Dell complaints

[cawimmer430]

2 weeks ago, my laptop suffered a hard-disk failure. I immediately contacted Dell via hotline. They told me to go online. Fine. I did that. And now they tell me to try their hotline. Eh? Hello? So I register my problem online using my code etc. No response.

After a week and a half of waiting for something to happen, I finally loose my nerves. I'm a college student in London but originally from Germany. I bought my computer in Germany but with the English keyboard and English software. So I get the local school technician to help me out, since he offered it in the first place claiming he has to deal with them alot and knows how to make them respond. To cut a long story short, I was there when he talked to them and could hear everything the Dell operator said. Boy, they sounded like they didn't enjoy their job at all! Very unhelpful (just like when I called them...) asking dumb questions again and again. Unbelieveable.

Eventually, after about 30 minutes of haggling, they tell the school's technician to send me over to them. Excuse me? In the warranty contract, it says "THEY'LL COME TO YOU!" At this point I was loosing faith in Dell and getting really annoyed. After sometime, they agree to send a technician to my school on Friday (today). Well, I just got a call today from Dell saying that their technician hadn't showed up for work and that they could do it Monday morning. WHAT THE F*CK!? I told them that the deal was for Friday since I have no classes. Monday morning I have two classes, one of which is 3 hours long, and in the afternoon, I have a major group project throughout the day. What happened to this "great Dell customer service"? I agreed to Monday and I guess I will have to tell my group about this.

I just don't get it. My warranty is good for Europe, even for the UK, and yet they don't respond, act like total dipshits and have shitty customer service. This is London for Christ's sake! What is Dell London? A two-man shop? One who answers the phone and spits out bullshit and the other a technician who has to service every friggin' Dell in this city!? I'm totally confused here. Dell just doesn't give me the impression that they want to help. I'm glad I have a 3 year warranty, because if I was going to pay for shitty service like this, I'd rather buy a newer computer.

I'm seriously pissed. I depend on this laptop since I am affiliated with two automotive websites who depend on me. I feel like I have received no support from Dell and will never purchase another POS product from them again. Fuck you Dell.

Incidentally, my sister had a Dell laptop which suffered from 6 hard-disk failures in 1 year! 6 HD failures! She now has new Dell laptop and guess what happened? HD failure. I guess this confirms it. Dell = overpriced shitboxes with poor reliability. Fuck you Dell.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Welcome 430. (4:20 was already taken? )

Another sorry tale of Dell's indifference to product and customer support. In fairness, there isn't a website called delltreatedmegreat.com, so we don't know what percentage of customer experiences this represents. From the size of this site though, and the consistency with which stories like this repeat, there's definitely a trend.

Portables harddrives have always been a reliability liability. They're tiny, tinny, flimsy, and subjected to things harddrives don't like. Notebooks don't cool themselves very well to start with, and the HDD is tucked away inside a little compartment with no air circulation at all. In some models, a heavy hand on the palmrest can actually deform the HDD case and frame. Then there's the big bugaboo--dynamic mechanical stress. HDDs REALLY don't like to be moved when they're operating. It generates gyroscopic stresses which have to be resolved by those tiny, tinny parts. Dropping an unmounted HDD onto a hard surface from a height of 1" can be enough to kill it, even if it's NOT running. When it's mounted, it can withstand some shock (the mounting spreads the impact over time, reducing the peak). The closest analogy I can come up with is, a car transmission can withstand some shifting into 'drive' while the car is moving backwards. If the driver makes a habit of this however, it will shorten the life of the transmission compared to if he didn't do it. If a notebook gets plopped onto a tabletop or otherwise tossed about, it will shorten the life of the HDD compared to if it was operated more conservatively. Users of these products aren't typically aware of this, so it's not their "fault" the HDD fails repeatedly. My experience with notebooks is that if this weakness is taken into account, the HDD will perform at an 'average' reliability.

That's much more likely a root cause, than the remote possibility that your sister was shipped 5 bad harddrives one after another.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'