*Alienware/Dell - Warranty Discussion Thread (Questions Only)*

How good exactly are the Dell techs on figuring out what the problem with a system might be?

I'm not a computer guru like uh, well, some of you, and I can't figure it out at all, but the symptoms are getting to me really bad now so I'm finally going to call them up. I was worried I might need to know what it is that needs fixing before they could do anything, and I certainly don't want them to mess with parts that are fine.

Also, can Dell replace single keyboard keys? I keep reattaching them but a certain 3 keys keep falling off.

 

I don't think so, but it should be covered if you ask to replace the entire keyboard. 3 keys just falling off is really not acceptable.

 

Ahhh, thanks! The computer's two years old but still well within warranty. I had been ignoring it for now because I was more concerned at why it was slowing down during decade old games.

 

I was offered a refurb replacement for my current system. They said though, they couldn't find a system of my equivalent spec. Are they gonna Frankenstein an existing m17xr3, or will I get a new m17xr4?

Yeah good luck with that. They came and replaced every single broken part in my case. No replacement for me

 

If I did partially melt something, how do I check that?

My computer shut off a few times due to overheating a while ago (without the cooler, in class), and now that I'm checking it the cores are all hitting 90 degrees whenever I play Warcraft III (super old, I know), and I'm kicking myself for delaying checking until finals were over and I had more time.

Edit: Scratch that, 97 and probably higher before I got the utility.

 

Have you ever cleaned out the fans/heatsinks? - over time they will get clogged with dust and debris and may well be the cause of your high temps. It's unlikely to "partially" melt something - it either still works or it doesnt. I would strongly advise you have a good clean, maybe even a repaste if temps are still abnormally high.

You may also find it beneficial to list your system specification either on your post or by editing your NBR signature in your profile. That way, we can all see what you have and can help diagnose any possible issues you may have.

 

I applied for a warranty extension and got a phone call today, they quoted me £175 including VAT for a 1 year extension. Is this about right? Or will I be paying too much?

Alienware M17x R3 with pretty much basic configuration.

 

Not sure if thats in line or not. If you want to send me a PM with your contact details (email/phone number) I can get my rep to contact you - he does good deals on AW stuff so he might be able to help out with extended warranty too....

 

Thanks. I have PM'd you.

 

Received and replied - hope he can help you shave a bit off that price...

 

I recently bought an m14x r2 for around $1200. It has i7, 8GB Ram, 500+64GB drive, 2GB GT 650M, 900p screen. It comes with the 1 year basic warranty. I called in to ask how much a 1 year extended warranty would cost, and the dell rep said $199. I ws wondering whether this is worth upgrading? I read somewhere that most laptop failures occur within the first year anyway. He also said that the price for the extended warranty would increase the longer I wait.

 

I never purchased it but if you can afford it, and you keep your laptops longer than a year, then YES its worth it. The reason I never buy them is because I end up selling my laptops every year to get the latest/greatest.

 

Yeah I've recently started doing that as well lol. But I really love this laptop and I think I might just hold onto it for at least 3 years. Do you know if it's possible to bargain with dell reps and possibly have them reduce the price of the warranty?

 

Yeah, you can haggle. They also will sometimes offer discounts to renew around the time it's about up.

 

You own a laptop with a 3 year warranty it has an out of date GPU in it and you still have 2 years left on your warranty. If you purchase a GPU from DeLL and have their technician install the new gpu, will that new GPU be now covered in your existing warranty ( excluding its own 1 year warranty on the GPU ).

 

I am not sure. I do know that if you buy the upgraded warranty and your GPU stops working for whatever reason during the warranty period, they will fix it by either putting in the same GPU or a better one (if three years have passed its unlikely they will have an old GPU hanging around, so they will put in a modern once that is about the same price as the one you paid for)

 

My thread seemed to be ignored by Alienware reps in the M17x subforum, so I thought I'd post here.

It started 2 months ago with a failing sleep issue. I would put my laptop to sleep, and it wouldn't wake up, causing me to force reboot. It took a week for a tech to come replace that mobo + gfx, and that resulted in a massive slowdown of the entire computer (idk how, even the BIOS was lagging hard). Not to mention he stripped the screw holes in my casing for the hard drives. Anyway, it took Dell another week to send me a box to get the depot to send me a box to send in my laptop for repairs, and it took another week to get it back. When they sent it back, the sent it back with a burned out 6990m. Needless to say, they sent me a refurb M17xR3 with a gtx 580m, but with a 3d vision LCD, so I lost my switchable graphics capability (which I absolutely need, since I am a student on the go and use iGPU extensively). In addition, sleep/hibernate STILL didn't work on the refurb system, on the orignal factory image. Anyway, somehow, they guy couldn't understand how switchable graphics doesn't work with the 120hz LCD even after explaining it to him numerous times about the eDP connector vs the LVDS connector, but after several phone calls over the duration of another week, he agreed to send a replacement 60hz LCD to get my switchable graphics back. However, I declined because I was out of town for the next two weeks. On the plane ride, my laptop just suddenly died and got a 1 beep error on boot, indicated motherboard went bad. So for 2 weeks, I had no laptop (not dells fault though, nothing they could do about that). When I got back, it took a week just to get them to call me back to setup an appointment to replace the motherboard and LCD. The tech was supposed to come yesterday, but he never called and never showed up. I tried calling back the guy in charge today, but he was out and the guy taking over for him didn't help me much. Needless to say, I'm furious at this whole runaround game. I will try one more time to call tomorrow and set things straight. If the end outcome isn't how I see fit, this is going to the BBB. If I was in school, I would have been screwed. I'm lucky all of this happened over the summer.

I don't want to keep dealing with R3s if I keep getting sleep issues. I've heard that A10 bios fixes the issues, but it breaks SATA III speeds. If I stay on A08, I lose sleep.

Wouldn't this warrant a m17xR4 replacement at this point?

Regardless, this is the first and last time I EVER buy a Dell product. This is beyond ridiculous.

 

I recently bought an Alienware m17x with the standard warranty it comes with... is it possible to upgrade that warranty into the Advanced one they sell? how much would they normally charge?

 

call a dell rep and ask. you can haggle the price a bit. And yes you can upgrade.

 

Hey guys, is it true that you can buy the warranties a year at a time and not all at once?

Sent from my SGH-T769 using Tapatalk 2

 

You can, but it will be a bit more expensive

 

I have an M14x which has been bought in the USA and later got the tag transferred to India.It has continuously been giving me troubles since a long time and I have contacted support 10 times now.Even now the laptop has been lying with Dell for the past 10 days.When i ask for a replacement system the Indian customer support tells me that it cannot be done.But now I am fed up of getting parts replaced so many times even after which the problem is not fixed.I am tired of waiting for so many days now.
So my question is "Can I go to USA customer support with my case since my lalptop has been originally purchased in the states"??

 

Hey I got my laptop on january 31st and I'm already having battery issues. I did some research and most people says their battery last for at least 2.5 or 3hours but mine drains out in 1hour with full charge. I tried switching off bluetooth, alienfx and changing profile to balance but its still drains fast. Dell replaced my screen on May, because microphone in mine was not working. So will they replace my battery too?

 

What do you think of this:

I was upgraded to an r2 after filing a complaint re: heat and SATA issues. I had been struggling with lags, very high temps, etc. since i bought it brand new 4 months previously. They finally agreed to the upgrade after I peppered every email and their FB page with fact-based details. By the time the r2 arrived, I was about 5.5 months into the original Advanced Care (1 year purchased at checkout). They said I would not get the full year warranty back, only the remaining 6 months or so would transfer to the r2. But the whole time I was struggling with the r1 is null and void IMO because AW is the party that sold a crappy design. Should I get at least a full year of the standard care with my r2 upgrade? I was OK with forfeiting half of the advanced care, but seems stingy to truncate everything.

I also had a very positive experience with the warranty service. The r2 needed some small tweaks and actually went from Maine-->Service-->back to Maine in around one week! The tech was a bit sloppy with how they handled it, but at least there was no new damage. They did not put my screeen cloth back in for shipping, and kinda just tossed my notes back in with zero comments. I did ask why I could not get on-site service, and just a generic "It should really come here for service" response. I guess if you read all the in-home horror stories, it might be better to just forget about it and send it in to be serviced. But then why are we paying for that tier of service?

Alas.

 

My one year basic warranty is set to expire in a couple of months. I am wondering if it is worth it to call Dell to extend the warranty for another year. Does any one know the price to extend it for 1 more year?

I didn't think I would need to extend it but recently realized that the tip of my power adapter is close to breaking off and Dell offered to replace it free of charge so I guess the warranty did come in handy.

Again: does anyone know how much it is to extend the warranty for one more year? Is it worth it? All opinions are welcome. Thanks!

 

The price depends on the platform and taxes on your area. I've always recommended the warranty extension because any part on the system is worth a lot more than the warranty is. If you need pricing information you can send an e-mail with your service tag and phone number and we'll send you the info ASAP. The address is [email protected]

 

Sorry to bother you, but I may want to acquire your advice for this warranty extension. I'll also email you.

Just for info to others, I had an m17x r3 bought in canada with 1 year warranty, went to Malaysia for 4 month right now and the gpu failed me. I went to malaysia dell website to contact tech support but they never recognized my express service code. I had to go to Dell international :

https://support.dell.com/support/to...onal_travel?c=ca&l=en&s=gen&~ck=mn&~ck=anavml

And find this country's phone number. Good thing is they only ask my service tag, transferred me to the specialist department, Alienware(and even gave me their contact no), chat for a bit and explained my situation and boom- tech tomorrow with my gpu replacement. Hopefully everything will went well.

@sunset rider
Inform the tech support before the technician comes about your battery problem. Just explain what's wrong and best not ask what you actually want replaced from them.

 

Hey all, I'm new to this forum, and am in need of help, so hopefully I'll be able to get some information. I am intending to buy an Alienware M17x from amazon.com which is labelled on the website as new and that it 'ships and sold from amazon.com'. However, I live in Singapore. I am thus concerned, is the product covered by any international warranty and whether it will be possible to extend it? This is because under Warranty & Support, only Amazon.com Return Policy is described and there is nothing on the Dell/Alienware warranty and coverage. Being a new user from Amazon as well, this is of major concern to me. Thanks for the help rendered in advance!

 

You will need a proof of purchase to "activate" the warranty as it will first be under Amazon's account. Once that's done, you will need to do an international warranty transfer to have it switched to your country.

Ownership-Tag transfer | Dell

 

Thank you Luis for the quick and helpful reply!

 

Sorry, another question which may sound silly. If as described above if I purchase the M17x from amazon.com, for how long will the warranty cover the product? Thank you once again!!

 

What sort of price can I expect on warranty extensions?
Is it true they are cheaper to extend if you are still within your initial warranty period?
Can they be negotiated over the phone?

Im based in the U.K.

 

Warranty extension price may vary from one model to another, and may also include a recertification fee if it's already OOW. You can check the specific price for your warranty extension here.

 

The trouble with that link is it requires me to already have a product (and a related product number) to look at the prices. I'm in the process of purchasing a system (well, ok, no I'm not - I'm in the process of speccing out a system for eventaul purchase!) and I'd like to know what it will cost me to extend the warranty of my projected system. Eventually, the system asks for my service tag - but I don't have a service tag, as I don't have the product yet. I'd still like to know what the additional warranty would cost before I buy, as this will affect my decisions on the initial warranty purchase. Is there a way to get the information for what warranty extension costs with no service tag?

 

It will cost significantly less for the warranty extension at the time of purchase. If you plan to get an extension to 2 or 3 years of coverage (which I recommend) it needs to be done when you order the system. I purchased 4 years of advanced warranty and it was one of the smartest moves I have ever made.

For example, to purchase a 3 year Advanced Protection Warranty with accidental damage coverage on a maxed out M18x R2 is $488.00 online at the time of purchase. It costs approximately that much to extend my M18x R1 warranty by 1 year for the same coverage.

 

Thank you for the reponse (and for the PM, Luis!) - that was what I was looking for! I very much appreciate the help!

 

Hi guys,
I am not sure if there are any post about this issues before(i searched about it and 0 results found).
I wonder if i have to do anything about the changing ownership or warranty region transfer with the 3 years Advanced Warranty. I called up the tech centre in here and they said they actually identify the Tag of the machine and nothing else before they do anything with it, i'm just afraid to get rejected if i needed the service and its pretty FAR to travel back the laptop back to america if anything goes bad.

Can u guys gimme some advice please?

Thansk

 

Let me get this straight. You bought the laptop while you were in the states, you are now living in Hong Kong and are wondering if you have an issue will you be able to get the computer fixed there?

 

na, some1 bought it for me while i am in hong kong

 

If the computer is in your name I don't see a problem at all with anything.

 

Hi, I just extended my M18x warranty. I was quoted the following prices (United Kingdom)

The price for the warranty :
1 year: 175.00
2 year: 350.00
3 year: 525.00

They also offered a 'weekly' special discount of 7%, which I haggled to 10%...
Atm it's an extra £360 for 3 extra years if selected at time of purchase..

 

is the reburbished warranty the same as the new one?

 

Can Alienware warranty be transferred to another country even thought that model is not sold officially in that country?

 

I am curious if I should be entitled to request a refurbished model m11x. I am currently running on an M11X R1. Here is a breakdown of my case:
- I had a hard drive replacement this past May.
- I had a technician come in because my charger was becoming faulty in July. It turned out that he had to replace the entire motherboard and give me a new charger.
- The previous technician sent another technician the next week to replace my missing-keyed keyboard.
- Probably because of the keyboard technician, the power button became odd and now my computer randomly turns on while in my bag. (The phone representative said that may have been related).
- Now, in this week, another technician will come and replace that power button.
- When I asked my phone representative today if this could all be related to the build quality of the machine, he said, "No. Parts just happen to turn bad. You have a warranty until April, so feel free to continue using it to replace those faulty parts."

I am not very pleased with this may issues over a five month span. Am I just overreacting? What else would it take between now and April (end of my warranty) to qualify?

 

From what i have read, to qualify for a replacement it should have been repaired for the same reason 3 times. Since your problems have been different each time, you wont qualify for a replacement.

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

 

Thank you for a quick response. I was under the impression from the forum posts about it that it was three of any repairs.

 

Hi I have a m17r1 with sli, I just got off the phone with Dell and they said they will be replacing my system with the m17xr4. This does not come with sli, do I accept it? I'm going to assume the performance of one new video card is better than the 2 I have now.

 

Most certainly. Go for it!

 

Can it be transferred twice? i mean to the third owner?

 

What were the conditions for this? If you read above, I was curious on the conditions for it.