The Downfall of Alienware

Since the birth of Alienware i have been a loyal customer, presently i own 4 alienware laptops, but unfortunately after this last experience not anymore.....

I currently have an Alienware 17 R3, a freeby from them. I shall explain, first some history. I work all round the world so the support part of Alienware was paramount and i've had to use it a few times. My last purchased laptop was an Alienware 18, a beast of a machine, SLI / 32gb ram / twin SSD's lovely; but whilst on a job in Iceland it died. Just wouldn't power up, easiest way for this is a storyline

• Contacted Dell, surprise they don't support Iceland, so sent it back to UK and they picked it up
• After a week delivered to my house and DHL back to Iceland, £500 for DHL!!! They tell me it was a motherboard problem and they've changed the board.
• Arrived back unpacked from masses of bubble wrap, wife knows it my baby, plugged in and booted up.
• As the system boots screen flashes RED, carry's on booting and when its ready everything thats supposed to be BLACK is RED. Ahhhhhh!!!
• Contact DELL, first thing they say 'must have been damaged in shipping', surprise surprise
• Explain to the oh so helpful assistant, if you've contacted Dell before you'll know what i mean LOL, that after having multiple systems and have been working around the world for 17 years this is not the first system i've sent back so NO it was not damaged in transit.
• Well as they don't support Iceland nothing they can do. Ahhhhh!
• After many calls and hours on chat they finally tell me they have a partner company in Reykjavik, so i take it to them.
• But oh no because i took it there DELL won't cover the costs. Ahhhhh!
• So i pick it up after a week, i'm working so had to make time, only to be contacted a few days later by DELL to say they will cover the costs. Too late i've picked it up.
• As my work in Iceland is finishing i ask for a DELL engineer to come to my home address on the day i fly back, ooh but they cant guarantee that; but as i would be flying out to Australia 2 days after i get back to UK they will try.
• Well surprise day i land engineer is there, he changes the screen but alas no change still RED screen.
• As i'm off to Australia DELL instructs me to contact DELL Australia on my arrival which i do.
• 3rd day in AUS an engineer turns up and changes both the graphic cards, but still no change everything is still RED. Away he goes.
• 2 days later he comes back and changes the motherboard again, wow this time its no longer RED but GREEN. Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
• I've had enough! I ask for a replacement machine, this is my workhorse i need it up and running.
• I'm informed by DELL Australia that this is not possible as UK Laptops are not the same as AUS laptops???????
• I ask why and am informed that they have different components, but i say hang if that is the case then why are you putting them in my UK laptop? But as we all know the components are exactly the same so its just more customer service crap being handed out.
• I'm told to contact DELL uk, which i do; they, after some wrangling offer me a replacement. Not an Alienware 18 as they state these are no longer available. Why then i argue are they still for sale on the US website? Yeah that's US they reply you cant have one of them !!!!!
• They offer me a Alienware 17 R3 or a refund. God i should of took the refund.
• I receive my R3 last December 21st.
• All eager i boot it up, 20 mins later its finished booting!!!! WTF this is supposed to be a gaming machine, ultra quick, high spec. 20 MINS!!
• Ok maybe first time setup, give it benefit of the doubt, turn if off and on and again 20 mins to boot up!!!
• After some searching find out its the free fall sensor driver in Win 10, update it and voila 2 mins boot time, still slow for a NVME SSD.
• Next i notice only one drive showing in Explorer, ok they've been cheap i think, no problem i'll slip in an SSD, so off with the back and to my surprise there is a second drive there. Ok back on again boot up still not showing, back off again, check connections, boot up hooray its there.....
• Not for long, now i would say the drive appears once every 10 boots...
• Ok xmas holiday over back to work, and it's Iceland the land of no DELL support.
• I'll skip past the next 2 months of frustration, blue screens, freezes, missing hard drive, crashes
• It's now March and i'm itching to get home, still in Iceland, just to be able to to DELL what they can do with this piece of CRAP. Not even worth trying to ring them from here just a waste of money on the phone.
• And what tops it all off is that the software DELL install to allow you to get support, SUPPORTASSIST, i have to kill the process before it gets chance to run; i get this option as my firewall stops it connecting to the internet without asking me, if i allow it BANG BSOD!!! And this software is supposed to help you.

OH Why didn't i take the refund.

Alienware used to be THE gaming laptop, that's why DELL bought them. But now there a joke, we all know gamers love to tinker with there systems, which was why on Alienware's website you used to be able to choose so many different variations of specification. Not anymore, now its just like any other run of the mill computer site, only a few options, no SLI option, maximum 16gb RAM, Jesus might as well buy HP.

Only a month to go and then i can give support a piece of my mind, Apologies for the rant but as you can imagine rather frustrated....

 

Hi, Sorry for your loss (of a reliable OEM) .

I left the AW crowd about a year ago during the debacle around their hybrid (mongrel) model line up. I managed to cancel my order and go elsewhere.

Unfortunately there is no one else that I know of that has the international infrastructure to meet this support need. It's now a case of standard consumer support in your own region and lip service to travelers. Costs have been slashed and it shows. Now they chase young, ex-console, gamers.

Story: I was responsible (among a bunch of stuff) for around 250 laptops used in and around North and South America. Dell's international warranty and support killed the competition - it delivered. Scenario: I am in Sao Paulo, with a laptop purchased in Canada and registered in the US. HD failure. Two phone calls and an engineer was there the next morning installing a new one. I didn't have to pull strings or jump through hoops.

Reason I mention this is I was very surprised that I got the same service in the consumer sector with my R3. Even replaced it with an R4. Every time something went wrong (and it seems to be part and parcel of gaming laptop components) an engineer was at my house the next day.

I've just had to accept that I no longer 'fit' the AW demographic and have to put up with dodgy support from another country .

I only recently removed my 'farewell alienware' rant from my sig...

Clevo/Sager have taken up the mantle of performance/upgradeable laptops and are now in the second generation with desktop CPU and GPU's . Some exciting stuff, my wallet is itching!

Good luck.

 

Off topic, but if you don't mind, what do you work in? Jumping from Iceland to UK to Australia within a few days, this is not exactly a standard flightplan And this is coming from someone who travels quite a bit for work as well!

 

With your original system, did they ever replace the screen cable?

 

I'd say it's 90% bad luck, and 10% inefficient services, I'm so sorry for your loss, Dell or Alienware wouldn't want this to happen, since replacing another 18 is way out of their league a 17R3 is the best that they can do, and that's another defective machine, talk about luck, damn.

 

Seconded...

 

That is really rotten luck. Expecting to not lose a customer after offering to replace an Alienware 18 with a BGA 17 R3 can only be described as naive, if not outright specious. If not for the fact that they were offering a refund as an option (which would have been ideal in 20/20 hindsight) I would almost be inclined to think they were hoping to lose a customer by offering such a massive and insulting downgrade.

 

I actually think they should be offering an Area 51 config that matches the price of the 18 that is defective. That is of course if the individual is willing to go with a desktop instead of a laptop. But the 17 for an 18 is unacceptable regardless of how tricked out the 17 they offer is.

 

Agree... In terms of performance, that would be a much closer fit. If nothing else you could sell the desktop and use the money to buy a better alternative in a high performance notebook. If they are offering refunds without any haggling, that is by far the best option. Then you can do whatever you want to instead of settling for something you don't want.

 

I bet most Dell salesperson/customer service personnel don't even know what is the meaning of BGA and what's the difference between them and they don't really care, and only some of them know it's an i7 bla bla bla.

 

Oh Noes not another one of these threads !

 

Unfortunately, the same can be said about the vast majority of their customers. The staff don't need to know anything because most consumers don't know anything. Kind of like the blind leading the blind.

They're like, " Hey, it's got an i7 and a Geforce GPU doohickey, and some pretty lights... my script says it is really awesome, so please don't ask any more questions?"

 

I work for a major dredging company, i originally wrote there dredging software but have since migrated to project management / survey, Jumping around the world is a normal day at work, planes are like buses.

Yes was changed the same time as the screen, one of my original thoughts was they had mis-connected the cable at the first repair, but alas not.

 

That's the truth, their job is to make sure the customers are satisfied, or try to, look at how they keep finding ways to help him get his repair done, even when he's overseas, they tried their best but then... well..

 

Doc2r, try contacting Aongus Hegarty, CEO of Dell EMEA in advance of your return to the UK, he stepped in with an issue I had with my AW17R5 and poo-thick Dell support agents.
Within hours I had an offer of a resolution to my satisfaction. His email address is *snip*

Good luck

Dave

 

Dave,

Cheers for the tip i'll give it a go.

 

Just a sad story of one company tainting a great company. I can cite another, Voodoo Computers/Laptops. They were innovate and much like Alienware were pushing the boundaries. Then the HP Shark came in and gobbled them up, played around with the company products, use one of their ideas for an HP, end result, Voodoo gone all but in an icon that HP still uses on its best gaming rigs in hope people see the logo and think, oh this is a Voodoo inspired design. Nope. Alienware was the same, great company, great ideas, pushing boundaries (several times I wanted to get one of their systems, but the cost was out of what it would cost to upgrade my current system, I even got credit with them to look into buying one anyways). Then when I was looking in 2012 to replace my aging Vaio Gaming Laptop, I looked first at Allienware. I knew Dell bought them, but I had hoped they had saw the disaster of HP-Voodoo and would be more hands off. Nope they used some of the designs of parts to push the XPS line (hey we work with Alienware) and then keep pushing the Alienware as if it is a stand alone company that goes its own way on things, then I learned the first day I had to contact support, let me transfer, call this number, and time wasted was about an hour and the horrors of Dell Support system became obvious. When I do replace my Alienware M17xR4 I hope they don't seem me as a loyal or return customer, that just isn't going to happen. Sager I like as they offer more than just desktop cpu's in the laptop, which is why I lost some interest in Origin, I want to be able get away from a wall outlet for more than 1.5-2 hours at a time. Desktop CPU plus Desktop GPU plus trying to be lite and thin, means something has to give in that constant struggle between battery life and performance.

Just sad to see this tale repeat over and over so many times. Going private was their way of not having to answer shareholders, "Why is it every where we turn we read about horrible support and customers going elsewhere? We would like to see this stock raise someday and pay out better dividends (if they ever did I don't know). Oh well, next?