Terrible alienware service (Fault)

Hi,

I was just wondering if anyone has had any bad experiences with Dell / Alienware I'm having constant issues with m17x laptop and they cant seem to repair the fault with the extended warranty I purchased a few years ago.

Few weeks ago I was playing BF2 for a few hours I noticed that my keyboard / wristpad was getting pretty warm but thought nothing of it and continued playing, my system then suddenly froze powered off and would not turn back on. While attempting to turn the system back on I noticed that the keypad had actually melted slightly! The keyboard was fine but the keypad (at the right) had actually melted and had warped all around the keypad and I could not press any keys on the keypad but the keyboard was fine.

I phoned dell up and advised the system would no longer power up and advised them of the keyboard situation telling them I thought the system had overheated.

The technical guy came the next day and he was pretty surprised to see that the full keypad had actually melted and spent a while trying to get the keyboard out the system as it had actually warped around the sides he said the system should had shut off well before it started to melt my system!

While looking at the system he advised that the system had a short circuit and he could actually see scorch marks inside the laptop which could be why the system did not power off.
The engineer replaced the full motherboard, and heat sync, the system did not work.

The second engineer then came and replaced the touchpad control panel with the power button and this allowed the system to power up.

Since replacing these parts my system is still not working correctly, the Alien FX lights on both the LCD and power control button either do not light up at all or simply light up blue randomly, the system constantly randomly freezes and the BIOS keeps losing its settings while unplugging the laptop out.

I then had a third engineer who then replaced the motherboard again along with the CMOS battery.

This has not resolved the issue, and the system is still freezing and the alien FX does not light up correctly as well as the BIOS losing its settings.

While speaking to alienware today they made me run a diagnostic in the BIOS while doing this the system froze again while it was testing the memory so they now suspect the short circuit may have damaged the memory too.

They now want to replace the 2 memory modules, the full LCD (With the alienhead LED) along with the power supply strip again.

I'm wondering where to go from here? Could the short circuit have damaged something else, if the forth engineer can still not fix the issue can I demand further action to be taking?

I purchased the extended warranty a few years ago for peace of mind (At a pretty high price) and it just seems useless as they cannot fix the fault! I've purchased a few alienwares previously but never had any problems until now.

 

When I read the title of this thread, one thought came to mind: I bet he lives outside the U.S.

Seems to be a trend, a very unfortunate one indeed. Sorry this happened.

You may have to outsource support to a computer store.

 

Sounds like catastrophic failure with potentially extensive damage going on there, and they might do better to offer a system exchange versus using the process of elimination with multiple service dispatches to try to cobble together or piecemeal the system back to a working state. At the very least, sending something like this to the Dell repair depot with all the necessary parts on hand might be better, as much as I don't care for that option. Whatever got hot enough to physically melt things may have caused multiple components to be damaged. You could be chasing issues and replacing parts for a long, long time trying to do this through field dispatches.

Maybe you should post some photos of the heat damage and perhaps one of the US/Costa Rica support reps can talk to the folks in your area that are struggling with what to do in order to resolve this for you in an expedient manner. Obviously, a change of approach needs to be considered.

If you do not hear from an Alienware Social Media/Support Rep here at NBR, send a tweet to @DellCares on Twitter and someone should intervene. You can use the URL of this thread as a point of reference.

 

if the tech support messes up your m18x isn't dell's jot to issue you a new replacement?

 

Mr_DoughBoy, I'm sorry about the inconveniences that you have had with the machine. At least the support team in your country is trying to get it fixed but after several services it seems to be going nowhere with this. I would like to recommend you to send the computer in for repairs, that way everything will be checked on it and it will be sent to you fixed and in the case that it doesn't I believe that something else must be taken into consideration to save you time.
Please send us an e-mail to [email protected] with your service tag, phone a brief description of the issue and we will get back to you as soon as possible. We only provide support to US and CA but we can forward your case to the UK support and give them some advices about the case.

 

I have sent 2 Alienware laptops to the depot, one came back that was the wrong model and was not mine. Never saw my original laptop again hahaha, they replaced it with a new one. 2nd laptop was sent and I got it back with no hard drive and only one stick of ram. I guess they forgot to put all my parts back in....? The dell depot has some problems.........

 

Gotta love outsourcing.