[rusty baker]

In November my wife spent $1500 for a new laptop with everything. Two weeks later, it quit working. All you can get is a gray screen. She talked to their tech people many times, usually for 2-3 hours at a time. After about a month, they finally agreed to sent new W8 discs.
That didn't work. One of the techs tried to help her with those and determined that the DVD/CD drive doesn't work.
So far, they won't exchange it or let her send it back to them to be fixed.
And it isn't like she is a new customer. Over the last 2 years she had already bought 3 17" laptops w W7 and a $900 camera from them.
She spent another 4 hours on the phone with them over the last 2 days and they finally say that a local tech will be replacing the defective parts and seeing if he can get the OS re downloaded.
At this point, I can't see us ever buying anything from Dell again.
We also have an older laptop and 2 desktops that we bought from them about 5 years ago.
And some of these companies wonder why they are having financial problems.

 

[rossfingal]

Had to deal with Dell products, over the years.

Computers - I'd rather deal with some type of machine, that I can work on.

Proprietary?
No thanks.
Dell is.
Just like "HP", "IBM", "Gateway" - and various, other manuf.
Do you like to spend hours on the phone, with "product support"?!?
(There's an oxymoron"!)

rossfingal

 

[dougp23]

Use a fair amount of Dell in my job. Their tech support is hit or miss. I have got on the phone (really my best experiences have been with online chat with support) with people that are just reading a script of questions, and other times, had someone who just immediately had me trying things I didn't even know where there! And I've been doing tech support for 20 years.

Your wife should complain and ask to have it escalated higher up with a threat like "I need to buy four more of these in the next month, but with this support, Dell won't be on my short list". That might get their attention!

 

[Missouri Bound]

I may be mistaken, but I believe Dell is going to stop the retail line and build privately. Could be they can't keep up with customers at a consumer level. I bought a Toshiba laptop, and service sucked. I've had a couple of HP's and no problem. First one is about 8 years old and needs a battery....that's it's only issue. I like HP, I will stick with HP. Sorry about your bad luck with Dell...they were at the top for a long time, not sure what happened to them.:whistling2:

 

[rusty baker]

I guess you know that HP announced last year that they would no longer be making computers. They dumped all the existing stuff to Walmart and supposedly were selling the name to someone else. At least that is what I read in the financials.

It seems they actually split the personal computer business away from the rest of the company because it wasn't making a profit. Hope that works out for them.

 

[gregzoll]

If she hooks it up to an external monitor, can she get the Windows 8 boot screen? A bad inverter can cause the screen that you are describing. I would send it back and have Dell either fix or replace the unit. No need to play their games and sit on a $1500 boat anchor.

When I was looking at systems for my son, I found a better deal through Toshiba, than I did through HP/Compaq, Dell, Lenovo, etc., for a widescreen, top of the line baseline system, that can run circles around most systems in higher categories.

 

[paintdrying]

This is one of the disadvantages of buying online. I bought an Asus computer that turned out to be total junk. I went back into best buy and got my money back.

 

[bbo]

AMEX works great for these situations. I would dispute the charges if you used a credit card as they sent you a laptop that was non working according to advertisements. I find $$ being withheld tends to get the best service from companies that are known for bad service.

 

[gregzoll]

This is one of the disadvantages of buying online. I bought an Asus computer that turned out to be total junk. I went back into best buy and got my money back.

Sorry, but Asus computers are far from being junk. As for buying online, you actually can score some great deals, that are better than you can find in a store.

For example, it is getting hard to find any networking or computer gear in places like the office stores or Best Buy these days, and going online is able to get you the stuff you need. Even electronics like Blu-Ray players can be scored for a better deal online, than in the store, plus are not budget bottom line models, like you are seeing in the stores.

 

[gregzoll]

AMEX works great for these situations. I would dispute the charges if you used a credit card as they sent you a laptop that was non working according to advertisements. I find $$ being withheld tends to get the best service from companies that are known for bad service.

Also tends to score a black mark against you if you do it for too many times, or do not attempt to do every way of getting the company to settle up.

The problem with talking to Dell, is when you call, you are talking to someone overseas (they are the worst when it comes to outsourcing), and you have to tell them you wish to speak to an U.S. based Technician and file a ticket to have the unit sent back to have it fixed.

Also never take anything to Best Buy or Office Max to have fixed, find a local Mom & Pop shop to do the work.

 

[bbo]

Also tends to score a black mark against you if you do it for too many times, or do not attempt to do every way of getting the company to settle up.

The problem with talking to Dell, is when you call, you are talking to someone overseas (they are the worst when it comes to outsourcing), and you have to tell them you wish to speak to an U.S. based Technician and file a ticket to have the unit sent back to have it fixed.

Also never take anything to Best Buy or Office Max to have fixed, find a local Mom & Pop shop to do the work.

by black mark, what does that mean? I've used the service and my credit rating has has no effect whatsoever from using this service which is advertised as a benefit. I've also used the 90 day protection plan for accidental damage with success with no black mark.

If you cant get a satisfactory resolution from a vendor, payment should not be expected to be completed.

 

[gregzoll]

Every time you contact a credit card company to dispute a charge, or reverse a charge, it leaves a black mark in their system. Amex is the worst when it comes to screwing with people that tend to make too many requests to reverse or dispute charges. They have been known to drop customers, lower your credit available, or even raise your interest rate, etc..

I think in all of my time of having credit cards, I have disputed one charge, and that was due to an ex girlfriend, that purchased something right before we broke up, and I was not going to pay for the item, so had them cancel the charge, and send the bill to her to pay for it.

 

[Bob...]

Build your own!

(ignore the few manufacturer "choose laptop options" links).

 

[RWolff]

Interesting about Dell, because I bought a few used Dell towers on EBay over the last couple of years to use for servers.
My main machine for this now I bought over a year ago on Ebay as a factory refurbished unit directly from Dell, it's a Dell workstation T3400 if I remember, dual core, 8gb of ram.
It was reasonably priced, with a warrantee, it was shipped in OEM packing, in a real OEM computer box, they included a brand new keyboard, mouse, power cable, other cables, manuals, backup install CD. Granted, the keyboard and mouse were the cheapest crap, but it impressed me they sent new ones not someone's old ones!

I replaced the drive with a new WD caviar.

I got rid of the default OS on it and installed openSUSE linux and later switched that to Ubuntu 12.04, installed the mySQl database, mono and other stuff I needed.
The machine runs 24/7 as it has been for over a year, not one issue of any kind has popped up, it's a good solid machine. It is used as a dedicated server for running my OpenSim regions on-line, the software runs from the terminal and uses mono and mySQL, it gets pretty busy at times but has run great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpS4z_BQdK8

I'd definitely buy another Dell workstation, though I'd find one with a little faster processor and betetr specs, and more ram as a general upgrade over what I use.
My main machine is a quad core mac pro, also bought used on Ebay like every other computer I've owned, not one has ever given me a problem and this mac I've had about 3 years or so now, it gets heavy use with lots of stuff running, including the graphics intensive opensim viewer, and is on 24/7.

My only issue is I have 3 machines, 2 on all the time, the 3rd occasionally, and they all have different operating systems which is a real pain to switch back and forth, but thankfully the server doesnt need much tending.

Mac has pretty much reached the end of the line for upgrading, I used to get a newer box on Ebay about every year or 18 months, trying to always double the specs each time, but now about all they have moved up is the NUMBER of cores, the speed, bus speed etc etc haven't increased much at all and it's not worth even buying a used machine right now for the $1000 or so they cost to have one with only marginally more speed, so I might very well build my own hackintosh as the way to upgrade hardware and still run OSX.