My Alienware Customer Support Experience.

My beloved 9750 started to have glitches recently.

Initially, I chalked up the problem with new NVIDIA drivers I downloaded from alienwares website. I mostly started to get occasional software glitches, but they would go away. Maybe they needed a little tweaking.

Then Oblivion started to get a little choppy. But it was playable still.

Then Oblivion would occasionally crash to desktop. I figured it was the heat and humidity we had here the past couple days. The laptop was running hot, but not melt the computer hot.

Then Oblivion crashed the computer. Hard. The laptop screamed at me, and to shut it off I had to unplug it, and remove the battery. NOT good. Better roll back the driver.. right?

That changed when I turned the laptop back on. Video glitches upon IMMEDIATE boot up. Laptop would ONLY boot in safe mode. Turned off the laptop, blew out the fans, and let it sit for a bit. Same issue.

Time to call Alienware. at 8pm pst. On a Sunday night.

I was on hold for about 20 - 30 minutes. Its Sunday, I was patient.

I finally got a rep on the phone. His name was Richard. Nice guy. He walked me through various troubleshooting. He went 'uh oh' when the laptop wouldn't power an external monitor. Another 'uh oh' when we determined that the card was truly gane when the machine refused to boot into anything but safe mode. (It will now, with the driver removed).

We removed the secondary graphics card, and no change.

So.. I have a laptop that will power on, but the graphical glitches are always present. He determines I need new video cards. He checks and they still have 7950gtx cards (For replacements only!) So I have new cards on te way, as well as a new heat sink. He tells me that they'll ship out in a couple days, and take about 3 days to ship. So I sigh and figure they won't get to me until next Monday.

I check my e-mail after I get home, and find out that the replacements have shipped! I should have them by Thursday!

So I am very pleased so far. When I have the replacements, I'll call Alienware to have them walk me through the replacement process.

I just wanted to say here that not everything is doom and gloom. Machines do break. And Alienware is working quickly (better than they told me!) to have my machine up and running ASAP. And I didn't need the Alienware reps here to push things along.

(I will, of course, keep everyone updated.)

 

a nice positive about CS - nice to hear....

 

Yes, someone posting about a positive experience! Good to hear.

 

ya, i was worried about AW for a minute!

 

Well. Here's an Update:

The Video Card and Heatsink arrived a DAY EARLY!

The Video Card and Heatsink installed flawlessly. And are performing just fine.

So a big thumbs up for the Alienware guys. I thought I'd be without my rig for a week, and it turned out to just be 4 days. Everything is working fine, all repaired.

(Though I WILL keep an eye on it..)

 

Once again very good news. I feel like they probably do well most of the time. It's just people don't usually report when they do, do well. So once again, refreshing and thanks for keeping us in the loop.

 

For a minute there, I thought it was going to be another negative review but I'm glad we're starting to get some positive reviews for once. I'll look forward to your updates.

 

The only good experience I had with Alienware Customer Support is with Adam. He was very true to his words and always followed up on my concerns.

The others pretended to write email just for the sake of responding but distanced themselves by never following up and always passing the buck to someone else with: "thank you for your email someone will get back to you".

Of course none of them got back to me after countless email and phone calls except for Adam.

 

You'd almost think that with all the negative posts here, Alienware would be on the verge of failing. Yet, I see the opposite.

No company is perfect. But people tend to rant about the negative experiences, and be quiet about the positive. Which is why I posted about my rather positive experience. And you still felt like you have to prove that Alienware sucks.

 

Nice to hear something positive about Alienware, has I have been wanting to buy one, but was scared off by the horror stories.

 

Every company has their horror stories. However, Alienware being rather high profile in the high end computer market, people can get rather passionate when they have poor results.

Chances are good that you'll get a machine that you have no problems with. That said... Always get the 3 year warranty with a laptop. With all the components, heat, and power that goes into these, there is more to go wrong. Alienware laptops are bleeding edge, and sometimes problems can sneak past.

From the current lineup for alienware laptops:

m9750: Older tech, but very solid design. Few problems.
m15 : New. Fast, powerful, but there have been a number of issues relating to the chassis, as well with strange downclocking. Most of these issues have been resolved, I believe.
m17: I know of no real outstanding issues. Its still a new machine.

 

I believe i should post about my good experience.

So I was a complete idiot and decided to flash the bios of my video card to make my 8700m overclockable, because i was having issues oc'ing it.

After doing so, my video card was fried.

My lappy would boot, but I would only see black! I had to work with the sound, and changes in my AlienFX setup to know WHERE I was in booting windows. After I knew I was in windows, blind, I hit FN+F7 to switch to integrated video and hit the space bar cuz i know it asks me to restart the pc. So I did.

Luckily, I was able to see again, I tried reflashing in dos, and I got an error msg stating that no NVIDIA graphic device was found! so i flipped out. Tried removing the card myself... nothing worked.

I called up AW, spoke with a rep named Mike. He tried to get me to take out the card myself, Told him I already tried and no go. So he just sent me a new card in the mail!

No questions, no problems. It doesn't work, they sent me a replacement. I thought that was great of them!

They may not be the smartest techs out there, but they definitely know how to keep u happy.

 

Whoa, he sent a whole new card. So, was everything all right afterwards?

 

So what happens if you still have warranty and AW runs out of them 7950GTXs?

Still, good to hear of this. Alienware's gotten quite a bad name lately.