to know what 'type training' the guy who has repeatedly butchered my machine has had!

Unless I get some sort of acceptable offer of direct resolution by Thursday this week I'll be hitting the 'print' button on the 'Letter Before Action' that I've already prepared...... Having read through other peoples horror stories on here and elsewhere it is pointless holding off from the inevitable, so I am afraid it will be the seven days notice of intention to proceed and then it is court proceedings time.

I don't mess about.

I don't dance to other peoples tunes, especially faceless monoliths, as a certain London Borough discovered when the claim I lodged for damage to my car (due to a potholed road - the Freedom of Information Act proved very helpful in establishing their negligence) was delayed; they tried hiding and procrastinating behind THEIR policies, timewasting, salami-slicing, brinksmanship etc, but curled up like beaten dogs when the letter before action arrived. Claim met in full.

I will go all the way with this, and win.

If anyone from Dell EMEA pops in here you may wish to convey this upline........

 

A long road of incompetent techs is what made me eventually get rid of my alienware laptops. I swore off dell entirely, and only came back to them recently with the laptop in my signature because they offered what I wanted and no one else did. So far, the business support seems to be much better, but I haven't had much cause to use it yet, though I guess that in and of itself says something about the quality of the business line as a whole as compared the rest of their portfolio, again as a whole. There are of course always exceptions on either side.

 

Just a few lines to update you on the current situation; having directly contacted the manager of Dell EMEA Consumer Customer Services by email last night, I received a reply early this morning.
It transpires that none of my requests for management contact had been passed on; within four hours of that first response I was told that he would be back in touch within two hours with a resolution, a reply was then received that he had discussed the matter with his manager and that it has been agreed that Dell Corp. will supply me with a new replacement machine!

The swap team have been notified and they will be in contact with me to outline the specification of the new machine and for me to approve this, and that once I approve, the new machine will be built, with a 2-4 week lead time.

The new machine will be delivered directly to me and after that the damaged laptop will be collected - so I will not have to remove my mSATA and SSD in a mad hurry.

Assuming that the machine is of the same or better spec then I will be pleased with the outcome; I just wish that the journey had not been littered with so many rocks and hard places over the past weeks as it has been exhausting, frustrating and utterly excruciating!

Once I get the spec of my new unit I'll post a comparison between old and new for your comments here; I just want to say thanks for the support and encouragement given me by folks on here; it has really helped me keep focussed.

One thing for sure; I will never let any technician lay their grubby paws on my kit again, Dell authorised or not!

I'm a self-fixer now! Having fitted my own cards and drives previously without causing so much as a fingerprint, it smashed me to bits to see the havoc the guy wreaked on my laptop - Never again!

So it's now a case of waiting for the spec, and as long as they don't try and do sillies, expecting the knock on the door with an unblemished new 17.

I don't know how much the baselines have changed since my current unit was built; 4700QM, 16gb Samsung RAM, GTX770M, 750GB 7200 HDD, maybe someone here can tell me what the current comparable builds are?

Anyway, at risk of repeating myself, thanks again for your advice and experiences here!

Dave

PS, can someone tell me what the standard 750gb 7200 drive that would have been supplied originally in my system would have been? Brand/Model/Etc? I suppose I could be utterly dishonest and send the unit back without a HDD but I'm far too honest!

 

They will likely tell you what system specifications you'll be receiving later in the process. This is how my replacements were.

The HDD's are Western Digital Black or HGST. You'll have to wait and see.

 

Thanks J.Dre;

I'll buy a 750gb WD Black to put in the return machine as it rings a bell in my slightly crumbled memory; I fitted a Seagate Hybrid drive in my machine as a secondary drive, that I had in my Precision for about 3 weeks prior to buying my 17 and sold the Precision with the 17's original drive, and my primary now is a Samsung Pro SSD, together with a 256gb mSATA which I will fit in the new machine. It's only fair that I return the damaged machine with the same size/type of HDD it had when I bought it.

I'd expect pretty well 'like for like' in terms of previous and current spec - a 4710MQ or if I'm lucky 4910MQ, plus whatever the current Nvidia offering is, GTX880 I think, with 1920x1080 res.
I don't expect to be massively better off performance-wise, but don't think I should be worse off if you see what mean!

We shall see.........

 

They may give you trouble about not returning the original specs.

 

That's what I thought J.Dre, hence my query about what the standard drive should be, when you mentioned WD Black it rung very loud bells in my head - I am quite certain that the stock drive was WD black and 750gb so wouldn't think it will be an issue that it is not the original drive, as it will be the same as supplied; the SSD and mSATA were both bought and fitted by me so my thinking is that by returning it with a stock drive with a fresh install of Win 7 Pro it will be as delivered, satisfying my personal ethics and neither better or worse than on arrival.........

 

Just a brief update - around midnight I received a personal reply from the President of Dell EMEA which would possibly account for the dramatic turn of events yesterday - I would prefer to think that it was more down to the Alienware staffer who helps members here, or that the support team decided to become more customer focused by their own volition ☺☺☺

 

I was really happy to receive the proposed spec. for the replacement laptop this morning; initially the screen offered was the 1600x900, which I queried and the revised spec is shown below.

Components
1 Alienware 17 Base
1 4th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4710MQ processor (6MB Cache, up to 3.5GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
1 17.3 inch (439.42 mm) 120Hz WLED FHD (1920 x 1080) TrueLife w/3D Bundle
1 16GB (4x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3L
1 1TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gb/s + 80GB mSATA Caching
1 Slot-Loading Dual Layer DVD Burner (9.5mm)
1 240W AC Adapter
1 8-cell Lithium Ion (86 wHr) Battery
1 UK 250V Power Cord
1 NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 880M graphics with 8GB total GDDR5
1 Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 @ 5GHz + Bluetooth 4.0
1 Intel 802.11n/ac Wireless and Bluetooth 4.0 driver
1 Internal UK/Irish (QWERTY) Keyboard
1 Resource DVD windows 8.1
1 Additional Software
1 Alienware 17 Silver Anodized Aluminum (For 3D LCD)
Software
1 Cyberlink Software for Windows 8 without media
1 Windows 8.1 (64Bit) English
1 Windows 8.1 (64Bit) English Resource DVD
1 Microsoft Office 2013 Software Image (Multi-Language)
Service
1 Standard Service - 1 year of Next Business Day coverage included with your PC
1 1 Year NBD with Premium Phone Support
1 No Accidental Damage Protection

I am pretty pleased, the 4710MQ I expect any difference to be marginal over the 4700 I presently have, but the GTX880M graphics should be an improvement over my current GTX770M, and although I have not see the True-Life screen with the 3d stuff, I would not expect the quality to be inferior to the standard 1920x1080 that is in my current rig - if anyone has seen/used both I would value your opinions!

So now it's just the waiting game, while the new system is built and shipped.

Best Regards

Dave

 

I'm glad everything is going as it should now. It's hard to get stuff done overseas and I'm truly happy that the EMEA support helped you as much as they could
I hope the new machine is good for you and it helps you on whatever you need it to do!

 

Not really, if you read around a bit on the forums here you will see many people have issues with it throttling down after reaching a certain temperature which in turn makes playing games almost impossible unless you are willing to flash a modded VBIOS to raise that threshold a bit. I would go for a 780M in SLI if I were you but that's just me