extending warranty for broken Alienware ?

what if I extended my warranty for my broken Alienware, waited one month and then asked them over to fix it ? did anyone every try this ?


cheers

 

If i remeber you can extend warranty only if you Aw is still in warranty. So if this case you can call them right now.

 

Yes and it works. How could they know if it was'nt broken before extending ?

Just try to make it look like recently used machine.

 

thanks for the feedback. I just paid the 450bucks for a year premium warranty.
Now I am going to wait a couple of weeks before telling them that it stopped working to not make it look too suspicious.

cheers

 

This is insurance fraud - it is people like you who are driving up the cost of insurance.

 

It works like a charm, one of my favorite "Alienware exclusive" features. LoL

 

Yes, it's doable. If the cost of their parts wasn't so astronomical for such old systems, there wouldn't be a need to do this. There is no reason why I should be paying $500 for a motherboard on a 3 year old system (Alienware 18)

 

To be honest, I think this is quite unethical and just fraud. You probably used your systems for years prior to this. Cases like this maybe ruin the good support of Alienware systems for others.

 

Yes, because not being happy with the cost justifies fraud.

What if I think it is just dumb iPhone 7's cost £699 and decide to just steal one with that logic.

 

naw, it's there to be exploited. this is completely legal and you SHOULD do it without any second thoughts.

buy the warranty, safe yourself a headache of sourcing parts, installing, etc etc. 450 doesn't seem so bad.




people like you breaking everyone's fun, why do you care? they'll make more in a day than most of us will do in a lifetime. stop saying ethics, it doesn't matter if your machine/money is on the line.

 

Its not there to be exploited. It is there for people who have trouble with their products within the reasonable expected lifetime. Also I think you highly overestimate what the majority of the people earn within companies like these. I work in a similar company as a digital designer, I wouldnt say my pay is bad but I am certainly not a millionair or something like that.

That machine is probably 4 or 5 years old. abusing the system by paying 400bucks and then claim a new machine after is just plain fraud.

 

nice story bro

 

Your logic is flawed. I'm talking about a single part, you're talking about a whole device. When computers depreciate, so do the parts, but not in Dell's world apparently.

OP, you can certainly extend warranty outside of your initial warranty period, I've done it many times. You can haggle on the price too. I got a year extension for 200 USD. They wanted 400 USD.

 

Honesty is always the best policy. What goes around comes around. Justifying it on the basis that they can afford the losses due to fraud it doesn't make it right or OK.

Now, if they were smart--which is obviously not the case--they would require a remote connection to validate the machine for which an extended warranty is being purchase is still working as prerequisite. In other words: No remote connection; no extension of the original warranty is available.

 

This is Alienware the fraud they pulled is nothing in front of this, A teardrop on a Planet of Earth size...

Alienware is putting out all the junkware, fallacy about their Machines in the DT realm and the Notebook market was ruined because of their Anti-consumer practises like gimping CFM, Fan Speeds, BIOS locks, Power Delivery locks on Mobos, Half-arsed HW delivery - Alienware 18 with 980M (Needed a custom vBIOS to fix the jank they put it out) And stamp a huge premium for this crap & push it onto US ? AMA with all the PR B$ previously and not acknowledging the problems..

Also who is thinking they don't know this already ? Haha, the corporates are not sitting in that position just because they could....& Ethics, in this era..meh ? Micro$lop, Dell, Intel, Ngreedia, crApple, AT&T, MP@@, G00Gle who believes these tech gaints blindly, LMAO !!

Go ahead Extend it, And what are you talking about..this is a no-brainer.

 

Hi,


I don't think Dell is caring about if the system is working or not. Last month I extended my AW17 R3 warranty and my original warranty was already expired for about one month.

The system was working fine, no problems, I extended just to be covered in any future issues. Well I do asked if they had to do a complete check-up in my machine since it was without warranty, the rep simply told me it wasn't necessary.


I just think they would not skip that part if it was a necessary "procedure" to be able to extend. So I do not think this is a fraud.


I think is all about pricing, I extended for 2 years, with premium support for $300...

 

Just FYI, I called in, said I needed support to get my computer working, and told the support guy my computer was broken. He said, "extend your warranty." I was asked if the computer was working, and I said "it was yesterday, no problems whatsoever." The agent laughed and said he could give me a good deal. I literally asked the warranty extension agent to transfer me back to tech support... they ended up replacing the laptop.

I can see how the situation would be a moral hazard... but just tell the operator what is going on and be nice. They like to help you, and if you make it easy for them, they will move heaven and earth for you.

That said, not a chance in hell will I ever buy another alienware. RIP aliendudes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


tl;dr: AW reps let you extend the warranty even on known broken computers.

 

Mate, calls are RECORDED. You can have serious problems if you tell the agent the truth because he could fear that you can use it (and you can as it's recorded). Better just pretend it was working.

 

I highly disagree. I paid top dollar for this machine. And it broke down just shortly after I ran out of warranty.
Also 450bucks isn't little by any means.
Maybe if dell built machines that lasted longer than 12months I wouldn't have to do this.

cheers

 

Your machine is not 12months old. Looking at your specs it is probably 4 years old.

 

I understand where your coming from, but I understand where he is coming from as well. Would you be so cavalier if your new car broke down after a few years and everyone just expected you to buy a new one?

If you take care of something there really isn't any reason for it to fail except cheap parts.

 

I had hardware break down after 4 years. Could not say I was sad about it. Its just the longevity of these higher performance laptops. They are like ferrari's when it comes to reliability often.

The thing is, abusing the system makes it more expensive for all other users out there that are a bit more honest about their stuff.

 

Stop knocking on others fun and mind your own business.

If the guy wants to extend the warranty then don't crap on the thread, take it somewhere else.

 

I have the same right to express my opinion as anyone else. This is a public forum and i got quoted and responsed on that. Report the post if you think it shouldnt belong here.

Also ironic to start about someone's fun while it might raise the bar for others their "fun". With your logic you can even defend plain shoplifting.

 

I had the maximum allowable of 5 years warranty on my Alienware laptops. It didn't cover my aftermarket upgrades, but the original parts that died were motherboards, display panels and AC adapters. All were replaced one or more times during the 5 year warranty. Motherboards are the most common failure, and typically lasted me around a year, sometimes just a tad longer. I didn't care about the warranty on CPU, GPUs, memory or drives. I took care of those items myself. The original AMD GPUs were trash and did get replaced under warranty multiple times. I didn't have any issues with Fermi or Kepler cards. The NVIDIA cards were replaced for upgrades, but had no functional issues.

The abbreviated lifespan on motherboards is one of the issues that makes me apprehensive about BGA. They are not cheap even on the older machines with sockets and slots, but when a CPU and GPU are included that cannot be good for one's wallet. I'd recommend getting the warranty for at least a year longer than you plan to keep a BGA Alienware. That will insulate you from out of pocket costs on catastrophic repairs and make the used machine easier to sell if it still has warranty left on it. The best (and cheapest) time to buy the warranty is when placing the order for a new machine. Extensions are always more expensive than adding more time when placing an order on a new machine.

 

This is the number one reason I am staying the hell away from the new ones. At least , with my current model, if it breaks I can replace a CPU or a GPU and keep on going....if I had the same problem I am having right now with my R1 on an R4 and I had no warranty I would have a giant paperweight. I had to remove my GPU to even get the machine to boot when the 780m died, which is not an option when the chip is soldered to the damn bored.

As much as I stay out of the hate trains on certain brands, the logic with this BGA crap that everyone is going to escapes me completely. The only thought process I can even speculate on is the BGA boards must be cheaper to produce because everyone is jumping ship for them.

It is a pretty well known fact that Alienware likes to replace motherboards like they are going out of style. It is one of the first things they will pull if they can't narrow down the problem with a tech support call, and that scares the hell out of me. The cost of my board right now on eBay is $320 CAD, with no CPU/GPU, I can't imagine what a board for an R4 would be worth with a soldered on CPU/GPU. The new GPU's alone seem to have pushed the price into the $3k range for some ungodly reason, I mean I know that the new 1070/1080 are supposed to be good but come on....

 

Boards for the previous generation AW15R1 and R2 go for about 300~400usd including all the soldered hardware. They are even less expensive than an replacement MXM board for a GPU. ALso I yet have to see a laptop motherboard die in my entire laptop history of 10 years.

Those old Alienware where great machines, no doubt about it. But they where certainly not the most reliable.

 

And therein lies the problem. You don't sell an unreliable product and then expect people to just suck it up.

There are already a TON of reports of the new machines having a multitude of issues. Overheating right out of the box, light bleed on a horrendous amount of machines and DOA stories...this is NOT how you impress or keep customers.

 

That goes for all brands, If there is 1 percent on faults in a whole batch of thousands. It still becomes around 100 users with problems. These are collected for example just this forum. Making it appear like it is very widespread. But according to statistics after 3 years about 15% of the users had issues with their laptops. Posted these statistics a while back somewhere on this forum. These statistics by the way did not spearate user errors from fabrication errors.

Backlight bleed is a technology problems on which all brands have to deal, overheating isnt widespread as well and fixable etc. The older alienwares weren't the coolest running machines either though.

 

I don't do the brand hate either. Brand is irrelevant to me. I do hate BGA garbage, and if that's all a particular brand offers, then I have no respect for them. I'm just returning the favor, since offering nothing but BGA filth shows they have no respect for their customers, or themselves.

 

Before I curse myself to hell here....(knock on wood)...

M18x R2 has not had a mobo failure
M18x R1 has not had a mobo failure
Alienware 18 did not have a mobo failure (turned out to be GFX card failure...not mobo)
IBM 600E has not had a mobo failure (made in 1998)
Thinkpad X220 tablet has not had a mobo failure

The common thread of all of these? No voltage mods. I do not overvolt, at all, ever. If anything, I try to undervolt and reduce stress wherever possible. I think it helps with longevity.

 

I never touched my voltage or overclocked anything and mine is failing spectacularly as well

It isn't a good feeling to say the least.

Honestly, this is how I am looking at it. Dell/Alienware is allowing you to renew a warranty on a machine that they do not know the status of and lets face it, they are not idiots, they know damn well that people are going to take advantage of that. Dell/Alienware could prevent this from happening if they cared enough about it. Maybe someone on their end agrees that these machines SHOULD be lasting longer so if someone calls in to renew a warranty and are willing to pay for it then they don't care.

 

Regardless. Longest possible warranty is needed more than ever now. Thanks Mr. Azor You know how to make money for Michael Dell!!

 

Companies have their own insurances to cover all that. So when product fails under warranty then insurance will most likely cover most of it. That explains why they take it so calmly when you renew your insurance. In the end customers are paying everything.

 

Just be sure to call in and talk to a few different people. I was offered a quote for $200 for 1 year via email and the first guy I talked to on the phone was over $100 more.

 

I'm not going to speak to the moral or ethics on the original question. But, I will make note of the cost difference between what dell (and other companies) charge for their warranty versus other shops like Microsoft store and Costco.

Don't think for a minute that these guys even Microsoft and Costco aren't making fistful of money from these warranties.

 

There are more then a few people that have called in with a broken machine and Dell/Alienware have offered to extend the warranty to fix it. Wether you personally like it or not even the company will use it to keep people happy.

 

You know, the fact an Alienware is expected to break down 4 times in 3 years on average, and maybe another 3 times in the next 2 years after that, should be why the insurance is so high. They sell you a piece of garbage that cost them maybe 1,000$ for 3,000$ and charged you 2-3 times for recertification and extending warranty, coming up to like an additional 1,000$ total. Then you also used your DFS account with DELL for 29.9% interest compound annually for 84 months, which in the end totalled close to 6,000$ or more...

By the time you paid the last invoice, and the last of the 5 year warranty just ended, your laptop dies again. You rarely used it anyways, because of all the months of downtime you replaced it with a Clevo from Eurocom and have been doing the tough work on that laptop, which cost more, never had down time, and is still upgradeable. Course if you were a lucky M17X-R4 or AW17 owner (First Haswell ones.) You probably are still OKAY with the alienware, but probably will never buy the newer gimmicks anyways.

Man , I can;t wait until oneday DELL/Alienware come out with a modular design again. Heres to hoping.

 

I would love to see some statistics that backs this up. since they state their numbers are very good. the numbers that i saw where 18% after 3 years.

 

Well I was going off my own experience.

18% in three years is horrible. lol

would you get behind the wheel of a car if there was an 18% chance "something goes wrong" while driving it ?

 

Just from my personal experience the failure rates have been pretty high unfortunately.

I started with an M17Xr4 over 4 years ago. RIGHT out of the box the machine was having adaptor not recognised errors but it wasn't every time I turned it on so I just did a restart and it went back to normal and I ignored it for a few months. Eventually it got bad enough that I called support and they shipped me out a new adaptor which fixed up the issue for about another 6 months at which point they decided to do a motherboard swap on the laptop as in their opinion that might be killing the adaptors. They sent a tech who butchered my system , broke more then he fixed and I had to depot service the laptop. When the laptop came back it still wasn't fixed and the LED's were not functioning , at which point they agreed that I should be getting a new laptop. The new laptop came and all was well for about 6 more months and then the adaptor errors returned. When I called back in I was a little less understanding and while I made sure to let the agent know I knew it wasn't his fault, I was pretty pissed that this was happening again. They offered a straight up new system immediately and provided me with the new Alienware 17R1 which was still pretty new at the time. The Alienware 17R1 has been largely trouble free until recently minus a few hard drives that have failed, all in the lat 12 months. About a month ago maybe a little more the GPU went out of this laptop (780m) and instead of blaming Alienware I just sucked it up and bought a new GPU through Woodzstack ( it's working great woodz thanks! ) and after installing it found that the MB was also cooking itself and obviously had a short somewhere. It would still work but it was going to melt itself if I used it for any long period of time. What I presume happened is the short cooked the 780m as there were ZERO warning signs something was wrong. I was playing a game, I went to the bathroom and came back to a dead computer when temps were completely normal. Now I could just keep sinking money into this , but why should I? Should this laptop not have lasted longer then a few years? If you have money to just toss in the trash then i guess you would be fine with just tossing it and buying a new one but personally I am not.
Now I will tell you the story of a colleague who bought an identical machine for himself and one for his wife as they are both gamers. Identical specs to mine minus the 120hz upgrades. His shorted out and actually spewed flames and smoke out the back exactly three days after he got it several years ago. Alienware replaced that one and it has been surprisingly trouble free since. Her's was good until about 1 year ago when the 780m shorted out and cooked the card, blown capacitors clearly visible on the card. So that's three Alienware massive failures in three systems in a very small group of people on the same lineup of laptops...not exactly inspiring numbers.

All the replacements and all the failed parts later I have to say, Alienware support has been great, they ship me parts overnight and always get the problem fixed...BUT why the hell do I need support so often. I am not calling in because Windows has a virus, I am calling in because parts actually physically failed....repeatedly...over and over. I am not even ruling out that all the HDD failures on my machine ( 3 now ) were being caused by something on the MB.


Would I buy Alienware again? Hell no because with the sheer amount of system failures i have experienced and seen on them I don't want to toss my money down the drain, which is exactly what I felt like I did with this laptop before they fixed it again. I don't bounce in and out of threads hating on Alienware...in fact I still try to help people wherever I can, but my personal opinion of them has gone down considerably , especially after seeing this latest launch catastrophe that they have with the 15R3 and 17R4.

 

Unfortunately thats even considered "average" in this industry. HP had a much worse ratio for example.

But it could range all the way from a dead battery to a failed motherboard or something small as a failed harddisk.

It's an older study though https://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf

 

HP is complete and utter garbage. I'm surprised they even make a profit off computers any more, they are total junk. Makes Dell really shine.

 

18% over the life of the laptop, which is what? 3 years? 5 years? I used a Gateway P7811-fx for 8 years and it isn't exactly a premium build, and it is still going strong.

As far as an 18% chance of something going wrong with a car.... I drive a car every day and I use a laptop every day. The cars go to the shop way more often. With an American branded vehicle, there is almost a 100% chance of multiple failures over the life of the vehicle and much worse than 18% even within the 3-yr warranty period (based on my experience with two Fords, two GMs and a Chrysler - actually based on that sample, you'd put failure rate at 100% in the first 3 years, although if you add the two Toyotas I've owned, the failure rate drops to 71% in 3 years... but this isn't a car forum).

So an 18% chance of failure over the life of a laptop doesn't seem so bad.

 

If you follow the HP financials, their PC business is being propped up by their printer and imaging divisions (EDIT: I quit following HP's financials a couple years ago. they might have turned it around since I quit following them, but I doubt it), and has been since they bought Compaq.

 

I have an AW17 RANGER motherboard extra if anyone has issues finding that, and needs it.

 

Dellienwares first AW Echo machines aka early 2015 represent a record in motherboard swap. Only 24 motherboard, distributed to 4 users incl their machines. This is probably a Worldrecord in MB swap I think And, Yeah. Extending your warranty on AW machines is a must!!

 

Anecdotal. again we both dont have the numbers and tens of thousands of laptops are sold. 4 users says nothing.

Also I suspect you are also counting the motherboards that Vickygameboy have swapped. WHich weren't broken of failed. They where throttling which is still a case no one here knows exactly what was causing that still to this day.

 

I just refer to that I counted four people who have had 24 motherboards between their hands (including machines)... All four persons with from 6 MB swap down to only 4 (I have counted only pure damaged components on the MB or hardware that throttle). The record is 6 motherboard replacements as you know... @VICKYGAMEBOY . What is wrong with all these 24 MB... Is not that important. Throttling or not. The problem is that the machines don't work as intended!! You must be agreed that this is a high figures for only 4 people(aka from 6 down to 4 MB swap)

 

No I do not agree. First of all I dont know if any of them messed it up themselves. In that case I could bring the rate down quickly since I had zero motherboard failures in the R1 for example. It is all anecdotal. Also I always suspected that in the end VIckygameboy received the same motherboard over an over. SInce they are probably refurbished in India.

If you can collect at least 50 experiences from 50 individuals you can start talking about statistics to some level. Now simply not. THe onyl motherboard issue I had with an Alienware up until now was the 1.2.12 bios which in the end could be fixed by the user but that was not known at that time.