Poor service from Dell

[Saga Lout]

And I've toned my language down a long way for my thread title because the original might have landed me in Court. Anyway, I know Dell people stalk this sub-Forum so here's one for you folks!

A Dell Inspiron M5010 - also described as model 5010-5132 and having Service Tag F730TP1 has failed six months after its Warranty expired. It's a known problem causing seven BIOS beeps at boottime and it goes no further. It came to me from a customer and I couldn't fix it as an economical repair and as it was still relatively new, I applied on behalf of my customer for an extension to the Warranty. Four days later, having received no reply, I click the button again and finally sent them a detailed e-mail.

They continue to ignore my requests or give an explanation as to why so here's a bit of bad publicity to try waking them up. Michael Dell would never have allowed this poor service and bad customer relations when I met him a couple of times back in the mid-Nineties so why have they gone downhill so far and so fast?

Wake up Dell- the next bit of bad publicity over this will be a little more public than a post in Tom's.

 

[jackal28]

I have worked on dell's for a long time and the way in which they build their machines and software is ridiculous. Every time I've spoken with someone about Dell they always reply: "I had a dell...once". I understand why people buy them because it seems like a great deal. Just finished fixing my Uncles two Dells he bought for his shop and here is what he got for his money.

CPU:3rd gen CPU i7 (Very respectable CPU)

RAM: I believe it was from Intel(not sure) in a 3 12GB ddr3 stick configuration (should have been a four (16 GB), but given the quality of the ram I'm not sure if it really mattered.)

PSU: 430W not rated, made in Taiwan power supply (really to run a quad i7, a 7770)

Drive: 2TB Seagate (used to be my favorite brand till they merged with Maxtor) (now Seagate drives are one of the Cheapest in terms of quality and money)

Software: Dell uses a restore partition now and for the most part it will not work so that when it fails you have to buy a disk from Dell (another $20) after you have already paid for the Windows license. For the newest machines the Activation code is actually imbedded within the BIOS.

Customer service is awful. It is outsourced and the only time I talked to one, they had no idea what I was talking about and finally actually told me to call Microsoft as they have only had Windows 8 for 6 months and they don't quite understand it yet.

GPU: Radeon 7770 (nice, but why up sell this for a hydraulic company for business)

Cooling: tiny air cooled heatsink, prime95 on regular clock got to 90C in exactly 3 seconds.

Sorry, but the ways in which they up charged him to what he got made me furious. Whatever happened to companies that actually care about their products and customers.

 

[Ubrales]

I try and stay with refurbished products when I consider the Dell brand.

These refurb products are a good value for money, and the tech support is US based; not the arrogant (and semi ignorant) tech people at the call centers in India!

 

[Saga Lout]

Since I put up my post, Dell has e-mailed me - only yesterday, mind - and I have responded. I will post further on this one but the experience of you chaps is interesting to say the least.

 

[Ubrales]

Yes please continue the dialog. Now that Dell has gone private I hope to see some changes. Good changes?

 

[Kisianik]

I am afraid that not all models are that bad. I have still working XPS GEN 3 from 2004 and it is still running strong with minor hiccups, I have Inspiron 570 now, which I upgraded beyond Dell limits and overclocked, and it is still holding, I put so much abuse on this poor Inspiron, but it is still going. I can not say anything about new laptops, old ones were made to last forever.
Dell general support from India is bad, can not say anything, but Dell Community forums are good and people are trying to help each other there as much as possible, I seen miracles there as well (in one case Dell replaced HDD out of warranty, because it was Dells fault in the beginning, and many more).
So I cannot say that all Dell is bad, and everything is bad. I think this is the disease of all huge companies, that is all.

 

[redheat2010]

Beep codes tend to be pretty accurate. Odds are not in you favor, 95% motherboard...5% CPU

Out of warranty repair estimates:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/en/expired_warranty?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&DoNotRedirect=y

 

[Ubrales]

Out of warranty repairs are not cost effective! If possible, self repair is the way to go.

 

[Saga Lout]

I had a mail back three days ago asking me to telephone a certain number but I was abroad and couldn't make the call. Now I'm back, I'll ring them today but I doubt I'll get anywhere. Of course I could fix this myself but my customer would be out of pocket for the parts and it may not be economical - particularly as they've already bought another laptop. A piece of equipment that costs this much should not fail six months out of warranty.

 

[Ubrales]

A couple of years ago Dell had a problem with the Nvidia graphics chipset, and there was a class action lawsuit. As the result of the lawsuit Dell repaired quite a few laptops that were out of warranty. D630 was one of the models.

http://www.techspot.com/news/43614-customers-get-shafted-in-nvidia-class-action-suit.html

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2010/10/nvidia-settles-faulty-processor-suit-dell-hp-compaq-mac.html

 

[redheat2010]

Let me tell you few things that u need to understand about Dell
1) The laptop or desktop that you purchase from dell are preconfigured or configured by a customer according to his needs and the parts that you have in dell systems are the parts that are joined together to create a new system for eg processor will be from either intel or amd (not developed by dell)
2) Because dell is a manufacturer and not a developer he gives a 5 year warranty on every system whereas in your case the warranty purchased on the system was for one year, if you had the warranty the parts would have been replaced.
3)You cannot say it died within 6 months of warranty expiration as its a mechanical part even if you go for a assembled system the parts can still go faulty, Some system do not die for lifetimes some die on the first day of purchase that does not mean system is faulty
4) When anyone purchase a dell system he need to think for what purpose he will be using it for eg a game like crysis 3 customer trying to play on Intel graphics on ultra settings how it will respond.. The same way the issue you had have u checked with the customer before that what he was doing with the system.
So in conclusion I too have a dell with 5 years contract and its working great even if I don't get any issues still its worth the warranty I paid for atleast system is secure for 5 years.

 

[Saga Lout]

Dell finally saw things my way and refurbished their dead machine. Thread now closing.