An alienware support story: my experiences

So this is a small collections of conversation summaries of conversations i had with alienware tech support in ordering and getting my new m15x shipped out to me. Personally, i still love alienware machines, but ever since dell bought them up their tech support has been annoying as hell.

Call #1: I call to ask about getting my system shipped without an OS cuz i don't want to pay 100 bucks for vista when im just going to install XP anyway. I get told no deal and no sales managers are there to talk to me.

Call #2: I called 2 hours earlier then the previous call (got the same guy), no sales managers again. he says they will be in until 5 every day.

Call #3: Called before 5, they are all in a meeting, no way i can reach them.

Call #4: No one knows where they are, they all disappeared, probably still in meeting.

Call #5: Tier one sales support is RUDE AS HELL (i filed a complaint) and even refuses to let me talk to his supervisor.

Call #6: I get a GOOD support person and he connects me straight to a manager. Manager and I have a long discussion and he decides to throw in a free illuminated keyboard instead of no OS. I agreed cuz i was tired of this.

Laptop ordered and shipped to NH, I live in MA and they wanted to charge me sales tax so I decided to avoid that and send it to a friend.

Call #7: Called fedex to get laptop rerouted for 10 bucks to my work. they say only alienware can do that. (i was told that also includes holds)

Call #8: Laptop shipped out today and i asked for a reroute because no one would be there to pick up laptop. Called alienware, filled out form with support, paid 15 bucks, no tax charge to me.

Call #9: Called Fedex next day to see if request went through, it did not.

Call #10: alienware says they deal with another group within fedex and that shipping reps know nothing about that. (its a die don't believe them)

Call #11: Shipping staff still has not recieved request, doesn't know what alienware is talking about.

FOUR MORE CALLS JUST LIKE PREVIOUS TWO

Call #16: Request did NOT go through, package shipped to NH, i want my money back. 20 min of arguing about if it went through or not. (on my cell) she FINALLY checks if it did with Fedex, and it DIDN'T. Money refunded.

Call #17: Called Fedex and asked to have laptop held at service center. Request went through no problems, no asking alienware to do crap.

Picking up laptop tomorrow from service center. And the moral of the story... check up on your crap. this was one of the most annoying experiences of my life and it took over 3 weeks.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE

i am not bashing alienware because they didn't do what i wanted them to. I am bashing their tech suport's ability to do things quickly and efficiently. They did not care for me as a customer. They pawned me off many times. They gave me positive answers with negative results, and charged me money for doing nothing. Only upper level tech support cares about customers, the rest just do their job very poorly.

 

Damn.....you had problems before it even reached you. Sorry to hear about your experience, there are really good customer CS agents, like Armando, but I wouldn't even waste my time calling them, usually 80% of them are useless.

 

Calls 1-5 seem to be a consistency within Alienware, and then you finally get a rep that's willing to listen, which is most defiantly annoying, but in my opinion, you screwed yourself over by trying to avoid sales tax. Maybe you should have waited so your friend could have mailed it to you, and you could have sent him back the money it costs to ship from NH to MA?

 

I would love to say AW sucks but it seems like those trouble was created by yourself, can't blame AW except their managers were unreachable according to what you said.

 

Agreed with Nirvana, you really brought this on yourself. For starters, expect to pay for the OS when you buy a computer from a well known or larger pc manufacturer. They can't make your recovery cd without the OS and all an OS deficient pc does is make a support nightmare for them because they are forced to support you with the state of the notebook as you received it. This means additional tools shipped with the computer, and additional training for the support technicians to deal with a subset of users that could be counted in number using only two hands.

As far as the rerouting craziness goes, try checking the shipping address beforehand to make sure someone is going to be there, or alerting Fedex beforehand to hold the box at the pickup station. I've done this many times. Again, it's probably such a rare request that I would never have confidence for any CS rep to carry out the procedure properly. How many people ask for rerouting in mid shipment?

 

Well said,lol

 

I'm not saying any of this is their fault, but they put me through a lot of crap instead of just sending me to the right ppl before hand. I've ordered systems from then without the OS before, it was just pre Dell. And i figured they would be ncie enough to do it again.

and the shipping wasn't entirely my fault, i figured out that no one would be there too late and asked to get it rerouted to save Fedex the trouble of trying to ship it three times then sending it back.

My issues are with the support staff themselves, not the specific problems. Only 3 agents out of the 15 i talked to actually tried to help me.

 

You know..sometimes we should try and look at things from the CS rep's point of view..i mean he/she is a human being after all and may not be able to do certain things..well at the end of the day it is important to work WITH the CS rather than blame them or try and find faults..

 

I hope Alienware goes broke and burns. They are the worst, there just in this for the monies, they dont care if our laptop runs nice or not. They just keep sending you parts that will most likely break. I wish instead of Nvidia gpu's having a problem that alienware had a problem and had to shutdown, so people wouldnt have to deal with their crap.

 

Amen cricha!

 

now now... that' is tad extreme... think of all the households that are dependent on the paychecks AW provides...

 

Here's an update to my story, i wanted to ask the chat support people about returns and this is what happened.

Robert E.: Hi, my name is Robert E.. How may I help you?
Tedd: hello
Robert E.: Hello Ted, <---(misspelled my name)
Tedd: your new chat system sucks, i cannot see the dialog

(no idea what was going on, the window was just tiny, maybe it was me, either way)

Robert E.: I apologize for the inconvenience.
Tedd: i'll just copy and paste what you say into notepad
Tedd: please tell someone about this as it is very annoying

30 sec later

Tedd: are you still there?

2 min later

Robert E.: Again, I apologize for the inconvenience. For a more specific answer to your question, you may contact our sales department via phone at 1-800-745-1639.
Thank you so much for your patience.

Tedd: any response would be appreciated to tell me that you are still paying attention
Call was disconnected.

FTW?!?!?!?!?

 

Jesus! it was your explorer, go complain whichever company you using. ie: mozilla for firefox, MS for internet explorer.

 

LOL

or call your ISP to tell them you have this problem

 

Well i was a bit rude in that respect, but he disconnected the call without asking me what my problems was, i didn't chat just to complain about the chat system.

I am starting to think that owning this m15x is going to be the most annoying experience of my life.

 

I think you should return it and get the NP8660 instead. Justin will take good care of you.

 

i honestly would at this point, but i don't want to deal with that stupid crap of sending it back. I don't want to pay shipping and i don't want to wait another 2 weeks for a new gaming laptop.

plus i had my friend in NH just go from billerica MA to manchester NH to pick it up for me because he is such an awesome guy and the government took my license. Would feel a bit guilty returning it after that.

I'll test it tonight and see what comes from it.

if i do decide to return it what recommendations do you guys have, I am def thinking clevo or Sager but what models?

 

@Stir - Honestly, I'm not going to hold back, you are kind of *****ing about small things.

1. Alienware doesn't sell their systems without an OS, that is their decision.
2. Getting it re-routed to avoid tax is your fault but also theirs for not processing the info to Fedex.
3. If your M15x is broken you can probably send it back with no refund.

Really AW hasn't messed up too much here. I'm not an AW fanboy or anything (I hate them), I just don't like to see them being trashed on for not offering a clean HD as an option.

Once again the shipping was 50 / 50 yours and their fault.

 

I'm not trashing them for not offering me a clean hdd. I'm trashing their support for being lazy, uncooperative, and helpful only 1/5 of the time.

A side note, I opened my system 3 hours ago, it wouldn't start up properly. it took 20 min with tech support b4 i got transferred to sum1 who knew what they were talking about and fixed it in 30 sec. another A+ to their hiring staff.

 

I understand where your anger is coming from

 

@Stir - It seemed from your first post that you were trashing them because of the hard drive but yea you are right sometimes their tech support doesn't want to do anything for you. I even asked to speak to a manager and they told me I wasn't allowed to because they were "helping" me with the problem.

I hope that you don't have any more issues with them but only time will tell.

 

i know what i made it seem like, sorry bout that, i guess i'm not a good story teller.

 

My first experience was pretty bad with tech support. I think it was just due to getting someone who really didn't know what he was doing. I had to just call last week because my laptop stopped charging the battery and would not run off the ac adapter. After taking the whole thing apart the tech said that it was most likely the motherboard. Problem was my warranty expired 2 days before i called. The tech support guy said they could process it with as a grace period the emailed me a Fed Ex label I sent it to them, 4 days later Fed Ex delivered it they replaced the board that day and shipped it back yesterday. Overall I was pretty pleased. I even shipped it back with upgraded memory and a different hard drive. They are not supposed to fix it unless it is they way it was when first shipped, but they still fixed it no questions asked.

One thing I have to say I never have heard of being able to buy a system from a company without an OS. That is just my experience.

 

note:
i turned you in for tax evasion. maybe you can get AW on your side since they actually shipped it to the wrong address. then again, you posted you wanted to avoid the taxes.
ever heard of karma?

 

I wanted to avoid sales tax which they shouldn't really charge anyway. and why can;t i have it shipped to my friend? i wouldn't have been there to pick it up and he was nice enough.

 

i thought warranty had to match your "shipped to" address. Had a friend with a 766 and a 7700 move and had a terrible time trying to get AW to change the address internally JUST to get their laptops serviced. good luck!

 

i did not say you could not have it shipped to your friend.
just funny how you admit you want to avoid taxes, then all of a sudden want it shipped to your work address.
i think part of the hold up was that the system was wanting to charge you taxes since you changed the address all of a sudden. and i bet AW may have thought a scam or some other situation was going on and wanted time to sort it out. not saying this was or is it, but you have to look at things frm a biz point of view as well.

as far as taxes - remember, they are a held to laws and regualtions for commerce in and out of the state(s) they do biz in and out of. many laws govern what states decide to collect taxes on items purchased elsewhere. maybe you should raise that fact with your state and not AW. they are just following the laaws regarding taxes and collection there of while you admittedly chose to negate them and avoid paying said taxes.

from what i gathered in your post, i would bet a months paycheck that 88% of your problems stemmed from your own actions and attitude.
1. wanting to avoid an OS. ever thought that AW has a basic/bottom-line system config that must meet thier criteria before shipping? ever thought that maybe they have contractual obligations to the OS vendor and can not comply with your request, thus the 'no deal' as you state...
2.they had noted your actions/words from the previous call and decided the best course was to avoid any further confrontation until a supervisor could be present.
3. people and companies do have meetings - most are pre-scheduled - but maybe the CS rep was not privey to the meeting dates and times until it happens...
4. i have been in meetings that have lasted several hours
5. maybe you were rude as well. remember - these are people just as you and are operating within the guidlines set forth by AW.
6. conversation goes good, you get a freebee and agree cuz your tired of 'this' as you put it. you could have opted to cancel at that time. instead you take the freebee and still complain.
7. again - rules and regualtions in place to protect the consumer and nto have stuff shipped to the wrong place.
8. easy enough. did you get the CS reps name?
9. again, why fed-ex? should have confirmed with AW first.
10. how do you know if this is a lie or not? i have known companies with departments within departments to handle such things. can you prove it a lie? maybe the re-route is sent to another location within the company as they have to deal with fed-ex on a different level now.
11. staff at AW? again, why fed-ex first when you know it should be AW?
12-15. how much time did you allow between each call? did you not get the hint to call AW and not fed-ex from the first call?
16. again - arguing instead of acting grown-up and taking a portion of the responsibility yourself. it was due to your tax evasion you wanted it shipped to NH in the first place, then you change your mind and make it everyone elses emergency to re-route your pkg. sorry - but your emergency is not mine mindset comes into play here - also - maybe they had the fraud department look into it. none the less - you got your money.
17. could have avoided the whole fed-ex issue by sending it to your work in the first place. but you wanted to be free of taxes.

all this boils down to your lack of understanding the other persons role and appreciating them and thier job. your attitude to me shows thru in your posts and lack of comprehension as well when you continue to call fed-ex in place of AW. you also show little understanding as to the possibility that checks and balances are set in place in order to avoid continual fraud purchases/shipments to help eleviate the cost of the products, thereby affording a bit of savings to the consumer.
as far as levels of support, most is customer attitude to be honest. the rest is at what ability is the person you are talking to able to help you.

maybe you should just return the book back to AW as i bet you will surely not be happy with it now. and i am sure AW has your account pegged as a 'just in case'

bah - long one....

 

Yea, that was a long one. No i won't be returning it because i love it now. And i never claimed perfection on my part anyway. I wanted to get some stuff done to the system which i had on a previous purchase from them, once a sales MANAGER told me no, i was perfectly set to agree, then he offered the keyboard as a bonus to keep me as a customer.

With the reroute, it was very simple. i got it shipped to a friend. Then when i realized that he couldn't be there I asked alienware to reroute the package to my work (expecting to pay taxes). I got the request in BEFORE it shipped out of Florida. meaning it would cost Fedex and alienware nothing to change the address. The problem with that is they told me TWICE that they sent the request and that it was all up to Fedex when they didn't. The woman charged me 15 bucks to fill out a form and then DIDN'T send it.

so i have every right to be mad at them for that. they offer a service, i took advantage of it, and they didn't come through.

And again, im not complaining about what i actually got and what they ended up doing with shipping. I am talking about the way they treated me as a customer and how BAD their support is, thats it.

 

hows the m15x?

 

2 sides to every story...and like i said, i think you were not all that nice to deal with either....i still say you did/said more then you are letting on.

but all that aside....yeah - how is the 15? im still in the market, but with the AW-Breed poster said - Aug 26 is time for something new....