Dell complaints

[JodyAnn]

We got five CD's that were supposed to fix our Dell Hells, they did NOT fix the problem.

The person hubby talked to that sent the CD's was never heard from again I think they must have fired him for doing real Tech work.

The Better Business Bureau is our friend

[FallenAngel]

When a hardware issue is being met with a software solution - this will never end good.

Send all the CD's you want, it won't help a hardware issue. Actually, not much will fix a hardware issue there these days...not even the hardware department itself. They'll say it's software, despite what your issue is.

[Mele20]

You get what you pay for. I wouldn't expect to get much support or respect if I bought a POS Dell or Emachines or whatever for $300-$400 and, on top of that, I didn't know diddlysquat about a computer. In that situation, I'm asking to be stepped all over. A lot of the problem as I see it is Dell selling something they claim is a computer for $300. For that amount of money you can replace it in a year when it has a problem. Too many people wrongly think that computers are cheap. Good ones aren't but Dell has tried to convince them that the cheapie ones are great. They aren't and they shouldn't be expected to hold up hardware wise either. The Dell customers who have the best reason to be pissed off are those who thought they were buying a quality computer, paid a good price for it, and then it turned out to be made of low quality parts that fail fast. That customer has a lot more reason, and grounds, to be very angry than someone who knew they were buying a POS because of the extremely low price they paid.

As for Dell not supporting XP they can't get out of that because the customer has purchased an OEM version of XP and Dell is legally obligated to support it since that is the deal with Microsoft. Dell certainly may try and pull a lot shit on the customer but here again, in this day and age, don't buy a computer if you don't know anything about them. You'll get screwed over badly. This is Buyer Beware 101. Yeah, it used not be that way. I didn't know much at all about the technical aspects, or hardware aspects, of a computer when I got my first Dell in 99. Back then though, I very carefully chose Dell (everyone here said I was nuts to not buy locally) because I did my research and Dell was way above the other OEMs in terms of excellent tech support which I knew I would need until I could learn which I would do as fast as I could but I would still need some help at first. I thought Dell walked on water back then. I had only one hardware problem on that XPS during the three year warranty and only one since then and it is still working fine at 7 years of age.

A lot of the problems home users have ARE because of spyware and viruses and repeat themselves over and over because the users are not willing to educate themselves in proper prevention. Most of their problems could be solved with one application (BoClean and no I am not affiliated with NSClean and don't get anything for mentioning it and I am not an astroturfer). If Dell was smart they'd put it on home users computers. It prevents trojans, rootkits, spyware. It doesn't take much care and feeding. Just let it run and then you can go to porn sites, gambling, where ever and click on everything you see without first engaging your brain and not get infected and that seems to be what many home users want to do. Dell should also install Firefox on their computers and hide IE and that would cut down tremendously on the support calls for malware infestation.
For that matter, if Dell was smart they would never put McAfee, Norton or TrendMicro on their computers! Rather Kaspersky, NOD32 or Bit Defender which are the top 3 AV currently.

As for all the Dell executives with the gold lined caves obtained by the abandonment of the standards and pride in product that Dell once had, Michael himself has a Billion dollar home going up on the other side of this island (the trillion dollar home he has on Maui wasn't enough). Rather ironic that the first REC supervisor I spoke with last August told me that Dell's position was that no one in Hawaii should own a computer because of the weather here and that Dell was refusing to honor my warranty on the grounds of inhospitable weather here for computers. Yeah...uh huh...he lived to regret that remark.

[FallenAngel]

That last paragraph reminded me of a similar (and somewhat funny) story when I was in hardware. Seems that there was an escalation over a tech dispatch. Turns out that the company wasn't going to honor the warranty for next day onsite because this guy bought it on the main land but lives on an island.

They said it'd be impossible to have it serviced that way as per the contract, so he'd have to get back to an area on the mainland where it could be serviced.

He scoffed and instead offered 'water wings' and directions for the tech.

Still don't remember how that all played out in the end.

[Sgt.Pepper]

[Mele20]

Yeah, next business day where I live (not the island of Oahu) is possible ONLY with FedX. That is because they have two planes coming in directly from the Mainland daily bypassing Honolulu. The other carriers fly to Honolulu and then the item is put on another plane to go to the neighbor islands which makes next business day impossible. I did get my 8300 and the XPS overnight because I specified FedX as the carrier but all replacement parts come via Airborne which means two days or more (usually more).

As for next business day (or second or third) tech to come back in 2000 or 2001 (I forget exactly) a tech had to be flown from Honolulu and he called and said he was so backed up it would be ten days before he could come. Luckily, I had gotten the problem resolved while waiting for him to call. I had second or third busness day in house support with that Dell.

We have a Dell tech right here now. (Super nice guy) who is on the side of the customer. He did service the entire island which was too much (it's big!) but Dell provided another tech a few months ago for the other side of the island. Even so, it is not next day service as he is too busy. And the parts usually take 3-4 days to get here. He schedules the appointment frequently after receiving the parts since you can't completely predict when they will arrive, so it may be a week or more wait for next business day tech service.

I found that even when REC had the part dispatched from Honolulu it took 2 to 5 days to arrive here (only 250 miles) and FedX was good at losing it.

[DellMan]

[pokey3330]

My first HDD failed in about 9 months. But I've had the PC for about 3 years now; so I have a reinstall CD. Guess I got lucky there. In my opinion, these 'recovery partitions' are pretty idiotic.

[Cyberian]

So have they gone back to shipping OS cds with systems by default now or is it because both my new systems are XPS (an M1210 and a 410 desktop, both from Home Outlet)? Both had XPMCE cds in the box.

I know my Dim8400 came with the XPPro cd, and my Inspiron 6000 did also, but the Inspiron 6400 I bought for my sister did not.

NBD service for the LCD (lost the green 15 minutes after 1st boot) on my M1210 was actually 6 days. "Server issue" delayed parts dispatch, BSC tech going out of town for the weekend called and bumped the swap to the next Monday but he did go to my office and fix it without me being there instead of making me take the day off and wait at home for him.

Chat Support India is a royal pain in the ass, cut the canned apologies and practice reading comprehension folks.

XPS phone support from Phoenix was fairly smooth despite being effectively a 3 way call (I can't hear on a phone anymore, my wife translated the call).

The need to fix the "server issue" between the Phoenix call center and parts. I wonder how long it would have gone unnoticed that the LCD hadn't been sent if I hadn't checked online?

[FallenAngel]

Canned responses and apologies come with the territory I'm afraid. I've preached from day 1 that there is a time and need to say sorry, but not every third sentence.

Regrettably, Dell QA sees it different and you are graded harshly if you don't empathize with the customer. Funny too, in that it's Dell ridiculous policies that create the issue that some lowly rep has to apologise for - out of policy to do so.

People don't want sorry. People want issues resolved.

[diashto]

[Mele20]

Disks are sent routinely with the system ONLY if it is an XPS. Sure, I got all the disks with my 8300...but when that was being exchanged in Jan for an XPS and I asked about the disks REC told me that they come with ALL XPS systems but for any other system you have request them and you may have to pay a small fee for them.

Disks are sent with the XPS because those are the only computers from Dell for consumers currently that do NOT have a recovery partition. That is one of the pluses of getting an XPS ...no stupid recovery partition that no one uses as it puts all the garbage that Dell insists on installing back and you have to run the Dell Decrapifier again...plus...there are a million reasons why you need the disk! What if you want to make Kaspersky Rescue disk? You have to have the XP Pro CD to do that ...of course, Dell has messed with XP and stuck extra files in so that Bart's PE Builder won't work to make a KAV rescue disk unless you do a lengthy, convoluted fix...then it will work...won't ever work if you don't have the CD! How could Dell have EVER thought that a recovery partition instead of the CD was a good idea?

[sfcspanky]

[Mele20]

I was trying to make a Kaspersky Rescue disk. The process requires using BartPE and following a Kaspersky wizard. I was not trying to make a copy of the Dell XP Pro reinstallation disk. That I have done. When trying to build the BartPE ISO file many errors are returned and BartPE Builder stops because of too many errors. That file has to be built before I can make the KAV Rescue disk.

The problem was finally narrowed to Dell PCs only and the reason to permissions on a registry key that makes BartPE barf. There is a fix that I haven't tried yet..its sort of convoluted and takes some time I don't have right now but other Dell users say it works.

The fix is in post #87
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?s=ba4d4d5dc6fa83101368084e9c85bd93&showtopic=12917&st=80