Poor and Pathetic Service with Dell/Alienware in the Middle East (UAE)

Hi Guys,

This post will share my experience with Dell Customer Service in Middle East. I stay in the UAE and I think the Customer Service for UAE and a few other Middle Eastern countries are the same.

Before that, I’d like to mention some history for this laptop

Specifications:
Model: m15x
I7 Q720
8GB 1333Mhz Ram
Geforce GTX 260M 1GB
500 GB HDD
15.6” 1600x900 LED display.

I got the laptop in a sweet deal so picked it up in April 2011 in the UAE and moved to India for education where I had the following repairs done:

1)Speakers had distorted/jarred. So got them replaced with Dell India
2)Touchpad replacement.
3)AC Charger had stopped charging laptop so new charger.
4)DVD-Rom (They were nice enough to give me a bluray drive)
5)AC Charger
6)Bluray drive(replaced with a DVDRW drive)
7)Motherboard and Fans

I move back to Dubai and one day I’m playing Hitman: Absolution that I got in Steam Summer Sale. Game doesn’t play beyond 5 minutes, laptop completely freezes. This same issue happened with COD: MW2, Warcraft III and Battle for Middle Earth 2 – lots of times. How sad is that? It crashes in WC3 which is like a decade old game. This laptop was the reason for messing up a LOT of our DotA matches. I had tried earlier to change drivers, windows and a lot of other stuff but none of it worked. This issue was there for certain games. And with Hitman, I got really ticked off and decided to do something about it finally so I called Dell and asked them for a replacement, they tell me that my case isn’t valid as I’ve done only ONE REPAIR earlier, which in their system is the last repair( Number 7 above). So I tell them I was in India and all of these repairs were done there, they tell me they’ll try to get repair history from Dell Technical Support India and get back to me, which doesn’t happen for a total of 4 weeks btw. But after calling them again and again the first whole week I was told to contact Dell Technical Support India myself, which I did and wasn’t successful.

Now tired of waiting from either of them, I contact the Consumer Rights Department here and I’m told I can’t do anything as I don’t have proof for the repairs done earlier and I should proceed with yet another repair. I agree and then contact dell and ask them to have the graphics card replaced. They contact the authorized service center (Key IT) and fix a date fast. The repair takes place, I get back home from work to have a look at the system and ALL GAMES ARE LAGGING (it wasn’t on stealth mode). So basically a failed repair. Now apart from this my DVDRW had died again and my spacebar wasn’t working. I contact dell and they were like the engineer/service center needs to follow up with them so I had to call them and ask them to take the laptop for inspection. I do that and I clearly mention to BOTH of them that I want a replacement not another 3 repairs. They don’t bother and proceed with repairs. I even had my complaint escalated for a replacement and it was rejected with the reason being –
“Our policy doesn’t have a system replaced if the purchase date has crossed 30 days” -_-

Means that in case your system has a problem and you have done 10 repairs, you have to keep on getting repairs till your warranty runs out. What kind of BS is that? Since they speak of repair records so much, I gave them records/proof of these:

1)Motherboard and Fans (two Parts)
2)Graphics card
3)Speakers (I had an email proving contact between me and dell)

Since they proceed with three more part changes, it becomes

4)Keyboard
5)Graphics Card
6)DVDRW

Six on records and still denied replacement, given pathetic excuses and service.

Their authorized service center(Redington) even misinformed me before all this started. Dell didn’t have a Toll Free number on their site, so I had called redington who asked me to drop the laptop there. I even confirm with the person on the phone telling them that this laptop has 2-3 Days business warranty and every time I had it repaired earlier, an engineer came to my house for it. Regardless I go drop it there so they can inspect it and confirm to dell about the freezing issue. They give me Dells Toll Free Number which isn’t working as it was a Saturday. I call dell the next day and (repairs, replacement, etc.) and I’m told by one exec that I shouldn’t have left my laptop at redington in the first place as I have business warranty -_-

Contact redington and get my laptop back only it is without the sleeve that I gave the laptop in and had put scratches on it. Brilliant. Waste the next day contacting and speaking to redington about it and they finally get me the sleeve on the third day.


So basically these issues were faced with Dell:

1)FAULTY PRODUCT – No product should be repaired these many times
2)Fail Records – They didn’t have repair history for most of the repairs
3)Misinformed Authorized Centers – Misleading me to have my laptop left there causing a waste of time and expenditure.
4)Lack of Coordination between Service centers and Dell Technical Support
5)No emails – Every single time I wanted even ONE email from them, I had to call them 3 times. Because they just don’t send emails. Even in India all my communications were via phone apart from one. So how can they expect me to show some proof if none of these execs send emails? It is a very sly thing to do, leaving the customer without any proof of contact. Apart from that when I reply to any of their “Test Mails” I have never gotten ANY replies. The only replies that I got in email from them was when I had filed a formal complaint. Why does a customer have to literally beg them to send them an email?
6)No response when tracking repair history – Dell Middle East and Dell India didn’t give me even one single repair record. Dell Middle East nicely sent an email to Dell Tech Support India, that was their “help” in tracking repair records for four weeks.
I even gave them intense help to track it – Told them about how this one time this engineer had replaced a part in my system and a friend’s dell xps and she had her records. I told them this repair took place on the same day, in the same house and by the same engineer and even gave them job numbers but nope, that isn’t given even an ounce of attention.
7)Pathetic Replacement Policy – So if a laptop is repaired 10 number of times in warranty, the customer doesn’t deserve replacement because it isn’t in the first 30 days? COME ON! That is ridiculous. Never buying from Dell/Alienware ever again, neither am I recommending anyone.

I was given three excuses most of the time before and after the rejection of replacement :
1)Laptop is three years old (I purchased it in April 2011 for which I have an invoice which I’ve mailed them 3 times)
2)The repair wasn’t in first 30 days.
3)The system is completely functional now(after they swapped three parts without my consent -_- hell yeah it should be completely functional) When these many repairs occur the customer should be given a choice to get a replacement or repair, not force it on him.

I know for a fact that Samsung has WAY better service and policies than these guys even though they might not have better PCs/Laptops. And I’d choose better service over pathetic crap like that. Actually I’m not even going to bother getting a gaming laptop, my next system will be definitely a Desktop.

My older Dell lasted four years till the gfx card died and started giving me issues. This laptop hasn’t made even one year without getting a repair. AWESOME! Hard earned money goes poof. Believe me if you don’t want to be wasting hours and hours trying to deal with these guys, get a system from another company. At least if you’re in the middle east. I have no idea how functional their service in Europe/US and other territories is.

 

Sent you a PM on this matter.

 

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We've had kind of a gut full of threads like this lately. I'm going to close down this thread now that it's off your chest. We don't need any comments in response. It's a troll magnet to say the least. I am starting to wish we would make customer complaint threads like this against forum rules and just ban them altogether. This is a technology forum, not an unhappy consumer venting platform. Sometimes things turn out well. Sometimes they don't. Everything in life is like that.