Topic: New pc,

[74cb750]

I've been told by Dell that my new pc should be working.
It's not.
SO, in about a week new replacement parts should be here.

Has this ever happened to anyone else?
 
michel

[rhos1355]

Just to make you feel better I have a 4 year old Dell Inspiron Laptop 510m, cost just over £900 when I got it.
Since then I've needed a new hard drive (not entirely Dell's fault) cost £200+ (data retrieval £465!!- guess who didn't back up his hard drive regularly?)and then a new motherboard £310.
You may wonder why I went through the last expenses, but it's like having and old car; oh, I'll just bite the bullet and fix this, then I'll fix that and so on.
So, what am I saying? I'm not entirely enamoured of Dells, especially not of their after-sales service.

[martino1972]

You may wonder why I went through the last expenses, but it's like having and old car; oh, I'll just bite the bullet and fix this, then I'll fix that and so on.

oh,we understand.....we ride honda cb's....

[rhos1355]

Somehow I disagree Martino.
Honda CBs are to be cherished and venerated and install pride and devotion to the owner.
Computers on the other hand are stupid pieces of metal soldered to bits of plastic pretending to be human brains.

[medic09]

Some of the worse customer service we ever experienced was with my wife's Dell laptop.  At one point I logged over 13 hours (!) of calls to them.  Twice it went back to them for diagnostics, and was returned with a little note saying 'we didn't find what's wrong.' We jumped through all sorts of hoops.   At no time did they say 'we'll make it right'.  They strung us along until it finally went in the trash.

All I can say to you is, good luck.

Oh, and now?  The wife has been happily using an IBM laptop (pre-Lenovo days) for years; and I've got a MacBook.

[Inigo Montoya]

It does not matter the brand, they all can have issues. Some of the issues are caused by the maker but others are caused by the hardware. For example, the dell 1525 had a BAD run of hard drives. Certainly not dells fault as they do not make the drives. Now poor functioning OS is a vender issue. They load on too much crap and kill things. With a desktop, I will never buy one prebuilt. I will always build my own. Laptops on the other hand you are kinda stuck with pre built.
I would not be too up on lenovo, Few places service them. At least with dell and hp and most others, you have a local place which can do warranty work.

[fuzzybutt]

i have been the unfortunate owner of a dell laptop for 4 1/2 years. after 4+ years of it overheating and cooking hard drives every year or so and finally melting some cd's that were on the desk, it was replaced. their customer service is the absolute worst i've EVER dealt with and got nowhere until i found the company founders email address and sent him a long message listing all the problems i had. i still have nightmares about my dealings with their customer "service"   now, the inspiron 1525 that replaced the inspiron 1150 i had has been really nice and trouble free.......................so far.

[Inigo Montoya]

Again though, that is a comparatively small company that buys parts and then assembles them by hand. You will ALWAYS get a better machine that way. AND better support as they are not big enough to survive poor service. If I could go that way with a laptop, I would. There are "barebones" laptops but you still are limited to your hardware choices.

[Inigo Montoya]

heffay, be glad you do not have gateway. If you think dell is bad, you haven't seen anything.
In the last year, gateway has had virtually no warranty support. MPC took it over for gateway and went bankrupt because of it.

[Tim.]

I have a Dell laptop at work, and it recently survived me dumping a bottle of water on it.  D630.

For home I build my own.  Most recently with Intel CPU etc.  Dell, Gateway and other 'branded' PC's often have dumbed-down motherboards etc.  For the same or less money you can buy the parts and bolt together your own.  If you can wrench on a CB, you can build a PC.

[myhondas]

Have my one and only Dell at my shop.....& will keep it that way. Have 12 computers at work and three here at home. I have had good luck with the PowerSpec's from Microcenter and some ones that I have put together myself from scratch.

[78CB750CAFE]

I always have and always will build my own desktops, since the day in the early 80's I soldered my Sinclair together.
Pre-built boxes are convenient, and cheaper, but I like to get JUST what I need, have the ability to upgrade (most pre built machines are limited in that respect) and use only good quality components.
My computer I built in 2002 finally bit the dust last week due to a rootkit my wife clicked her way into on Facebook.... FRIED my motherboard by planting itself in my BIOS and replicating itself even if I put in a clean install on a different hard drive... nasty stuff.

$400 later and a few days of installing hardware and software I have a high power, hand built, expandable machine again..

Asus M3a78T mobo
AMD Phenom 9550 2.8 ghz quad core
650w Antec power supply
2 gigs DDR2 1300 ram

+plus my existing drives and case

Generic mass produced computers and cheap and built to be obsolete in 2 years... don't you think there are enough big old beige boxes filling up our landfills already?

(first post here on my new machine.... been too busy geeking on how fast this dang thing is... I need some new games )

[Inigo Montoya]

BIOS crap like that ends up requiring a flash to remove, possibly bricking the mobo anyways!

[Blasbo]

Dell Gold support has been pretty good IMO. At work we get one day service on user PCs and 4 hour on servers.
On one system I ordered, I forgot to get Gold and had had a problem with it. I called in and spoke to regular Dell support. It was the worst.
But yeah, some systems do arrive DOA.

[Inigo Montoya]

Dell does have good support, if you pay for it. But as you said, it is awesome.

[medic09]

Dell Gold support has been pretty good IMO. At work we get one day service on user PCs and 4 hour on servers.
On one system I ordered, I forgot to get Gold and had had a problem with it. I called in and spoke to regular Dell support. It was the worst.
But yeah, some systems do arrive DOA.

I should NOT have to pay extra to get decent support under warranty.

[Blasbo]

I should NOT have to pay extra to get decent support under warranty.

I agree, but that is the reality of it.

On further reflection though, most of us are willing to pay more for higher quality. (Helmet threads come to mind.) Should support be the same?

[Inigo Montoya]

On further reflection though, most of us are willing to pay more for higher quality. (Helmet threads come to mind.) Should support be the same?

That is exactly it. You shouldn't have to pay so much for that arai but you do. Same for many other areas. Car warranties do that. You can get the basic and then you can pay so much to get more warranty.
There are many areas where a person can elect to pay more to get better service. A hotel comes to mind for that BIG time.

[Blasbo]

The hotel example made my think of another point. If I go to a hotel I expect a minimum of the room being clean, the plumbing working etc. no matter how little I am paying. If I buy a helmet I expect it to meet DOT specs; if I get tech support I expect them to be able to solve my problem; if I buy a PC I expect it to work or if it doesn't I expect them to fix it quicker than a week.
If those minimum expectations are not met then I am disappointed and upset.