Europe needs contact with alienware too

Hello guys, so I created this post with several objectives:

1. Why isn't alienware expanded in Europe as in America.

2. Is there any retaillers of alienware to Europe.

3. Why does Europe has an overpriced alienware options with lesser options.

4. Is there anything we users and fans of alienware can do to change this situation.

Your thoughts are wellcome !


If you want to Dell/Alienware have more presence with their representatives in Europe please vote in: IdeaStorm

 

1. Why isn't alienware expanded in Europe as in America.
Not a big enough market

2. Is there any retaillers of alienware to Europe.
Not that I know of

3. Why does Europe has an overpriced alienware options with lesser options.
Import taxes paid by Dell

4. Is there anything we users and fans of alienware can do to change this situation.
HIDEvolution.com. Order from them and ask to talk to an international sales rep.

Your thoughts are wellcome ![/QUOTE]

 

[/QUOTE]


I think there is a big market in Europe they just need to better explore it, lack of access to alienware in Europe, that's their problem, in certain countrys there is no alienware access.
The taxes paid by Dell, sincerely I don't know if they will suffer that much since there is a lot other computers brands in Europe.

That info from HIDEvolution is good to know since I want to buy an alienware m18x.

 

Of course the market in Europe is big enough. If you take the whole EU's GDP, it is certainly comparable with that of the US (I'm not sure which is higher). The population of Europe is higher, I think.

I mean, come on. If Australia is a big enough market, then Europe is certainly worth it...

Alienware does have European websites. For example, alienware.de in Germany, alienware.co.uk in UK, alienware.es in Spain, etc. It does me off that Portugal doesn't have one, since anywhere in Portugal is within 130 miles from Spain, but that is more understandable since we're just 11 million.

 

Exactly the problem with alienware is their contact with certain spaces in the world.
I seriously don't know if there's a lot of taxes, laws and maybe influences in the market acception from other computers manufacters but if they don't try to get some publicity on the street, some good proclamation of their products they will lose a lot of possible incoming from Europe IMHO.

 

anyone ordered from hidevolution? i was wondering about shipping/taxes ull pay for europe

 

Check out these threads on hidevolution:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/other-manufacturers/652545-hidevolution-woes.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/other-manufacturers/578507-questions-about-hidevolution.html

 

So many of you states things that simply aren't true.

US market is more competitive and all-in-one for the whole country. Europe is both richer and has more citizens, yet everything's divided into small nation states with their own laws, taxes, certain regularions and so on. This means single entity of Dell/Alienware for the us =/= multiple entities for EU countries.

Another thing is language. This forum is frequented mostly by US citizens. There is a bunch of UK people too as well as some other Europeans fluent in English. Apart from that, there is a whole galaxy of smaller gaming and hardware forums in particular languages where Alienware is discussed.

Dell sells Alienware in pretty much any EU country these days. There are dedicated Alienware websites for Germany, Austria, Poland, Denmark and so on.

This, plus there are smaller retail shops selling Alienware systems. I know several both in Germany and in Poland. I believe other countries have some too.

There is the same hardware offered in both US and the EU. And price? Well, taxes, higher quality of living and higher income rates (meaning higher costs of everything) and so on. Note that anything in Europe is roughly by 1/3 more expensive than the US.

Write up a business plan and contact Dell. You may just as well become a retailer.

Finally, you can deal with Dell/Alienware in Europe in the very same way so many users in here do it in the US. Dell is willing to talk prices, offer discounts and award recurring customers. I myself got excellent deals on my machines. The rule is the same everywhere: call and ask. Doesn't work? Hang up and call again.

 

I thank you for your post DarkSkies, but see I for example live in Portugal and Portugal had DELL, they went out.
They tried to sell pre configured alienware laptops here, didn't worked ofc, people want to costumize has other people do.

So I have 2 resellers with one single type of the m18x with old specs and guess what they are overpriced. The only way is too import I think but I would prefer the other way

 

I also live in Portugal and confirm this. Finland also has no AW website, despite being one of the richest countries in the EU (per capita, of course).

I looked around a bit, and from what I saw, Sweden also has no AW website. This basically means that this statement:

is false. At least 3 countries, and I'd bet that the Eastern countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, and so on) don't have websites either.

I wouldn't give a flying intercourse if at least Dell shipped to anywhere within the EU. They really have no excuse apart from being lazy (transport costs would be ridiculously low, and they can always pass them to the costumer, and there are no custom taxes within the EU).

 

Did you try to contact Dell Spain? There is AW Spain. I don't know how Dell customer service works for that part of Europe, but e.g. in Austrian, Slovak and German (and possibly other countries) case it is the same customer centre. They simply answer the calls in different languages. I often talk to Slovak representatives both in German and English. It may just as well work in the same way for Portugal and Spain.

And yes, AW is expensive. You cannot really expect to find a system offered on European AW sites for, say, 3000 EUR veryu much cheaper. If you are a recurring customer, you can negotiate some deal (I got -450 EUR once on a 2100 EUR worth AW laptop, but it was the 3rd system I was buying from Dell within the same fiscal year), but that's it.

You can always order form the US from a place like hidevolution, but this can be risky (e.g. it can arrive damaged en route) and, if you want to do it legally, you are in theory supposed to declare the actual value of your order and then pay tax for it in your country. All in all, AW is expensive.

There's nothing false in what I said. Do you understand the difference in meaning between "pretty much any" and "all"? I hope you do and you just didn't read it carefully enough. Austria has its own Alienware, btw. The rest is prolly too small.

 

That's some good information DarkSkies, but unfortunately I've already talked with DELL Spain and they don't sell to Portugal, that wouldn't be great anyway since their alienware m18x only brings a 560M, yup that's right.

Thats another problem I have to point here about alienware, countrys who don't buy much from them, they just forget it and countrys who don't have money or a strong economy they don't even care about it.

That's a shame that's what it is I sense that a lot here in Portugal not only from them, but from other brands too.

We are seriously abandoned in the corner of Europe.

Btw DarkSkies what do you feel about your alienware and about the quality/european price ?

 

Maybe "false" sounds too harsh, but it is incorrect. The EU has 27 countries, and "pretty much any" country having an AW site is not true (i.e., false... I didn't mean it as offensive).

Now if you say that most of the EU population has an AW site in their country, that's another matter... I'd say AW covers about 60% of the countries but about 90% of the population or something like that (numbers made up).

Regarding AW Spain: yes, I tried contacting them. I immediately got the "we do not ship outside of Spain" reply. Even when I mentioned that I was already a Dell business customer, that I simply refuse to buy from a reseller, etc etc, they did not budge.

I really don't understand. Allowing AW Spain to ship to Portugal (for example), would incur the following costs:
- Translating the site to Portuguese, which costs maybe what? 3000 euros? Sell 5 laptops and you recover that cost. Heck, DON'T translate the website, Portuguese people read Spanish just fine anyway.
- Shipping to Portugal. Apart from the islands (which pay extra shipping in any delivery anyway), there is no location of the Portuguese continental territory farther than ~130 miles from Spain. Yes, we are that small. This would cost an extra what? 5 euros per system? 10? 50?? Just put an extra shipping charge if shipping to Portugal, for all I care... even better, drop it off somewhere on the Spanish border and I'll drive there and pick it up!
- Parts for the warranty claims. Those are shipped overnight on a JIT basis, so there is zero inventory cost!

A similar analysis would hold for any EU country, because there are no custom taxes. Within the euro zone, there aren't even currency-changes to consider!

We need an AW rep for Europe so I can spam these questions on his email.

 

Words of wisdom! me and HerrKaputt just want the conditions that america, canada, united kingdom and some other countrys have with alienware in Europe, just please DELL reconsider it.

When I think there is HP selling their products in europe like it was rice I just can't find a reason for DELL not doing that they are both american brands.

 

Quality is the same. Both of my laptops came from Shanghai. If you meant the quality difference US vs EU, there isn't any, because hw is not produced there, just sold.

The price? Well, anything's so expensive in the EU these days and one cannot really figure out why (e.g. a pack of particular dark bread costs €1.20 in Germany and exactly same product costs €1.99 in Austria). The States are much much cheaper to live in hence electronics' prices reflect that too. EU prices are basically US prices + local EU tax.

Edit: BTW, AW quality is undeniably superior to any laptop I previously owned. IMO it is totally worth it paying more for AW than getting some cheap Asus or one of those Clevo-clones (e.g. Schenker in Germany), so in other words, there is a reason why AW is more expensive. The price tag isn't just Dell playing moody in the end.

An 'joint' European rep won't be able to offer quotes anyway. Once I was ordering from Dell two systems at once and wanted to have one delivered in Austria and another in Germany, and that was not possible. I had to place one order for Germany (and to be treated as German customer) and another for Austria (as an Austrian customer). Plus, the Austrian price automatically rose by some €80. The sheer tax difference DE vs. AT 19% vs 20% respectively would be much lower than that, so as said before, there must be something else at play talking prices in Europe.

 

Hey DarkSkies, ok I see you understand EU is becoming expensive without a reason or if there is one it's behind public information, but there's one thing I didn't understand you ordered your alienwares from EU Dell or from Shangai??

 

I order my stuff either from AW DE or AW AT since this is the area where I live. After ordering the laptops were shipped from Shanghai (from factory I guess).

 

That's nice you still have some chance to do it, I only have resellers here with low or old specs , I'm consedering to orderm from HIDEvolution but I still don't know if the warranty is going to serve me much since I don't have them in Portugal.

 

You are right. But such a rep might be able to arrange for Dell Spain to ship to Portugal on occasion, for example, with a Portuguese keyboard, and to switch the warranty to Portugal immediately upon purchase (instead of me having to do it manually).

For example, when I bought my E6400, I bought it in Finland, where the only keyboard layouts offered in the Dell site are Finnish and International. I called to ask for a Portuguese layout, and their initial response was "no". I explained that this was a deal-breaker and they passed me on to another rep who was able to make that exception.

 

Guys,

I am from Netherlands, I orderd 2 alienwares (17x3 in May 2011 and 11xR3 in May 2012) and am very happy with having a dedicated dell account manager for myself with her direct number at hand, (+33..... number) a direct tech support number (local Dutch) and I received my 11x a week ago within 5 days from order date. All very good....

However, like US guys have dedicated "Alienware" technicians I would also like to feel comfortable that there are dedicated specialized "Alienware" technicians here in EU or at least in NL whom I can trun to / call if I have an alienware specific problem. Dell tech support here in NL is also good and I have ahd good impression of them however, at times they gave me wrong information which was corrected by a response from a ticket I had submitted about M17xR3 and responded via US guys. So..... overall, not too bad. But, Alienware support would be much more helpful here in EU as well!

 

Le0Heart you have a lot of luck by having such conditions with DELL.
I do wonder if DELL made some studys about is it or not worth selling in certain countrys in EU.
If yes than that explains a lot if not well I think they should do, I think they would gain a lot by investing in EU IMHO.

 

Good for you, really. I switched reps 2 times already (having the 3rd one). The rule is simple: if "your guy" gives you a quote and then a simple call with a random other sales rep gives you better price, "your guy" has to go. This happened to me already twice. First purchase is always very nice, there are discounts and hands kissing. The second one isn't so easy, especially if it comes soon after the first one. "Your guy" feels you have money and tries to score higher commission (at least this is how I'd say it looks like). This seems especially annoying as I've always bought everything as a business customer.

Thankfully, there's a lot of people working at Dell's call centres.

 

I removed a few off topic posts.
Guys if this happens again, feel free to report these posts using the report button

Concerning the OP, i think we should consider a thread on IdeaStorm.

 

Like katalin said how do you guys feel about openning a thread about this situation in IdeaSorm, what should we post there?
There are many specifics concerns around this matter.

 

Search to see if there's already a thread on this subject that might have already gotten some votes

 

Done:
Idea Storm

Now let's all sit back, watch that thread get plenty of votes, and hope for the best...

 

Thank you for doing the post HerrKaputt I'm busy with colledge

 

No problem. Thanks for commenting and voting there.

If this IdeaStorm post goes somewhere, I'll tell all my friends that I played a role in bringing AW to Portugal! (wishful thinking)

 

And so do I, we will be proud about such accomplishment!

 

More importantly, I will finally be able to get a decent gaming laptop...

 

And so do I after a long long long wait

 

Instead, tell them to sign up, get out and VOTE!

 

I m beginning to spam that!

 

I added a link on my signature for that effect. I also told my two gamer buddies.

I'm not going to spam it though. My "regular Joe" friends have no clue what is the difference between a gaming laptop and a regular one, so it's of little use.

 

Do what I do explain it they will like to know that

 

Well done, HerrKaputt. I'll add my vote/comment tomorrow.

 

I guess it can't hurt. Nevertheless, those are people who would do wrong in buying an AW. A cheap Vostro can suit their needs just fine for less than half the price (and still covered by Dell's good warranty).

 

Yes, but their votes will be just as good.

 

I doubt they would have the trouble of registering on the IdeaStorm website and voting. These are people for whom "Outlook is such a complicated program"

 

We need to other users to know this too we have to tell about the idea to people and if they like they will vote, also people who are from Europe and see NWR may also enjoy hearing about such idea.

 

I'll post at an AW user forum, perhaps that will get us one or two more votes.

Lp18, perhaps you could update the first post of this thread to include a link to the IdeaStorm topic.

 

Hey HerrKaputt I noticed that Dell saw our IdeaStorm have they told you something ?

 

Only that they will "pass this on to the Aliens". Still, if we can get more votes and comments, it would be better. 7 votes isn't that high.

 

I have been trying to arrange more votes but it's not that easy

 

Same thing with me. Of course, I could say to my sister "why don't I create an account in your name and vote", but that would defeat the point (and it's probably against the IdeaStorm rules...).

Oh well, If the Alien team does see that, it's already a win of sorts, I guess. They'll probably do nothing about it, but at least they saw that some people here are not happy about it.

 

Voted. Having a few reps in here dealing with European matters should be no problem at all. They can be from the UK for example and if a matter requires that, they can always have some local Dell branches on the phone in no time.

 

I've been seing the E3 and Computex and there's one thing I don't understand there's a lot of cool and gaming laptops from Alienware, Dell, Msi and they don't seem to appear in Europe. At least that's what I think.

What I don't understand is it if there's any blockade from the other brands, if there is dark choices behind such situations I seriously don't understand.

Edit: Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever heard, known about something similiar to this. What do you have to say about that?

 

There isn't any blockade. You are clearly getting carried away here. Anything what 'big labels' offer in the States is available in Europe (proper), including Chevrolet Camaro. This is certainly true regarding AW and Dell and as I expect, MSI too. Note that seeing something at computer show and buying that product right away are two different things. There is a delay between the shows and actual market entry.

Plus, if something is not available in Portugal, it doesn't automatically mean it isn't/won't be in the rest of Europe. Portugal is a small market laying on the edge and not exactly Germany rich, for example. Talking Germany and other neighboring countries, even including the new EU members like Poland, anything can be ordered there.

 

I agree with DarkSkies. My request is precisely that even smaller countries should be catered.

 

And I agree with HerrKaputt.
Have you guys convinced more people to vote up? I have tried