BEWARE - DELL ALIENWARE RESELLS PARTS KNOWN TO BE FAULTY.

Around 4 weeks ago I purchase a refurbished Alienware M18xR2 motherboard from Dell/Alienware Australia, when the motherboard arrived it had a broken/missing hard drive ribbon hold down clip.
I contacted Dell and informed them of the faulty item, I was asked to take pictures and email them to a customer service rep, when doing that I noticed that the coin cell battery adhesive had stuck to one of the yellow labels on the motherboard and had pulled off a corner of the label which was still attached to the back of the coin cell battery - Shortly afterwards I got a phone call arranging pickup and replacement of the faulty motherboard. I still have the photo's I sent attached to the email in my sent emails folder, so I can confirm these comments
The new motherboard arrived a few days latter and installed without issue - now to the interesting part..........
I regularly purchase items on an Australian auction site called Graysonline, they seem to resell the majority of unwanted items for Dell Australia. Around 1 week ago a "Reconditioned" Alienware M18xR2 motherboard appeared on the site available for bidding/sale, I ended up winning the auction and received the item from Graysonline today.
IMAGINE MY SUPRISE WHEN I PULLED OUT THE EXACT SAME MOTHERBOARD I HAD SEND BACK TO DELL 4 WEEKS EARLIER AS FAULTY OUT OF THE BOX. I've checked the pictures I sent to the dell rep and the photos are an exact match. So is the serial number, not the six digit part number, but the 12+ digit alpha/numeric item serial number
TALK ABOUT CATCHING THEM RED HANDED - What an embarrassment to a Global company, all for the sake of a couple of hundred dollars.
Read between the lines, if they have done it once, just how many other times has it happened without anyone picking it up

 

Honestly, I'm not surprised.

 

Thanks for letting us know about the situation. We'll send it to the team in Australia and make sure we provide the proper feedback to them.

 

If the clip had been fixed then it would be ok, but I take it the listing made no mention of the damage and it was not fixed?

 

Sheesh, I just agreed with Dell AU to replace the motherboard on my 17 R4 due to the ongoing saga of my recon3di and they mentioned it would be a refurb'd piece. I am absolutely petrified of what I will receive, and what torture I will need to go through to get another replacement if I needed to ( spent countless months with the 3 returns and refund from r3 and a replace for the r4)

Would you recommend a board swap?

 

You have to try.. Make sure you don't let the tech go till you check all the ports you use are working etc...

 

Nothing new.

 

HAHA, good luck. I had 5 board replacements for my M17x R4 Recond3Di problem, all of them still defective. They just cycle out the boards.

 

I'm not really all that surprised - I bet the boards are returned tested for about 30 seconds and work fine so they are shipped back out as "refurbished" but in reality have either faults which are intermittent or wont show up in brief testing. Only time that won't happen is when some major component like the PCH or power circuitry is burned out and the board doesnt work period.

The technician who examined your returned board for the 30ish seconds probably wasn't told the reason for return so just tested it briefly and doesn't care about examining the board for any signs of broken clips and such.

 

While everyone here is saying "At least Dell's service is good"
I think it only applies to US?
Dell Australia is TERRIBLE.

I ordered warranty extension in their web store (Yes I know haggling over the phone can get me a better deal, but I wanted everything to be CLEAR and SIMPLE, but read along you'll find how disappointing their service were)
I have moved since I ordered my machine. So I inputed the new address in the warranty extension order. And it was correctly shown on the order confirmation. But then, on the digital copy of invoice it became my old address. And of course the physical, proper copy will be sent to the old address.
I called them up for this, to ask if they can change it back. (Before the invoice was mailed of course) The guy said it will be done. Also, I asked if the warranty extension requires me to supply my service tag or something, he replied it was all done automatically.
At the end, I received NOTHING in my letter box. And while I input my service tag on Dell's website, my warranty expiry date wasn't updated. It seemed that offshore call center guy ignored my request as a whole? Or that's how it works?

Luckily my machine is still standing strong. If anything ever happens and I need it to be serviced I don't know if the extended warranty will be honored with NO physical document and a not-updated database. I believe they eventually will, but not without some good hours spent explaining the whole thing. This is absolutely a pain, as no one on their online chat system is responsible for a thing, they just say I will be redirected to another chat, and I will be redirected again there. Obviously only the sale chat works flawlessly and efficiently, but then it's for new systems, not for parts and upgrades. These are not "sales" in their minds.

 

You recon I should just bypass the repair, ?

 

I would play the lottery and see if you get a good board, you are certainly entitled to with your warranty.