M17x R4 - Not charging maybe?

Hi Guys,

New to forum and new to the Alienware world so please be gentle! And apologies for the long post but I'm kinda desperate!

I'm not exactly having a great time with Alienware at the moment, and it's kinda a long story. I ordered a laptop from Dell and it arrived DOA, so Dell customer service were great and we thrashed out a dell to upgrade me to an Alienware M17x R4, which I thought was great, I've always wanted an Alienware but could never afford one, to cut a long story short that arrived, and the laptop shell was damaged, it wouldn't charge when the laptop was turned off, and the alienfx lights would never work correctly until the laptop booted to the desktop few e-mails/phone calls and twitter messages they agreed to replace the laptop. Now this is where it get's a bit strange... the replacement laptop did the same thing! Bar the case being damaged anyways, so more phone calls later with tech support of try this, try that, wipe windows etc nothing worked. So they sent out a technician to replace the motherboard, that didn't fix the issue. More phone calls later tech support confirmed there was an issue and it would take a BIOS update to fix it with a 4 week ETA. Great I thought they are finally doing something about it. Needless to say that's not the case. So far the M17X R4 has had two BIOS updates (now A13) and it's still gone unsolved and I have onyl 146 days of warranty on a laptop that has never really worked from the start. The laptop will charge fine when windows is running, or its in standy, it just won't charge when it's turned off.

So my question is,
1) Does other people's M17X R4 do this? Is it actually designed not to charge when it's turned off? In which case I have nothing to really moan about it and it's a 'design-flaw'
2) I absolutely love my R4 and I'm not so keen on the R5 as it seem's like a step back in my opinion, so do you think they'll replace like-for-like or what they just replace with it with an R5?

Thanks in advance for any opinion/help/advice you guys may have!

 

Chances are you will get the refresh unless they can find a comparable R4 kicking around somewhere but at this point I doubt that will happen.

And mine def charges when the computer is off, not just when it is in Windows....I also find it pretty odd that you got 2 laptops with the EXACT same problems, are you sure they didn't just service it and send it back to you? Are the service tags the same? If they have already done a MB replacement and that didn't help at all then I think it is time to call this one DOA and move on. I would take a refresh , brand new, no refurbs and demand an extended warranty with the new one. You have more then earned it with 2 DOA or just as bad laptops at this point.

 

Hi Mogrules,

Thanks for getting back to me. It was two separate laptops as I had both for a few days before they sent someone back to collect the 1st DOA. I just find it completely strange, maybe it was the configuration, but then again I only have the base model M17X R4 with blu-ray and windows 8 added?

I think I will contact them a ring then as I've given them enough time to look into the issues and resolve it, as the last call I had with technical support was that they have replicated the issue, it's definitely a software issues and no amount of changing hardware will fix it (this was after the motherboard and PSU was changed)

Thanks for letting me know about that your laptop does charge when it's off so at least I know it's not a 'design-flaw'

 

It can't be software at all....the laptop is off so no amount of software is going to allow it to not charge while off unless it is a hardware design, but even if it was it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

 

Sorry about the issues that you have been having. Can you send us your service tag and address to [email protected]? I would like to review the case.