Mobile Broadband missing in Latitude E4300

Hi!

I have order an Latitude E4300 from the Dell UK Outlet page. Specs seemed to be perfect: SSD, mobile broadband and so on.

Now, that I have received the machine, the mobile broadband add-on is missing. Description said that it has "WWAN" and, because I was still unsure, I actually asked a representative who told me in a chat (lucky I saved this session) that this machine would definitely have mobile broadband.

There is also one piece of plastic missing at the joint of the display, but it doesn't really affect usability of the notebook. Well, I could live with this...

Dell is only offering me a refund (which would be bad, since I will certainly not find another E4300 with these specs) or a discount in price (which would be too less to buy the mobile broadband upgrade). So, I am not happy with either option.

1.) Isn't Dell required to deliver a machine as per their description? In Germany this would be the case, I am not sure about the UK law. Since I assume that the law is similar in both countries, I have actually argumented like this, but the customer support was quite unimpressed.

2.) Does WWAN maybe mean that this machine has a built-in antenna, so all I need to do is to insert the add-on card for mobile broadband?

Your advice is appreciated.

Greetings,
Alex

 

Their offer of a full refund or discount to keep as-is is all that is required. You cannot claim that they did not deliver as promised if you refuse their offer of a refund.

I had a similar issue where I ordered an outlet machine with Vista Ultimate and it shipped with an Ultimate DVD but a Business COA. They would not send an Ultimate COA sticker but offered a refund on the system or a $50 discount (which was the exact amount of the upgrade cost assuming I had bought the machine new). I took the latter.

As to your machine being WWAN ready, that is pretty easy to determine. Pop the bottom cover off and look for antenna wires near where the WWAN card installs. If there are no wires then it is not WWAN-ready. Oh, and if you've got the web cam then you cannot possibly have a WWAN-ready system because the camera occupies the same space as the antennas.

 

Did you have any progress on this issue? I think I have exactly the same problem. my E4200 lacks the built in antennas. So I could insert the Dell 5530 HSDPA card, but it wouldn't really perform well, since there is no antenna to attach.

Well. There are some built in Latitude ON antennas, but I don't know anything about the specs of those