Miserable Dell experience

[beatle]

As the title says, I've had a bad experience trying to get the warranty on my laptop extended. It's a 700m and I love it, but it's broken twice (bad optical drive, headphone jack fell out) in the past year and even if I were to have done the work myself, parts would have killed me.

I have 3 days left on my warranty now so I called to extend it. Their web based extension is not working for some reason. I told each person my name, service tag, address, and phone number. Each person said they could not help me and that they would transfer me to another department. I started getting pissed after #5 so I started asking for a manager. The first person said they would try to help me first and then get a manager. They couldn't help, so they went to transfer. I went back into the queue and then sent to a menu again. On the 7th person I asked for a manger immediately. They transferred me to someone else (I had to wait a while) and they could actually do warranty extensions, but I don't think they were a manager. They told me it would be $158 to extend my warranty (!!!) When I gasped at this, I asked if that was the only option. I did not hear anything after that. A few seconds passed and I said "Hello? Hello?" There was a click that followed, disconnecting the call.

 

[SLCentral]

Why is $158 so absurd? How much did you think it would cost to extend your warranty?

 

[shoRunner]

how long was the $158 for? you do understand this it will be alot more than you originally paid since your item is older and has a much higher chance of failing.

 

[Trikat]

Uh... Arn't almost all Dell customer service experiences pretty sour? I'm sure a good hand full are decent, but from what I know it is already pretty bad.

 

[beatle]

I paid around $70 for my first year of in-home service. I was expecting it to be less than $100. The $158 was for one additional year.

My other two experiences were miserable, as I had installed a new hard drive and I never could get the Dell utility partition on the new drive. The level 1 techs for my problems were useless as they do not know how to troubleshoot beyond using the built-in utilities.

We use Dell at work and they're great, but I have a feeling the service contract costs more than $158/year. 🙂

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: shoRunner
how long was the $158 for? you do understand this it will be alot more than you originally paid since your item is older and has a much higher chance of failing.

Your logic seems reasonable to me.

 

[thirdlegstump]

Gold technical support FTW. ENGLISH SPEAKERS!

 

[yhelothar]

What I'd do is to get it fixed on your last 3 days of warranty, and immediately sell it as a refurb on ebay or something after you get it back.

 

[Nutdotnet]

Originally posted by: beatle
I paid around $70 for my first year of in-home service. I was expecting it to be less than $100. The $158 was for one additional year.

My other two experiences were miserable, as I had installed a new hard drive and I never could get the Dell utility partition on the new drive. The level 1 techs for my problems were useless as they do not know how to troubleshoot beyond using the built-in utilities.

We use Dell at work and they're great, but I have a feeling the service contract costs more than $158/year. 🙂

Yeah...this is why Dell (and other companies) try to get you to sign up for extended warranties while you are purchasing the computer...

 

[beatle]

My logic was that it shouldn't be exponentially larger, as a two year warranty from the get-go was under $150, IIRC. I just didn't know if I would value the laptop as much as I do. Maybe I should sell it and get a Sony TX. 😀

 

[So]

Originally posted by: beatle
My logic was that it shouldn't be exponentially larger, as a two year warranty from the get-go was under $150, IIRC. I just didn't know if I would value the laptop as much as I do. Maybe I should sell it and get a Sony TX. 😀

From my experience, sonys are even worse on build quality than dell, but they put more mascara on them and charge more. 😛

 

[Powermoloch]

It seems that I'm getting a problem with dell too :roll: although I'm not going to loose hope, I just hate it when they move the shipping date for another week !!!

 

[rezinn]

Buy sony?

 

[simms]

This is why I laugh and tell you to buy a Thinkpad.

 

[fbrdphreak]

If you don't pay for the higher level tech support, it is sh!t with most every PC company.

Or buy a Thinkpad.

😛

 

[amdskip]

Originally posted by: simms
This is why I laugh and tell you to buy a Thinkpad.

Isn't this the truth🙂

 

[GeekDrew]

I was recently quoted $160 for a two-year extension on an Inspiron 6000. I was told that they could not extend it by only one year, and that only two-year extensions were possible.

Originally posted by: simms
This is why I laugh and tell you to buy a Thinkpad.

Except for their tiny screens and high price. I'd love to buy one, save for that. 😛

 

[RKS]

I bought a Dell Inspirion 9200 just over a year ago and a week or so after the Dell warranty expired the headphone jack broke and also killed the connection to the speakers. I also noticed that the backlight was leaking more.

Since I had charged the entire amount on my AMEX I called their customer support and within 2 days I had a pre-paid 2nd Day Air box/packing for some place in Illinois to have the motherboard and lcd replaced at no addition cost.

 

[esun]

Originally posted by: GeekDrew
I was recently quoted $160 for a two-year extension on an Inspiron 6000. I was told that they could not extend it by only one year, and that only two-year extensions were possible.

Originally posted by: simms
This is why I laugh and tell you to buy a Thinkpad.

Except for their tiny screens and high price. I'd love to buy one, save for that. 😛

Okay, high price I can accept, but since when is 15" tiny?

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: esun

Originally posted by: GeekDrew
I was recently quoted $160 for a two-year extension on an Inspiron 6000. I was told that they could not extend it by only one year, and that only two-year extensions were possible.

Originally posted by: simms
This is why I laugh and tell you to buy a Thinkpad.

Except for their tiny screens and high price. I'd love to buy one, save for that. 😛

Okay, high price I can accept, but since when is 15" tiny?

I'm used to having a 15.4" WSXGA+ LCD @ 1680x1050. That seems like a small screen to me... I've been thinking about a 17", but I think I'd have to go to a Dell E1705 / 9400 / 9300 for that, which is somewhat self defeating, if I'm trying to get away from Dell.

Isn't 15" @ 1440x900 the highest that ThinkPads go? I admit that I'm not terribly well versed on ThinkPads yet.

<edit> Just found myself to be very wrong. I guess the T42p and T43p come with 15" UXGA @ 1600x1200...

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: deathkoba
Gold technical support FTW. ENGLISH SPEAKERS!

English speakers who understand "I have a bad hard drive." and "Bad RAM" and "I have an Optiplex GX260 with a bad motherboard. Do you want me to box the whole thing up and you can replace the whole thing, or can you send me a new board and I'll have one of the techs install it here." and it takes an amazing 45 seconds from logging the call to getting a DHL pickup scheduled on their tab.

Not sure if that's gold or not, but it's nice.