I bought a new Dell laptop, Inspiron 17R (5737), Windows® 7 Professional, 64Bit in late May, 2014.
Right at 1st of the year, it started locking up and getting BSODs.
I ran diagnostics, ran 3 different virus scans that didn’t find anything.
I called Dell customer service for the first of many times mid-January. My computer was 7 months old, still well within warranty period.
Generally on every call, the wait just to get to a CS representative was 15 to 20 minutes of my time, going through the robo operator, the staging representative and transfer to a CS department. Several disconnects. Despite asking for a phone number during each call, no one ever called back after a disconnect. I had to start over and put in another 20 minutes to get through to someone. The time commitment involved to deal with Dell is staggering.
I answered the same intro questions at each stage on each call. Despite having an Express Service tag, every time I called I had to start at the very beginning to reach someone who knew nothing about the situation.
Got multiple useless apologies from sincere sounding reps, concerned about improving their service.
I also tried responding to the multiple emails I received from numerous different CS people. Absolutely no knowledge of the situation reflected, just a series of corporate platitudes, seemed designed to just spread my energy further without achieving anything meaningful. Completely useless.
I went through Dell F12 diagnostics with CS that found no hardware problem. They referred me to their software CS, which would have cost me $80 or $90. Instead, I took my computer to a local reputable shop, who investigated the software and found no problems, but did experience lockups and BSODs. Told me to call Dell for a probable hardware problem, since virus and software problems were ruled out.
Dell insisted it was not a hardware problem, that it was a software problem, despite there being no evidence that it was. They leaned heavily toward the problems they weren’t responsible for, no surprise.
Dell advised me to reinstall my operating system and sent me disks to reinstall.
Instead, I took it to a second computer repair guy who looked at the hardware. He quickly found the hard drive was overheating severely, half the memory wasn’t seated properly, and the CD drive worked intermittently. He hooked the CD to another machine and it worked fine.
Called Dell back. CS admitted their diagnostics were “limited”. No kidding. This after a month of CS interaction.
Dell shipped me a box to send my computer in for repair. Another 7-10 days once they get it. They said they’d go over it thoroughly and it would come back “new”. I asked how this wasn’t giving me a refurbished computer when I’d paid for a new one less than a year ago. No satisfactory answer, just happy mouth noises.
Sent off the computer and got it back. The first day I set up my computer with software, got a BSOD and it locked up twice.
So, I’m looking forward to more useless interactions with CS.
Honestly, I’m thinking of walking away from $800 I paid for this piece of junk just to get away from Dell. I’ve lost easily that much of my time and productivity in the last month and a half, now looking at two months. While under warranty, which turns out to be useless.
Hope this helps someone else steer clear. I will certainly never buy a Dell product again.
Right at 1st of the year, it started locking up and getting BSODs.
I ran diagnostics, ran 3 different virus scans that didn’t find anything.
I called Dell customer service for the first of many times mid-January. My computer was 7 months old, still well within warranty period.
Generally on every call, the wait just to get to a CS representative was 15 to 20 minutes of my time, going through the robo operator, the staging representative and transfer to a CS department. Several disconnects. Despite asking for a phone number during each call, no one ever called back after a disconnect. I had to start over and put in another 20 minutes to get through to someone. The time commitment involved to deal with Dell is staggering.
I answered the same intro questions at each stage on each call. Despite having an Express Service tag, every time I called I had to start at the very beginning to reach someone who knew nothing about the situation.
Got multiple useless apologies from sincere sounding reps, concerned about improving their service.
I also tried responding to the multiple emails I received from numerous different CS people. Absolutely no knowledge of the situation reflected, just a series of corporate platitudes, seemed designed to just spread my energy further without achieving anything meaningful. Completely useless.
I went through Dell F12 diagnostics with CS that found no hardware problem. They referred me to their software CS, which would have cost me $80 or $90. Instead, I took my computer to a local reputable shop, who investigated the software and found no problems, but did experience lockups and BSODs. Told me to call Dell for a probable hardware problem, since virus and software problems were ruled out.
Dell insisted it was not a hardware problem, that it was a software problem, despite there being no evidence that it was. They leaned heavily toward the problems they weren’t responsible for, no surprise.
Dell advised me to reinstall my operating system and sent me disks to reinstall.
Instead, I took it to a second computer repair guy who looked at the hardware. He quickly found the hard drive was overheating severely, half the memory wasn’t seated properly, and the CD drive worked intermittently. He hooked the CD to another machine and it worked fine.
Called Dell back. CS admitted their diagnostics were “limited”. No kidding. This after a month of CS interaction.
Dell shipped me a box to send my computer in for repair. Another 7-10 days once they get it. They said they’d go over it thoroughly and it would come back “new”. I asked how this wasn’t giving me a refurbished computer when I’d paid for a new one less than a year ago. No satisfactory answer, just happy mouth noises.
Sent off the computer and got it back. The first day I set up my computer with software, got a BSOD and it locked up twice.
So, I’m looking forward to more useless interactions with CS.
Honestly, I’m thinking of walking away from $800 I paid for this piece of junk just to get away from Dell. I’ve lost easily that much of my time and productivity in the last month and a half, now looking at two months. While under warranty, which turns out to be useless.
Hope this helps someone else steer clear. I will certainly never buy a Dell product again.
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