Warranty transfer to another country for a model not sold officially in that country.

Firstly, I did a search as to whether this matter has been discussed before and found the arguements to be inconclusive and only because of that I opened a thread for an issue that might have been discussed before.

My dilemma

I have always been the desktop guy but now I am moving to a new city and can't carry my rig with me. Needed a laptop to play the latest games and be powerful enough to do game programming on various engines like Unity and UDK etc.

So I finally decided on Alienware as my choice of poison. Found out that in my country India not only are they priced exorbitantly but also that they come pre-configured and don't have all the bells and whistles, so to speak.

So I decide that I would rather buy from US. Don't mind paying customs duty at 16% because at least I will get the best hardware currently available.

When I was configuring I see that Alienware laptops come with global warranty which is transferable to other countries as well. Suddenly the $369 for the 3 year warranty don't seem too expensive since I can get the service in my country and won't have to ship it back to US for repairs.

When going through this forum I come across instances when the warranty transfer has not been allowed because the model is not sold officially by Dell in that country.
This news throws out the plans of buying the M18X R2 as that is not sold by Alienware in India
Still I could buy a better specced M17X R4 because that is officially sold in India.

Main issue

The M17X R4 sold in India is pre-configured and comes with i7 3840 and GTX675 whereas the one I wanna buy has the i7 3610 and GTX680.
The question is despite being the same model will Dell not transfer the warranty to India on the pretext that the specs are different and since we only sell the model with these specs we won't transfer the warranty.

I have had a chat with both Dell and Alienware reos from US and India. All conversations have been inconclusive.

So was just wondering if people over here cab throw some light on what is the truth.
I have 3 options when it comes to buying.

1) Buy the R4 from NBR Marketplace. Great deal for a sealed pack Alienware with 2.5 years warranty.
2) Buy a cert refurb from Dell Outlet with 680M and 3 years warranty.
3) Buy an MSI with 680M,12 GB RAM Blueray reader and most importantly 1 year Global warranty which I have confirmed that will be valid in India.

All cost more or less the same with a difference of max $50 between them.

I wanna go for the Alienware becuade it can be easily upgraded when the next gen of graphics cards pop up.

So if someone can give me conclusive evidence that I will be able to get the warranty transferred I will be highly obliged.

Looking to buy any one from these 3 by the weekend.

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

 

I'll tell you about my own experience.

I was in Paris for a few months, and decided to get myself a M11xR3 which is not sold in Brazil.

Back then, I had no idea about the "transfer of ownership" or "warranty transfer" whatsoever.

I bought it anyway, and to my surprise a week after my arrival, the HDMI port stopped working. So I called DELL support here and they told me that I had to transfer the M11x ownership before proceeding with the support request.

Just a quick note: Since DELL was not accepting my international credit card, I had to buy it on a store.

Long story short, once the transfer of ownership had been required it took them 2 whole months to get it.

Once it was done, I had zero issues with DELL fixing my M11x.

I believe you should call them and try as many time as needed, because sometimes you can get a rep that has no clue about the matter. Believe me, it took me a few calls before talking to the right one.

Hope it helped you.

Cheers.

 

Hi varunrs, I've been recently through a similar situation: I wanted an m18x r2, but that model is not sold here in Italy, so I had to purchase it in the UK.

I asked the same thing a few weeks ago here on NBR, and no one could answer with certainty about the active covers after the warranty transfer (the transfer itself was totally painless and super quick in my case, but the 3 years of next business day cover had morphed into 3 years of "LS", whatever that means).
So I called the local support and asked about the state of the warranty. I was informed that, despite what the Dell website says, I still have the NBD cover for 3 years, even though the m18x r2 is not imported here in Italy. The rep said that transfers across Europe are not a problem. It's transfers from the USA to Europe that cause problems warranty-wise (he was not any more explicit on the matter, so don't ask me for additional info, as I have none ).

This leads me to believe that there is a single European Dell zone within which transfers are easy, but transfers from a zone to another may be more complex. So my suggestion is to look and see if there is a state in your zone where Alienwares are priced reasonably, and then purchase from that state. The warranty transfer may be much easier in that case. As far as support for specific components, if there is another model in your area with the same component, then support for that should not be a problem. So, look for other models sold by Dell (not just Alienware) in India with the 3610 or with the 680m. If you find them, you are golden. If you don't, then they should still be able to get support for the components by having them shipped specifically for the repair of your laptop. Expect longer repair times though.

Just my 0.02€. Hope this helps,

Andrea.