Sunday, April 22, 2007

I'll Still Refuse To Trust MSM

Just wanted to post something about my computer before My wife and I leave, as a public service.

It's a Dell Inspiron 6000 that's barely a year old. It was sold as having lots of bells and whistles and on paper it's capabilities are impressive for around $2000. Three days before leaving on a vacation it decided to fail with the AC adapter. It would boot up with the battery but not the cord, and if you plugged the adapter in the screen would go blank. I brought the cord and adapter in to Radio Shack and it tested fine so the machine had malfunctioned. Then I contacted Dell.

Knowing that the chances of getting a customer service agent without a thick accent was slim to none I opted for online chat. After some back and forth the agent said he would send a new motherboard and cord to a repair tech who'd come to my house and install it. He came today. The computer now boots up not at all. Dead. No WiFi for us.

Back to the online chat. The first agent, one Gunjan_143463, wanted me to pull the hard drive. Umm, no That's ridiculously unacceptible to expect customers to do that. One spark, one misstep and you lose big time. Adios Gunjan.

The next agent, one SHAVETA_146442, tried to go the same route as the other person but I stopped him and told him what I wanted. I wanted to take it to a Dell approved repair joint to get fixed in the first big town on our trip. Wouldn't go for it. Imagine that - Dell wants YOU to dig into your rig's insides but won't let you take the time and effort to take it in to a repair shop until, get this - the same incompetent ass that came and trashed my machine today will come back and do it again Two More Times. Then it can go in.

Bottom Line - Screw Dell, folks. I won't see a usable computer for months now, if ever. That vaunted customer service was all a myth anyway. Go with HP.

3 Comments:

Blogger LesleyinNM said...

I had a Dell once, paid extra for the "better" harddrive, that HD died before it was even a year old. I will never buy a Dell again.
Right now I have much cheaper Gateway, 2 years old. It does all the same stuff, the harddrive went crazy awhile back and they totally replaced it for free, with no problem.

22/4/07 8:46 PM  
Blogger nolocontendere said...

Sounds good if I have to replace this current contraption. I think the catchphrase should be ABD - Anything But Dell.

15/5/07 8:05 AM  
Blogger nolocontendere said...

Also Lesley, and anybody else who's interested, I'm about to embark on a further continuation of Dell's customer relation experience and will remark about how efficacious they may or may not be.

16/5/07 1:08 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Cost of the War in Iraq
(JavaScript Error)
To see more details, click here.