Dell are cheeky sods!
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Soldato
I've had nothing but bad expieriences in terms of build quality and the insistance of their tech support to stick to their script hence I do all their scripted instructions before phoning them the good thing I can say about them is when they do send the techies out with the stuff needed to repair the lappy the techs are extremely quick and efficiant other than that Dell are just problematic hell even speaking to some of their techs they say they wouldn't buy a dell!
Associate
Keep pushing: call up every day and argue with them. I have a lot of experience of this, having bought high-powered dell laptops since ~2006, and had my fair share of problems.
I'd guess the main reason they're being difficult is that they're going to have to issue a replacement laptop, i.e. an alienware m17x, which will cost them a lot of money. I haven't actually bought a dell laptop since my XPS 1640 - the 1645 I had after that, and the L502X I have now were both warranty replacements and I now have a 5 year warranty on my L502X at no extra cost.
I'd guess the main reason they're being difficult is that they're going to have to issue a replacement laptop, i.e. an alienware m17x, which will cost them a lot of money. I haven't actually bought a dell laptop since my XPS 1640 - the 1645 I had after that, and the L502X I have now were both warranty replacements and I now have a 5 year warranty on my L502X at no extra cost.
Soldato
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
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To add a bit of balance, we've got about 50 Dell D620's and D630's and they've been the best laptops we've ever had.
A couple have had the boards replaced out of warranty for the nVidia graphics issue FOC, and one GMA one had a board fail at 4 years old. Dell let me put it on extended onsite service for a year for about £100 and put a service call in 5 mins after taking out the service contract.
The rest of them with the Intel GMA have been faultless. Externally they seem very well put together and the metal cases last well and look tidy for years. I've used my D620 all day every working day and most nights at home for nearly 5 years now and apart from the nVidia issue 12 months ago it's been flawless.
The last batch of Dell desktops we had were terrible though - something like 10 out of 30 developed faults in the first 12 months.
We switched to Lenovo - reviews rave about their build quality but the cases mark like hell and the keys drop off the keyboards, the batteries die to minutes of capacity inside 12 months even without heavy use and we had a couple that for no explainable reason just ran like treacle all the time. It must have been related to the motherboards because when we swapped the discs around the problem remained. That, and getting hold of the things meant we dropped them after 12 months. However, their M57 and M58 desktops have been absolutely fantastic - we've got about 350 of them and bar a few disc failures here and there, and one or two PSU's, they've been no trouble at all.
We're buying Toshiba laptops now. The specs aren't brilliant, they don't offer many with discrete graphics, the Tecra's feel a bit cheap but they have been very reliable up to now and Toshiba will, apparently, give you your money back and repair it if they fail under warranty!
A couple have had the boards replaced out of warranty for the nVidia graphics issue FOC, and one GMA one had a board fail at 4 years old. Dell let me put it on extended onsite service for a year for about £100 and put a service call in 5 mins after taking out the service contract.
The rest of them with the Intel GMA have been faultless. Externally they seem very well put together and the metal cases last well and look tidy for years. I've used my D620 all day every working day and most nights at home for nearly 5 years now and apart from the nVidia issue 12 months ago it's been flawless.
The last batch of Dell desktops we had were terrible though - something like 10 out of 30 developed faults in the first 12 months.
We switched to Lenovo - reviews rave about their build quality but the cases mark like hell and the keys drop off the keyboards, the batteries die to minutes of capacity inside 12 months even without heavy use and we had a couple that for no explainable reason just ran like treacle all the time. It must have been related to the motherboards because when we swapped the discs around the problem remained. That, and getting hold of the things meant we dropped them after 12 months. However, their M57 and M58 desktops have been absolutely fantastic - we've got about 350 of them and bar a few disc failures here and there, and one or two PSU's, they've been no trouble at all.
We're buying Toshiba laptops now. The specs aren't brilliant, they don't offer many with discrete graphics, the Tecra's feel a bit cheap but they have been very reliable up to now and Toshiba will, apparently, give you your money back and repair it if they fail under warranty!
Soldato
My graphics card developed a fault so I contacted Dell to talk about it (0844 number, never realised how much they cost). Many hours later they admit there is an inherent fault and that they would collect the laptop and replace the cards.
So it's been two weeks later and they have returned the laptop. The swines have put just one graphics card as replacment instead of the SLi in it before. Rang them up, got transferred from department to department, eventually to a guy who played really sneaky and was insinuating there was only ever one card in it, etc etc.
Really frustrated. Why could they just not have replaced the cards and just be done?
(Laptop is a M1730 with 8800m GTX SLi (well it did).
/rant.
They'll know exactly what the original laptop was shipped with by the service tag.
This should be fairly easy to resolve.
Welcome to Planet Not Reading Threads Properly .. Population ... you
Soldato
I had a laptop arrive once with a faulthy gfx card, gave them a call and they sent an engineer out next day to replace it.
Incredible service since i was in a caravan park in Wales which is no where near my delivery address!
Incredible service since i was in a caravan park in Wales which is no where near my delivery address!
Soldato
Did you buy it from them or off the back of a lorry ?
I disagree. My company would not have deployed thousands of these globally if they couldn't stand up to travelling etc. The vast majority of the business are client facing and the laptops are present during demonstrations which could lead to the signing of business worth millions of pounds. I simply could not use a ropey laptop to do my job.
Personally, I have had numerous Dell's ranging from high end stuff to Dell minis etc. If there was an inherit flaw running through all Dell products then I would have undoubtedly experienced them.
But hey, it's cool to hate Dell because you can build a computer yourself right?
My mates former workplace got a load of desktop systems from Dell. They came supplied with Windows Vista but they wanted to wipe them and put XP on. He originally tried contacting Dell to get XP drivers. Apparently the call went something like this
Dell: Installing Windows XP on a computer that's made for Vista will destroy the RAM and hard drive.
Mate: Am I talking to Dell computers or Dell agricultural supplies?
In the end he just found all the drivers himself online and imaged every machine to XP.
Dell: Installing Windows XP on a computer that's made for Vista will destroy the RAM and hard drive.
Mate: Am I talking to Dell computers or Dell agricultural supplies?
In the end he just found all the drivers himself online and imaged every machine to XP.
All i can say to that is LOL.
Lol you bought a Dell and didnt listen to me when I said 'Dell suck', and instead continued to insist that Dell are great and theres nothing wrong with them ....
/rant.
(Not the OP personally, but plenty of people I know).
OCUK make pre built PCs, why do people who are capable of using this forum insist on buying crappy Dells, HPs, Compacs or whatever else?
/rant.
(Not the OP personally, but plenty of people I know).
OCUK make pre built PCs, why do people who are capable of using this forum insist on buying crappy Dells, HPs, Compacs or whatever else?
Associate
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- 7 Feb 2009
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Dell are ripoff merchants who install a lot of crap on pre-built machines.
Read up on building your own machine instead.
Read up on building your own machine instead.
Associate
I'm guessing the stuff you have had from Dell is the home user stuff with the Indian call centre/return to base warranty for support.
Dell's enterprise kit is anything but crappy in my (fairly significant) experience with NBD onsite warranty and build quality.
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Associate
I disagree. My company would not have deployed thousands of these globally if they couldn't stand up to travelling etc. The vast majority of the business are client facing and the laptops are present during demonstrations which could lead to the signing of business worth millions of pounds. I simply could not use a ropey laptop to do my job.
Personally, I have had numerous Dell's ranging from high end stuff to Dell minis etc. If there was an inherit flaw running through all Dell products then I would have undoubtedly experienced them.
But hey, it's cool to hate Dell because you can build a computer yourself right?
No, it's "cool to hate dell" when you spend every day calling their tech support to get yet another part replaced because it was faulty on receipt of the laptop. The high end stuff was fine (as you'd expect) but we had no end of problems with their mid range laptops to the extend that we changed suppliers. It was disappointing more then anything because the older laptops never used to be this bad. Like I said, the first batch bought weren't even put together when they shipped them to us! The build quality on the others was pretty bad to say the least. Of course most of our customers would probably say they were fine since they were being sent the ones that were fine when received or that had since had dell out to repair.
One thing I will say is that we rarely had problems getting them fixed. The engineers would always arrive promptly and we never had to send anything off so it wasn't all bad.
Soldato
There are a lot of laptops around that suffer with a well known fault with nvidia chips. I've seen dells, Sony, a lot of Hp's / Compaqs, Packard Bells and even Mac books with the fault. I would argue that the laptop isnt fit for purpose (depending on age) and that dell should be rectifying the issue. The laptop is designed for gaming which it will now struggle a lot more to fit this description because of the lack of the card.
I would be wanting to speak to someone a bit higher up straight away, mentioning http://en.community.dell.com/dell-b...lawsuit-and-limited-warranty-enhancement.aspx and SOGA if you purchased it from them.
Theres a website dedicated to the whole nvidia problem, where a lot of people have had sucess eventually in the laptops fixed / replaced outside of warranty. I would link to the site but it mentions competitors a lot.
I would be wanting to speak to someone a bit higher up straight away, mentioning http://en.community.dell.com/dell-b...lawsuit-and-limited-warranty-enhancement.aspx and SOGA if you purchased it from them.
Theres a website dedicated to the whole nvidia problem, where a lot of people have had sucess eventually in the laptops fixed / replaced outside of warranty. I would link to the site but it mentions competitors a lot.
They ran me finally, and took a REALLY hard line. Said that the issue isn't their problem, accused me of basically stealing the laptop and lying about the specification unless I provide them with an order number (which I don't have).
Not a happy chappy.
Not a happy chappy.
Once you have confirmed ownership of the system, for example the name the system is registered to and the model. Tell them you want to see all the logs for the service tag including all cases. Tell them you want to speak to the team leader or tech lead, tell them specifically that you have received a survey from them and you are ready to fill it out. Let them know that you will score this very negatively unless your issue is resolved. This will usually get the direct attention of the manager on the team. Hope this helps!