Dell complaints

Mele20

I want to buy another hard drive for my XPS 600. I don't know what the hell Dell has done to their Small Business website but it unusuable. It was fine a few months ago but now I get blank boxes for login, can't add anything to a cart, etc. I tried to use the Dell Storage Selector and that gave me text on top of text three deep. I couldn't read a thing. So, then I decided to login. I clicked on that and got a blank box. I had to go directly to Small Business login page to be able to login...couldn't do it from the page I was on. Got logged in and then I clicked on "parts and upgrades for your Dell" and then under my service tag I clicked on "Find More Parts". Each thing I click on takes up to FIVE MINUTES TO LOAD on a cable modem connection at 5ms down. The slowness of the site is worse than if I was on dialup connection.

So, I finally get 5 pages of parts. Not one internal hard drive listed. I did notice with great disbelief that Dell took me first to a page actually wanting to sell me RAM for XPS 600 ... a 2GB stick and I was informed I must buy a pair and the price ...only $1062! The page also informed me that the MAXIMUM amount of memory for XP systems is 2GB! That isn't right unless has Dell done something to their computers so that you cannot add more RAM? XP won't recognize 4GB but it will recognize almost 4GB and definitely will recognize and use 3GB so what is that all about??! This was a diversion because I didn't go there to buy RAM but Dell stuck this in my face and I do plan next year to sell two of the 512MB sticks I now have and add 2 1GB sticks so I have a total of 3GB and I can't believe Dell would say that 2GB is maximum on XP 32 bit.

Anyhow, I looked at all 5 pages of parts for the XPS 600 and no internal hard drives were listed. So, I then went and tried to search all hard drives..I can't use the Storage Selector since it produces the text on top of text. Well, I found maybe 1000 selections and no way to narrow it down to selections for XPS 600 (unless I use the Storage Selector that produces the three deep text on top of text). What a mess Dell has made of their website and here they were claiming when their blog was new that they were fixing their website. Instead, they have made it much worse. Plus, they sure enjoy insulting their customers. I am on Firefox and Dell thinks that only IE exists and expects all their customers to be idiots who like to use an insecure, crappy browser like IE.

I was just intending to probably buy another Samsung 160GB drive. If I buy it elswhere how does that affect my extended warranty? I was going to buy it from Dell unless I found somewhere else with it much cheaper because I wouldn't have any warranty worries as it would be a Dell part. But Dell insults my choice of browsers and that pisses me off. I'm not going to use IE. I know I can call sales but who knows what the hell they will tell me that might not be true. I wanted to buy it on the website so I could print out anything about the warranty, etc.

If this crap of only being allowed to use IE on Dell's site now is an indication of how they are "improving" customer relations ...well.. they are just shooting themselves in the foot. I guess they have had their heads in the sand and don't know how popular Firefox has become. Makes them look really out of it. I recall now that when I renewed the extended warranty and I called on the phone first the customer service person that helped me told me that she hated the fact that Dell had made the new website compatible only with IE. She said she had used Fx and Mozilla as default browser for many years and she hated having to use IE at work. Why in the world would Dell snub Mozilla and all the users who love Firefox with this utterly crappy new website? Tabs don't work right at Dell either. I wonder if IE 7 with tabs even works correctly. Dell really does have a death wish.

diashto · Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 8:24 pm Post subject:

Well, if you were shopping today (Being Black Friday, aka the day after thanksgiving in the US), i can almost guarantee that Dell was having bandwidth issues. Hell, Amazon.com and Walmart.com got burned down with bandwidth today, so i'm not at all surprised to find out that Dell was having bandwidht issues.

Also, there's an extention for Firefox that lets you open an instance of IE inside of firefox, even letting you use windows update.

Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 11:58 am Post subject:

Not only does Dell 'only support IE', they send an instruction to Netscape to shutdown. Not even an error message, just POOF. Ludicrous, when you consider Michael himself owns substantial stock in Redhat. But Microshaft almost undoubtedly pays them per-browser-rejection for favoring IE. No other internet retailer does this, not Amazon, not airlines, not ebay, nobody but Dell.

Adding an aftermarket drive does not affect hardware warranty on the rest of the box. However, if you made a point of telling Support you have added hardware not purchased from Dell, the phone person (desperate to make numbers by getting you off the phone fast) is likely to lie and say your warranty is void. So don't tell them.

Dell also 'improved' their support forum. With my popup blocker on, now the home page is not even an entry to the site (no internal links appear). So I reset my link to an internal page. Whatever impression they were trying to make with the home page, the one they made was "don't bother loading it".

Oh, and I tried to use the phrase "Windows allocates interrupts to suit itself" and the content filter prohibits the use of the word 'suit'. Not much content critical of Dell survives on that site more than 15 minutes, but you can say 'I'm very disappointed in Dell' and they'll let that stand (for the appearance of balance?).
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

HellComputer · Dances with Hate Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 222

Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 7:53 pm Post subject:

Good one, HC. But if you're able to read code, fire up Netscape and capture it yourself. It's been absolutely consistent. Not the 'illegal operation' or blank browser display most incompatible sites generate. Shutdown--not only the browser, but anything branded Netscape.

I haven't looked at the sales site. Only the support sites. And it does the exact same thing every time, shutdown the browser (and anything else branded 'Netscape' that happens to be running). No other site does that. It has to be deliberate.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

Mele20 · Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 8:11 pm Post subject:

You must be kidding! Surely even Dell would not be that stupid to tell Netscape to shut down. What does AOL have to say about that? I don't have the current Netscape because of the horrible EULA or I would try it. I think I will try Opera there and tell Opera to say it is IE and see what happens.

I have a bookmark to the forums so after reading your comments, I decided to see what they are like now for myself. I had no problems getting there on Firefox but I thought for a moment that there was a big fat ad (I use the Proxomitron so I see no ads...although here I usually bypass Proxo so I can support this site by clicking on some of the small ads and I do that for a few other sites that I appreciate) but it was just a graphic.

I had no trouble logging in using Fx but EGADS ...YUCK ...the forum software is awful! I tried to reply to a specific post in a thread on hard drives for the XPS. I was very careful to click on reply by the poster's name and on the page with the reply field, I saw that person's post under the reply box. But when it posted, there was no indication to whom I was replying. I guess you must quote the original post...that makes for a lot of clutter..you don't always need to quote...but it needs to show to whom you are replying!

So, I posted again and complained about the crappy forum software (doesn't even have live links...that is really bad) and I carefully chose the Topic Reply button at the very top of the thread. Hmpf. My own first post showed up under the reply box. So, I was replying to myself supposedly when I thought I would be replying to the OP/thread. Plus, the damn software didn't show me all the posts under the reply box even though I was replying to the OP. That is dumb and irritating.

As for it blocking the word "suit"...that board blocks so many words that it is very difficult to get a post to post. But I didn't know they were blocking that word now! Geeez...Wonder if my criticism of the board software will stand?

I read one thread and replied in it and just that one thread had folks arguing over details about hard drives in the XPS and whether or not there are screws to be removed and where a second drive goes...etc. It was like each person with an XPS had gotten a different manual with different instructions. Mine says to remove the original drive first, place the new drive in the upper bay where the original drive was and then place the original drive in the lower bay. The people in that thread all had different instructions for how to install another hard drive in an XPS. Confusing to say the least.

Yes, I know enough to not tell a tech on the phone that I bought another drive from elsewhere. The advantage to buying from Dell is that it would then be covered by the extended hardware warranty and would also have the manufacturer's warranty.