Alienware's superb warranty and excellent customer service - Details inside - Post your experiences

If there's one thing I've taken from my alienware experience its that their support is to die for.
I just got done dealing with RAZER's support because their new Sabertooth controller, it has a fatal weakness in its design. That little detachable cable, can snap clean off so easily. So I deal with several emails with razer trying to get them to replace it, after a while they said they will send a part... I wait almost a week and it finally gets here...
My First response "God if this was alienware it would have been fixed the day after."
Because that's literally what Alienware does. They are so freaking quick to pull the trigger on support replacement and trying to make sure a customer is happy with their products.

Just to prove this point. I've owned 4 alienware systems 1 keyboard, 1 headset. I'm going to focus on my 3rd system, my m14x R2. I rough handle my laptops pretty good, its held up to my abusive nature very very well... But what hasn't is the mechanical hard drives. I've broken 3 mechanical hard drives in this laptop... So you know what I did? Call alienware, say the drive failed 40minutes later a new hard drive replacement is on the truck via FEDEX to my place of residency. After the 3th hard drive failture, alienware has pretty much figured out that its because I'm man handling the laptop. So instead of voiding my warranty or anything like that, they tell me "Give us just a minute I'm going to discuss with my supervisor about the frequent drive failures." Mind you this is someone here In the states on the phone, not your "cant speak English worth a dam outsourced agent." She comes back and I'm expecting her to tell me that I'll have to pay for a replacement. What do they do instead? "We have a solution for you, We can offer you a 512GB SSD since you're having troubles with the mechanical hard drives, they are more durable." WAIT WHAT?! My jaw hit the floor for a second. They want to offer me a 400$ piece of hardware, even though they knew I've caused the past 3 hard drive failures? The agent asks me "We know its a much smaller capacity than your 750gig drive, we wanted to make sure that is ok with you, since you wanted the 750 drive in the original system" I'm like "no no no... That's totally fine, i'll definatelly take the SSD" YEAH LIKE IM GOING TO REJECT AN OFFER LIKE THAT! "I'll definitely take the SSD offer, that sound really good for me" I'm speaking back into the phone trying to not sound like I hit the jackpot in the vegas lottery.
Then they absolutely insisted that before I got off the phone that I talked with the supervisor because apparently they've noticed I've had a few systems and they wanted to know how my experience with alienware has been over the years. So I talk with the supervisor.
And every replacement part that I've gotten from Alienware has been nextday shipping all expenses paid replacement. Not even an RMA process, just one call, a few diagnositics, and a brand part is at my door 48hours later.

Alienware, I love you warranty support but damn you're reinforcing my bad behavior. >.>





hopefully I don't get any of my warranties voided for this...

 

And why are you here to defend Stevie in every thread? He is pretty good to draw attention to himself with the countless essay like posts he complains about his minor problem, which could even have been resolved a long time ago.

Since basically everyone know about him and his situation over at this forum, why not use his example?

I was totally on his side, but it changed when he continued to complain even after he got a full refund. Greedy gets greedier, fat get fatter, rich get richer etc etc

Bah, I`m done with this. Enough wasted energy.

 

Why are Steve's issues present in so many threads? This should be considered spam. I entered this thread expecting to read something good. Lo and behold, Steve's issues are the topic of discussion.

 

You misconstrue defending Stevie for just trying to get that whole debacle to end. That's it. Stevie is a big boy and can make his own decisions. I'm saying you've said your piece, and you keep saying it.

I'm trying to keep the peace here. Like I said, let it go. If you think he feels he needs to have the last word, be the bigger man and let him have it. At the end of the day, this will not affect anyone's lives but his own.

 

No problem. Done with him now

Continue thread please. Is it anyone from Europe that can testify they got good Alienware service when problems occured? Anyone who got replacements for a broken notebook without hassle?

 

Why don't you start a new thread to find out instead of wasting your pent up anger and energy talking about me? - that way you would get an impartial picture, because as of right now, in this thread, we do not know if it is just US residents posting and that could skew the results and give a false perception. Just a thought for you if you really wanted to find out.....

I find it quite amusing, that even after the above statement posted earlier, 'some people' still find it necessary to act like children. Obviously nothing better to do, I guess....

I suggest you take that up with the thread starter. I think you will find that he was the one who brought my 'issues' over here - done very 'tongue-in-cheek' in his opening post - not me (see below). Also, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not 'discussing' my problems here, you are.

 

Heh, why do you think I asked if any europeans had any good experiences with Alienware support?

 

Yes. And I responded to you with a method that would separate US & Canada as opposed to EMEA so you could get an even more accurate perception of Dell/Alienware as a 'global' picture - what's wrong with that? - I think someone even asked earlier if the poll could be amended to reflect that.....

Why don't you try reading further back....it's not hard to do.

 

Meh, I don`t have trouble going through a thread to find my answers.

The Poll could be different though

 

Lets skip the sniping and get back to the positives.

@ FranBunnyFFXII

That's a pretty great story. I'm really really surprised that they offered you such an upgrade, but, congratulations on it! They sure have treated you well. Customer for life on stories like that.

 

Yes, I liked that story, too.

 

Caladdon,
Looks a good poll, I'm new to Alienware ... in fact I'm expecting delivery of my Laptop sometime during this week. I've purchased the extended warranty (only 3 years for us in the UK).
So what I was wondering was, could you refine the poll to be able to split by Region? North America / Europe etc?
I think it's an excellent idea to poll the experiences people have had ... but as extra research and something that might help people (and the Dell organisation) in deciding about buying the extended warranty should be to include the region they've dealt with.
Anything to keep the regions competitive and "on their game".

As I say, I'm new to the forum and never owned an Alienware before so I'm coming from this at a purely neutral perspective with no ax to grind / no grudges.

Thanks.

I think this is the post Stevie is talking about Cloudfire.

 

"I had excellent service and I live in US"
"I had excellent service and I live in Europe"
"I had excellent service and I live in Asia/Australia"

"I had really bad service and I live in US"
"I had really bad service and I live in Europe"
"I had really bad service and I live in Asia/Australia"

 

Why don't you just start a new thread as I suggested, instead of having a poll with a million options - that will most likely confuse a lot of people.

 

hi

I've read a few of these topics now and tbh the 'quality of service' comes down to one thing, well 3 Location, Location, Location oh have how much you shout or spend

If the poll was changed to show fantastic, average and poor service for say USA, Europe and say Asia, i think it would show a better reflection of how great the warranty is

I have a M14x R2 (Jan 2013) it has the usual issues - chirping dvd rom, and slight odd alignment of the lid to case, nowt major - a friend I have from doing work in a University bought his the week after i did, (we used the Jan sale to buy from, I went cheap route) he spent stupid money of the fastest i7 and it over heats and shuts down if he plays games on it!!! He is on speed dial with service and still waiting for a solution - last i heard they wanted him to re-paste the chip..... which is shocking for a 6 month old laptop - but i'm not sure how much he is kicking off so perhaps he's not shouting loud enough for service to sort a solution

Then i read posts from people saying i had a new ssd delivered next working day and installed, which is fantastic news, but i distract from this post, so back to my point if we want to say how great or how poor a product is, either do a separate post for each area, or change the poll to show more locations? Then this would show how great or poor the service/warranty is as a true global picture, not some 30 people saying it?

Before people have a moan about my post, a bit of background on me I am an IT manager for a company and run 2 offices with servers and pcs, all are which are dell - as their business warranty is the best full stop. I bought my AW via my works so have a business warranty and when i reported my faults they where happy to send out a replacement there and then no questions asked - but my account manager did say my faults where minor and better the devil you know - but I spent stupid money with him last year updating the office, got more blade servers than he has my MD reckons, so perhaps that's why i got the quick response

This forum is a great forum, and tbh on a hole gives a fair hearing to posts.

-H

 

I just made a new thread to hopefully make a better understanding about the service Alienware offer. I hope you dont mind thread starter.

I dont want to hijack this thread but this thread had too much discussion and the thread title was kinda misleading (already calling it superb).

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/726046-alienware-warranty-satisfaction-thread-please-rate-share.html

 

Wont a global combined poll skew things? - I guess not, after looking again.

 

This thread was intentionally designed to be aimed towards positive stories and feedback concerning the service as the forums tend to be complaining grounds rather than those of compliment.

 

Oh the irony.

 

Had my M17xR3 replaced by M18xR2 both in my sig.

Had some headaches during the repair process of R3 but when they offered an exchange, it went smoothly.

I still have minor problem though, there is something like a mess behind the screen. Doesn't look like dead pixels.



Dell is sending a tech to replace the screen anyway so its not a deal breaker considering the great replacement they gave me

 

That is sure a mess, But the exchange is killer I would run in to a external monitor if I had too!

 

I have had my share of experiences with Dell from bad, good, great and bad again. to make it short, only the states get good offers, discounts, cheaper configurations and customer/tech supports, period.

 

This isn't true at all. I'm from the States and my experience has been far from "good."

I'll agree in that the States, from reading this forum for the past few weeks, the consensus would seem that the US does, more often than not, get the better deal. But you can't just say "period" and make it a fact.The "fact" is, we'll never know who gets better service, regardless of how many threads are made.

 

Well, looking at the results of Cloudfire's thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ty-satisfaction-thread-please-rate-share.html it looks like the majority of US customers enjoy good service over bad, at a ratio of 3.5:1 in favour of good service. The rest of the vote indicates a 50/50 split, indicating overall, that generally speaking, there are more happy US customers than other regions.

Still, not many voters....but that's how it looks from that small cross-section - it's even worse if you look at Australia/Asia, where 3 people out of four report bad service.....

I think that is pretty indicative of the 'state of play'.

 

Count me in as being from the UK and being quite happy will DELL's services. Their customer support staff is superb and I would recommend Dell to anyone.

 

1 post & he posts here. Sounds awfully SUS to me "Camelion". This whole thread is a joke....

 

I see there are some people who will never be satisfied, but I guess that's just the reality we live in.
There are options available to show your negative experiences therefore I completely disagree that this thread is a joke.
As a matter of fact, with over 60% either having good or excellent service I think this is a rather true representation of those whom express their feelings of Alienware's impressive service, despite complaints usually taking priority for online discussion.

 

60% isn't vindictive of anything, and not really a number to be proud of. On the whole, it's a bit more than half.

 

Unfortunately, because there is no 'location' for the poll on this thread, for all we know, it might just mean that 60% of US customers are happy with things. Having close to 30% of the vote here say that they would find themselves 'hard pushed to reconsider' or 'never again' hardly speaks volumes about great service or support - actually, some of these results tie in pretty well with Cloudfire's poll results so far.

A quick glance at his poll from http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ty-satisfaction-thread-please-rate-share.html shows the following:

78% of US customers report good service and are happy. (7 out of 9 voters).

40% of Europe/Australia/Asia report good service and are happy. (4 out of 10 voters).

That is a MASSIVE difference - almost twice as many 'happy' US customers as there are 'the rest of us' and that itself speaks volumes about the divide when it comes down to 'excellent customer service'. Far less than half of people outside the US are not happy with Alienware/Dell's service, and considering the sheer size of that market, Dell should pay some heed to these kind of figures...

Also, less than 50% of total voters here enjoy that 'Woooooooo!!!!' feeling.....something to be said about that figure and customer service as a global snapshot.

 

People are either going to like or not like Dell's service. Most people come here because of problems to begin with. I for one have had my share of frustration with Dell. But on the hole they seem to help most of the time. I posted I would like a Kit,Software,W7U64,DRCTKEY,Multiple User Interface,Unified Extensible Firmware Interface. Not only did I get one but Idea Storm and Team Media got one sent to me free, with free over night shipping. Now that may not be a big deal but it was nice and they did not have to. All my systems are WIN7U64 so to be able to recover back to out of the box means alot to me. Anyway point is there are nice people with Dell and anyone that says the hole system is a fail is being disrepectful to all those that have helped us all. Just how I feel..and a salute to the Reps in Costa Rica they have always helped me. And they are not in the U.S.

 

Now that the spleens have been vented, back to the original idea of this thread...

So far, I have been pretty impressed with the AW warranty service. There's been a couple of MB replacements, two GFX replacements, a keyboard replacement, two HD replacements (lots of use of the words "replacement" there, eh?) and they have always gotten the on-site tech to my place with the part within three days for the work to be done. There has been a few Windows hiccups (and the aggravating reinstallations that come with them), but they've been very good about doing the necessary tasks to get everything up and running until the next technical disaster strikes. Rest assured, it always does. Extending my warranty past the initial period cost me about $330 or so, and it paid for itself within the first two support visits just in terms of the cost of parts alone.

Right now I'm dealing with a display issue that has cropped up in the past on this machine, and we'll see what the final resolution is going to be. I've seen previous threads where people have been offered replacement systems whose capacities far exceeded that of the original device (most notably the M17x R2 owner who was wondering if he should take a M18x R2 with 680M SLI in exchange), so I cannot fault their desire to keep the customer happy, even if the original product is a little buggy. I also understand that as an R1 owner, I was the guinea pig for all the models that came after, so while being an early adopter has its perks, there is also a dark side to it as well.

The bottom line is that if you're going to get one of these beasts, you need the extended warranty unless you're really techno-savvy and feel you can do all the work yourself. The idea of shelling out 3K for a system only to have it go belly-up five days after the one-year warranty expires should be enough to make anybody fall into a defensive crouch, and peace of mind is mandatory when it comes to your entertainment/work system.

Hope you enjoyed my two cents.

 

i don't know about the other have posted, I think its a joke. like i said, I have had good experience, but it eventually turned to crap. Dell has good service but when something doesn't go your way just because of their "policy" doesn't seem to fit around it, theres no work around it unless you are in the states.

 

Just bumping to the top....out of interest.

 

I think I voted for the first one. I'd like to change my vote to the second, while still keeping part of the first one true:

"Amazing laptop and an overall good experience with customer service, despite a few problems here and there."

When I ordered my Alienware 17, the representative pulled a fast one and basically broke the law by "baiting me in and switching," so to speak. Long story short: my original order should have had multiple years of warranty, he claimed to give me a huge discount and then charged my card, but failed to mention the fact that this "discount" was actually him removing all of the warranty I added. I would have cancelled the order, but he told me if I did, I'd lose the other discounts applied. So, I got stuck with it.

 

Never saw this thread before but here is my whole story.

I ordered an outlet m17x-r3 in May 2013. The laptop arrived in good condition but I noticed quickly that the thing would hard lock and power off randomly very often. I had a motherboard error on the boot scan and one of the Raid drives kept giving failure messages. I got the thing mostly stable by removing the raid drives and just putting in one SSD, disabled wireless card, and plugged in an external keyboard.

In August I got tired of having to have it as a desktop to use so I finally called to get it fixed.
Short story here they wanted to swap the mobo, wifi, and GPU, but they did not have a replacement GPU 580m available.

I waited all August calling evey few days for a status and finally end of August they said they would replace it like for like with a outlet laptop m17x-r4.

After a few weeks I got a new order showing up on my dell account, they never called to confirm specs or anything but I was not going to complain.

By mid september I had a new Alienware 17, i7-4930mx, 780m, blu-ray, 3d screen, 256ssd.

I could not be happier with the end result of this.

 

The level of incompetence Dell customer service has shown is unbelievable.

 

Anyone have experience with their Out-Of-Warranty department before just out of curiosity? Going to be dealing with them soon, will post feedback after.

Apparently if you report a problem after the warranty expires, they explicitly mention that even if you renew the warranty (which I can as it's been barely 2 weeks) they will not repair your problem according to their T&C. Way to kick a guy when he's down. At least the operator was apologetic and straightforward.

 

I wouldn't have told them there was a problem till after

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk

 

Before my Alienware M18X R1, I had an XPS M1710 with a 7900GTX card in it. I was 2 months out of my 2 year warranty when the card died but I knew I needed it replaced so I rang the XPS help desk to find out how much a new card was going to be. The lady on the phone informed me a replacement card would be $1150 NZD... ouch. Then she gave me an alternative. She said if I renewed my warranty for another year I could get the card replaced on that instead. Great, how much? $400 NZD. Sold!

So, not only did she save me $750, she expedited the card from Singapore to NZ on an overnight service, and I had a technician arrive at my place of work who replaced it the very next day. Not to mention the fact I was subsequently covered for another 12 months as well.

That's insane service in my book.

 

This is going to be kind of long, and it will probably sound like a rant thread but it isn't I promise, just read it through.

My experience has been mostly good despite all the set backs I seem to be experiencing. This is my my first Alienware laptop and when I can get it running properly it is truly a magnificent machine. Unfortunately for me getting it up and running as intended has been a bit of a challenge. Let me first start off by saying the support team for the most part has been awesome, as when I have phoned in my problem is usually sorted out quickly and the parts are en route and at my door usually within a day. My first M17XR4 was ordered and arrived June of last year, and ran problem free for about 6 months. After the 6 months I started getting AC Adapter not recognised problems and called into tech support to arrange for a new adapter figuring that the adapter just wasn't being recognised any more. After a brief phone call a new adapter was ordered and was on it's way and the next day I took possession of the new adapter and all the problems disappeared....or so I thought. About 4 months later the adapter again started to fail and start throwing AC Adapter not recognised problems leaving me with a machine that was running in low power mode and not running right. I called in again to Alienware support and after a short time the rep had a new motherboard ordered as well as a new adapter and a tech was scheduled to come and replace the parts. Now I am a tech by trade, I work in a fairly high end data center in Canada and know my way around hardware and i have had my M17X apart before just to see what makes it tick as well as upgrading a few things I didn't upgrade at the time of purchase, but due to the fact that this was going to be warranty related I just let the tech deal with it and put my feet up and watched him do the work. The first warning sign should have been when he looked at my computer and said "oh wow I have never worked on one of these models before", that should have been a red flag right there....but I let him proceed with the replacement. While removing the VGA connector on the motherboard he pulled apart the power connector that powers the Alienware head on the back of the laptop . After about 45 minutes of fiddling with stuff due to the fact that he had no clue what he was doing he managed to change out the old board and put the new one in and powered up the machine to run test....there was a series of soft clicks and scratches from the speakers...and that was the last time they worked on that particular machine. I don't know if it was a faulty board or if it was more then likely something that he did but the sound never came back. At this point it was determined by tech support that the computer had to be sent back to the depot for servicing, and since it was only really 75% working at the time there wasn't really much I could do about it so boxed it up and shipped it out. It was gone roughly a week before coming back and I eagerly opened up the box and turned the laptop on , to which everything seemed to be working. The sound worked and everything appeared to be there....but wait...the alienware logo on the front of the screen would not light up .... or rather it would light up as soon as you turned the machine on, but as soon as the alienware bios logo disappeared so did the light and nothing that I did , including reseating the cable seemed to affect it. I called tech support back again and told the gentleman on the other end of the phone the whole story. He didn't try to troubleshoot, he just apologized and began processing a replacement machine , he even built it online with me on the phone. The only catch was at the time this was like 2 weeks before the new 17's launched so they were low on some parts, in particular the 1080 screen that I had in my current R4. He ordered the machine and asked that when it arrived to give them a call and they would ship out a replacement screen and upgrade it, to which I agreed. So the machine showed up and the screen was ordered and 2 days later I had another tech appointment to change the screen out with the same tech that did the motherboard replacement. This time everything appeared to go ok and the screen was upgraded to the 1080 model and I was a happy camper again. About 3 months ? I think...after that screen was replaced I made a shocking discovery....I didn't have a webcam ....probably because the tech left it attached to the old LCD when it was changed out and shipped it back to Alienware. The tech support person I talked to apologised and shipped out a new webcam for me as well as schedule a tech visit with....you guessed it , same tech. So he comes in and again not knowing what he is doing starts prying the bezel apart with a small .... sharp....screwdriver , which needless to say the bezel did not take kindly to. By the time he was done the webcam worked but the bezel was full of chips and dents from where he pried it apart and put it back together. I called tech support back again and explained what had happened and they agreed to send me a new screen and bezel assembly, but I insisted and they agreed to let me install it myself, which I did and everything looks brand new again ( Amazing what not forcing and taking your time accomplishes). Fast forward to last week and my computer was running pretty good, didn't have any problems at all...until the AC Adapter problem started up again out of the blue. I called tech support and didn't get a very knowledgeable tech this time unfortunately and she wasn't very good at her job as she kept going silent for minutes at a time leaving me wondering what exactly she was doing. By the end of the call she had fed me some BS excuse about the power my house supplies was messing up the adapter and I should give it a few days and she would call back to check on it...I was to angry to argue with her and just let it go. I went to work the next day and tried to plug my computer again and wouldn't you know it..... AC Adapter problems . At this point I am starting to lose my cool....through all of this...ALL of it I have been very pleasant and understanding because sometimes stuff happens and you just get a crappy hand and you make the best of it. Aside from the tech that keeps breaking my stuff this isn't any of the people's fault that have been helping me on the phone. So I called in and outright told the guy that got the call, I am going to vent on you, and i understand this is in no way your fault, I don't blame you but I am pretty mad and here is why, and I laid out the whole story from start to finish with both my R4's now. He didn't even try to trouble shoot this one, he apologised and immediately began processing a replacement request for a new 17...so I am working on laptop number 3 ATM , waiting for a reply from their replacement division which should come this week hopefully.

At the end of this I still don't find Alienware to be a bad company, and I would probably buy again although my faith is a little shaken. At no point have I ever been given the run around about anything except from the second last tech that tried telling me my adapter was failing because my house power sucks, but to be honest after talking with her for 20 minutes I would not trust her to restart my cell phone. Every time I call in , I explain what I have done before calling them and that usually bypasses any and all questions that they would have asked for a less experienced person and most times results in a direct parts replacement which are at my door in usually under 24 hours. Their on site techs...well I can only really speak for my area and i am sure that others have had fabulous results with them....my particular area however...well lets just say the fact that I have customer in my data center that use him for server replacements just scares the hell out of me and I will never let him touch my laptop again...period.

All in all the tech support has been pretty outstanding and the parts if I have needed any have always been shipped and come to me in a timely and even unexpectedly fast manor. Even when I shipped the Laptop to factory, for whatever reason it was sent back via ground so that took about 5 days to get from me to the other side of the country but it was only in the depot for 48 hours before it was put back on a plane and overnighted to me from Toronto to BC.

The support has been really good, I just don't like how much I have needed it...and I really hope that this new machine will be the last time I need to use it

As a retrospect I could compare this to my recent RMA with Western Digital and that would curl the hair on your toes...that was a scary experience and if I could get a decent reliable external HDD from anyone else I would never buy them again.

EDIT: Holy crap I didn't realise how much of a wall of text this became until I actually posted it...yikes

 

we ppl from belgium got robbed i think alienware m17 starts from 1499 eu and the m17 in usa cost 1499$$ how the hell is that possible our euro is much higher then the $$ can anyone explain me this ?

 

Inflation... what about the price of a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs or a loaf of bread? You can't compare that way. In some countries it's not available at any price. You have to decide if you want one or not, and the price is whatever the market bears.

 

What is supperb? alienware it's poor quality. I have R3 model and 4 times had problems with this .
Super service 30 days waiting for spare parts??
My wishes to alienware company burn in hell with their laptops
I coming back to Asus Game Republic 2 years without any problems compare with r3 1.5 year.
DON'T BUY ALIENWARE
DON'T BUY ALIENWARE
DON'T BUY ALIENWARE
DON'T BUY ALIENWARE
DON'T BUY ALIENWARE
DON'T BUY ALIENWARE

 

I'm hoping to get in touch with support today to try to get overnight shipping thrown in. I purchased my alienware and the EDD was Nov.8th until I actually purchased and it turned to Nov.13th with 3-5day shipping.

 

Good luck with that. Our opinions are often shaped in the vacuum of our own experience, and that's normal. Sorry to hear things haven't gone well. Hopefully, you won't need to use Asus Support... based on everything I have heard, it's not a pleasant experience.

A lot of extremely satisfied Alienware laptop owners are dissatisfied former owners of another brand. There are sad stories from owners of every brand. And, for every sad story there are probably 9 or 10 very happy customers.

 

So after two days of calling Dell, I was told (both days) that my order was done and was ready to ship, but they couldn't add Next Day Shipping because it's already "packed up". That doesn't make any sense if both days I call its ready to be shipped but hasn't been shipped out. At the company I work for, a lot of times we have orders that need last minute shipping changes, especially NDS. We can change it anytime before it gets on the truck. Really dissapointed with this one but what can I do? Here's to another week and a half of waiting.

 

Third day that my Laptop has been ready and it still hasn't shipped. :thumbsup:

 

Well my order has just been cancelled for no reason. So not happy especially when I've had to find out myself.

 

Finally today my laptop has been changed to "Shipped" on dells tracking page. I still don't see why 4 (possibly, and probably more) days later after the laptop was finished, packed up, and ready to ship, that it JUST shipped today. Also, why couldn't I get NDS? Confusing process here dell/alienware.

EDIT: wow am I surprised. My wife just sent me a picture of my Laptop box sitting on our bed. Completely turned this whole experience around. I'm still a little aggravated about the Customer Service experience though, now that I know nobody knew what they were talking about. I was even told I had a case manager who would call me when the laptop was sent but no calls. Either way, I'm happy the laptop is here. I give this experience with CS a 2/5 ONLY because of the false information given by both telephone and online.

 

Recently I was having some problems with crackling sound and slow performance.
Within a week after a series of the necessary online tests Dell sent out a technician who arrived first thing in the morning and replaced my motherboard, graphics card and heat sink all in one go.
My system is back to it's original state and I couldn't be happier. If you have reasonable expectations of service times and the sort then Dell's service can't be beaten.

Nice one Dell/ Alienware.