UPDATE: I GOT DELL TO SWAP MY 75GXP WITH A 60GXP!!!

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CovertCow

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Jun 5, 2001
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You could try a RAID lvl 5 so if one of your drives fails, you could just rebuild the lost data. It seems as though the IBM 60GXP seems like a logical choice to use for that purpose. I know your having trouble with Dell, but if they wont give you a refund, or they do, you could get what I previously mentioned.
 

crt1530

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2001
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CLARK HOWARD!!! I used to listen to him on the radio before I moved...Good Idea!
 

crt1530

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2001
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I do not have a problem with the hard drives being "refurbished." My beef is with the fact that I keep getting the same model hard drive, which I KNOW is inherently flawed.
 

Passions

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2000
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Things like this happen all the time, boycott Dell just because of it? I think not. They are a great company and my first computer was Dell, mind you it crapped out, and another replacement crapped out, I still think they are the best OEM Computer Co. available. :) Good luck.
 

crt1530

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2001
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OK, new angle. I just talked with yet another Tech Support Representative. After 20+ minutes speaking with him, he referred me to the Customer Care service, who are apparently there to "make me happy." When they open at 8:00AM(it's 5 right now:)) I am going to call and will not stop talking until they send me another model drive. I will not stop calling these people until they give me a different hard drive. Expect a victory speach sometime this afternoon.
 

Miquel

Junior Member
May 16, 2001
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"I called up Dell and after hanging up on two Indian CSR whose English I could not understand"

I think some of his animosity comes from a bit of predjudice. Hanging up on someone is rude and very unprofessional.

Michael
 

crt1530

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2001
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I think it is unprofessional to hire people who cannot speak english well for a job that requires a relatively high level of communication skills. I had an extremely difficult time discerning what those two people were saying. When I cannot understand what somebody is saying, I cannot tell whether or not we are understanding each other. In this situation, clear communication is very important and I was not going to be able to communicate with them effectively. This is not an insult to anyone of any race. I'm sure those people are quite competent. They cannot, however, speak english with a decent level of proficiency. I think that you should stop looking for prejudice everywhere you turn, Miquel.
 

MSNY

Senior member
Oct 29, 1999
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Our company uses DELL also. But at home I've built my own and always will. This is the answer to your problem, though does not solve your current situation. If you can do it yourself, if it breaks you can fix it. Warrenties on indivdiual parts really make it nice. I just had both a keyboard & mouse go bad. Both replaced free from the manufacturer at no cost with a value of
about 100 buks. I've also had 3 NEW hard drives replaced over the years, at no cost.

Due to the layoffs at DELL I'm not suprised at the CS. Our wait times and quality of support has gone down dramatically the last 3 months. Expect more problems. Luckily you picked the best retail vendor, others have even worse service records.

Dump that system and do it yourself !
 

burnedout

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 1999
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I don't work for Dell, Was hired by them and turned the position down. In favor of the job I have now.

Here's my take on a few things.........

My company uses about 60 Dell desktops, 45 Dell notebooks and 2 Dell servers. Since deploying the desktops between January and February of this year, we've had zero hardware problems. The notebooks, deployed in August of last year, have had a total of 6 service calls. 3 for bad screens and 3 for keys which fail to operate after the notebooks have been in continuous operation for more than 1 hour. On all 6 units, Dell sent out a repairman to replace motherboards, keyboards and screens. Next day service. The repairman was good and quick, by the way.

We don't have Premier Access - yet. My company is paying for the online course for myself and my assistant so we can get Premier Access. I have friends in notebook and desktop support and e-mail them during the day on an occassional problem. Can't call them because they are so busy.

On the refurbished components: Dameon, if you are reading this, correct me if I'm wrong. Every now and then Dell dumps components here in Austin. I've managed to get some. Acquaintance of mine had something like 2000 internal zip drives for Inspiron 3000, 3500 and 4000 notebooks.

Each box was labeled REFURBISHED. However, one opens each box and each unit is brand new - with a Dell part number. Saw him with cases of older hard drives. 6.4 and 8.4 GB drives. All the drives were sealed in static bags. The differing factor again was the Dell part number. We call them "infected" because no manufacturer, except Maxtor, will honor the warranty on them.

From what I can gather, Dell had issues with the "refurbished" thing a couple of years ago. Legal litigation. So, even though the drive you receive says refurb, it's more than likely new.

The series of IBM drives you have received was problematic from the manufacturer - IBM.

My best advice to you is this. When calling them up again, ask to speak with a manager after detailing your experience with three bad drives to the tech who takes the call. Describe your problems in a cool, diplomatic manner. Get his/her e-mail address, if you can and send links about this problem. I'm sure the IBM problem is posted on a couple of websites. Anyway, inquire to management about a different brand of drive. They have them in warehouses.

In my opinion, Dell is the best of the PC manufacturers when it comes to support. If I required a large lot of desktops or notebooks for a company, I'd go with Dell. For a small lot of desktops, I'd build them myself.

 

Oxy

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Sep 28, 2000
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I have had Bad experience with Dell too. this is what happened. My monitor suddenly turned dark after talking to Dells customer service they sent me a "new" one No.1 although it turned out to be refurbish. This one was brighter but instead one corner of the screen startred to bubble, like if you drop a stone in the water, now and then. I called again and got another monitor No2. This one was as dark as my first one. Call again and they sent me another one No.3 . This one was bright yellow and now anothet problem occured. If i had an object displayed on the screen a greyish mirror image was displayed little next to it. Now when i called the customer rep said that they they will replace my Geforce video card aswell as sending me another refurbished monitor No.4 and they will send a technichan too. If it still wount be good after that they will replace my monitor with a new one.
The technichan came and installed the videocard. He seamed more or less clueless and had a hard time installing it and couldnt answer any questions i had about my monitors and videocards. Just as he is putting in the card i asked if i could have a look at it. It turned out to be a radeon card. It wasnt mentioned anywhere that instead of my GeForce card i should get a radeon. Anyway he installed the card, took aprox. 2h. This took care of the shaddowing image but this monitor went compleetly black after maybe 1h use. Then if u turned it off you could sometimes could turn it on and it would work for another hour. I called Dell again and explained that i was promissed a new monitor by a customers rep. They said that there was no such note and that they cant send me any new monitor instead they could send me another refurbished one. I was sick after 4 failed refurbished ones and i was promissed a new one. They kept connecting me between diffrent customer reps who all said the same thing. All my calls to dell has gradually all taking longer and longer time. The first maybe 15 min and then the avergae time was meybe 1h calls. This last call took over 2h and my battery on my phone was staring to wear off. I ben talking to customers rep and supervisors and waiting for more superviusors and blablabla. Some of them where really bad/rude and suggested that i lied and made the whole story up one even laughed at me. Finally i was transfed to a special workgroup that could take care of me. I talked to a person with name Mike and explained what happened. He said he would investigate alittle and then call me back.
He never called back so i had to go through the same proceedure the next day again. I dont even want to explain everything again what was said and connecting here and there. Finally i talked to someone after a couple hours could promissed me a new monitor. I finally got it and it was great.
I would definately NOT reccomend anyone to by Dell.
Makes me wonder what the people that repaier refurbished monitors do. I was told that all the refurbished get new plastic to look new and that they will fix the problem that was wrong with them. I think they do change the plastic but of 4 refurbished monitors i got all was bad so my guess is they dont even bother to try fixing them.
Another problem is is that Dell dont do theyr own customer service. They hire subcontractos, i think it was 12 diffrent locations all over america/canada that do the customer service for them.
It seamed that they didnt care much for the customer just worked after their unflexible rules.

BLEH
 

Raspewtin

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 1999
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it sounds like Dell is great as long as you never need to call Technical Support. It seems that's how it is with every manufacturer. I remember Gateway was rediculously bad. I swear sometimes you get better tech support building yourself ;)
 

TuffGuy

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2000
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go micron. ;) whenever i have problems with a component, i receive a replacement within 2 days. free upgrades occasionally as well. :D
 

Von Ribbentrop

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
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If you don't want to spend a lot of money to backup your data(Tape/Raid). You could buy another drive(Cheaper 5400rpm would do just fine) and use Norton Ghost to image your partitians. If it's really important Ghost(2001) gives you the option of burning the image on CD(compressed), which would give you a redundant backup which you could do for at least your primary partitian. I know this doesn't help you now, but if your not backing up, your playing with fire.

 

Macro2

Diamond Member
May 20, 2000
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RE:"I do not have a problem with the hard drives being "refurbished." My beef is with the fact that I keep getting the same model hard drive, which I KNOW is inherently flawed"


What they want to do is keep sending you the same crap HD until you give up and your warranty runs out. After that it's Sorry Charlie!
This is a great EXAMPLE of why you should build your own or just have one built locally.
You know darn well you could order in a 60 GHz yourself and install it but you don't because you don't want to void your useless warranty...so you go around in circles with a headache.
S$ew Dell.

Mac
 

crt1530

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2001
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VICTORY!!!

I just finished my SEVENTH call to Dell a few moments ago. After carefully explaining my situation to a nice woman and asking for a specific hard drive(60GB 60GXP), she put me on hold for several minutes. I explained how this was my third hard drive failure and that all I wanted was a different drive, which I know they sell, and which retails for $60 less than the drive I currently have. When she came back, she said that she had sent me the 60GXP and that it should arrive by Wednesday. This call took a total of 13 minutes. I guess the moral of this story is that when speaking with customer service, BE PERSISTENT. If I had quit early on, I would have had another drive failure and more lost data and frustration.

I take back what I said about Dell in the title. If I ever have the need for a prebuilt system again, I will choose Dell. From my experience, they are a much better than the OEM competition. With all this said, it will be a LONG TIME before I buy an IBM hard drive again.
 

Miquel

Junior Member
May 16, 2001
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<< When I cannot understand what somebody is saying, I cannot tell whether or not we are understanding each other. >>



Now, that's a fair assumption. All you needed to do is ask to speak to someone else because you were not understanding them. I'm sure they would have honored your request. But hanging up on them????

Michael
 
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