Can anyone confirm my thoughts on your experince with your Alienware dell on-site warranty service?

Hi,

I have been doing a ton of research on Asus & HP laptops these few months, and have come to the conclusion that the Dell On-Site warranty service is truly the only one that comes on-site?

The reason I say so is from my own personal experience with owning a Dell e1705 laptop which I purchased over 4 years ago. Each time I had an issue, Dell would send a tech over either to my office or my home to fix the issue(A tech was sent to my location 3 times over 4 years). If a hardware part is required for replacement, like a new Mobo or GFx card, it would be sent together with the tech.

I have read many of your postings on this forum baord, and see that in most of your hardware issues, a tech was also sent with the hardwares on-site.

However, from my readings of postings in both the Asus and HP forum boards, I have never read of a tech being sent on-site for warranty services. I know of course that Asus never has such an on-site service. But for those who purchased the additional on-site warranty service from HP, in all cases that I have read, they still had to send in their laptops for RMAs whenever it was diagnosed as a Mobo or Gfx card issue which resulted in alot of lost time and dissapointments. To me, the HP On-Site warranty than becomes a sham.

Could anyone here confirm with me if a tech was indeed sent on-site to fix/replace your hardware issue each and everytime for your Alienware laptops? And that you did not have to ship off your laptop for an RMA.

This is very important to me as I do not want to lose precious time with sending in a laptop for RMAs after purchasing it,and for also the potential for more issues of laptop mis-treatment during the RMA process. My previous experience with the Dell On-Site service has been positive for my Dell, and wonder if it holds true for their On-Site service now.

Thanks so much for any feedback.

 

My experience with the Alienware onsite support has been poor. The first tech killed my motherboard by leaving a loose screw holder inside the case. The other one who came over 6 days later to fix this left the notebook with a screen gap and creaky base. Both tech had never seen a M11x and both showed up without maintenance manuals which resulted into a lot of head scratching trying to figure out how things were supposed to fit...

Not impressed... Next time I'm getting the parts shipped and I'll do it myself.

Lenovo also offer on-site warranty repairs and they do come over to your home.

 

The onsite support is not always bad. I've had a few good tech guys come to change parts.

Just make sure you are always there next to them when they do work. It's your PC and your money not theirs.

On the other hand, if they break something they are pretty good at fixing it by ordering new parts.

Overall, dell onsite is a good experience especially compared to HP or other brand's after sale technical support.

 

Maybe Im fortunate but Ive had Dell Tech's out twice in the past two weeks, M15x is 21 days old today, and the tech's performance was knowledgeable, clean, fast and complete. I wonder if its because im only 15 miles from Chicago ( insert any major metropolis ) and had Unisys doing the calls.
AND Ive been promised a factory fresh replacement since I still have additional issues. All because of loading Command Center from the Resource Disk.
DONT DO IT ! Be advised !

 

it always hit and miss with on site techs. I really suggest printing out a service manual just incase.

 

Absolutely, had to bring up the service manual on another system to show the first tech where to install the Bluetooth module...

 

Well, I feel comforted knowing that the Dell On-Site service is still as responsive in sending tech over with hardware to fix your issues. I understand that the techs may bungle the job sometimes, but at least they are equally fast to send a 'replacement' tech over. Also important is that since they are onsite to fix your issue, you can test it out with the tech to ensure the fix worked.

I think this is still waaay better than sending in your laptop for a 2-3 week RMA where you are not there to observe who handles your laptop, and it may be that when the RMA returns, it still has the same or more issues....

 

I have an on-site service warranty, but it was not an option. The closest qualified tech was over 50miles away.
The last problem with the M17X R1 was not an issue that could be diagnosed over the phone, so I had to RMA.

 

I had a pretty decent interaction with the one that came to change out my motherboard. He was nice and was decently knowledgeable about the product... so that was a plus.

The only minus was he apparently hated screws and holder clips. He lost every one of my Hard Drive screw clips and stripped out my master GPU bottom screw peg that connects it to the fan (a fact that i didnt notice until i took it apart to replace my GPU's)

Now i'm in the process of getting a new Fan to replace the one currently due to the striped peg... i'll be doing that myself.


So overall i would say i had a positive experience, but not overwhelmingly so

 

3 out of 4 techs that visited my place to replace GPUs/fans/etc - couldn't disassemble the system without breaking parts, so I stopped the first one in the middle of tearing the touch panel apart and since then had to always do it myself...
Kudos to Dell though, for speed and commitment: all broken parts were replaced and even the entire system was replaced R1->R2 under the warranty.
Overall, - positive experience.

 

I've had the same tech for my xps 700-720-730x and also with my xps m1730. The first time he worked on the 700 I had to help him pull the motherboard. Every other time he knew what to do. I have a different tech scheduled to replace the motherboard in my M17x r2. He already blew me off Wednesday and now can't come out until Monday. So much for next business day. I'm worried about this guy.

 

Just make sure you are there when he touches your system.

 

As a few other people have already said before, make sure you are there the entire time watching every step. I've had my M17xserviced 4 times in the last 3 weeks, the first tech was to be nice an idiot. He refused to put new thermal paste on the CPU stating it didn't need thermal paste after scraping it off on a mobo replacement, and also tried to tell me the palm rest was supposed to stick up on the sides then tried to break off the tabs that held it down. The guy that came out next to replace the ram, heat sink, and gpu was awesome a real young kid maybe 20 so I was worried at first. The kid had a diagram sheet to lay the screws and parts on, and did the job in a very good timeframe. They will all be on site as long as you have the right warranty, but keep in mind not all of them know a car from a computer.

 

I've had to have a tech come out two times for my latitude first time I wasn't present but when i got home everything was good in perfect working order and put together properly. The second time was to replace a screen and diagnose a secondary problem. Tech guy did a good job replacing the screen but had to send it out to fix the second issue. which was not related to either technican and was mostly likely my fault. Turns out the touch pad armrest needed to be replaced because it some how was causing the wifi card to drop the signal. On the plus side it only took four days to send out, fix and return it.

Oh and i asked the technician if he ever worked on a M17x Laptop and he said he never even seen one before and I asked him if I had a M17x if they would send him out to fix and his reply was that they would send someone who had some training with the M17x.

 

Thanks for everyone's nice and informative feedback. Due to these posts you all have made today, I went ahead and purchased my first Alienware laptop.

Looks like I will be rejecting the Envy 17 that I recently purchased. I asked this same question in the HP section, and only managed to get 2 very weak responses to the non-existent HP On-Site tech support.