Current mood:

aggravated

My ongoing Dell saga...
Ongoing for me, but this is the first post about it.... *sigh*

Last week me Dell laptop (an Inspiron 8100, about 2 years old) died. Well, that is, it wouldn't power on (to put it simply).

So, I called Dell Tech Support (I have a 3 year mail in warranty, luckily!). After about a 40 minute call, I was disconnected. This guy called back and he said things were set so I could call Airborn Express and and get my laptop picked up (they ship both directions for free and provide the box).
I called them first thing. Nope, the reference number wasn't in their system yet. They said it usually takes about 4 hours. So, 5 hours later (it was now about 4pm) I called them again. This time they said it normally takes 4-6 hours. But, the?!

So, I called Dell Technical Support. After getting the call center run around, I finally got to tech support. And was disconnected after having been on the phone for about 40 minutes. Now I was getting a bit upset. So, I started hitting them from all angles: chat rooms, forums, etc. I then called again and after another 40 minute call, the Technical Support dude tells me that the first guy was supposed to have done a conference call with Airborne Express on the line. He does this and all is set.

Airborne Express picked up the laptop at about 4pm. That's normally when they come by, so I expected that.

I kept checking the forums for status. Finally, on Monday they Dell forums said my laptop had been received Friday. (Dell's online page has yet to list any sort of support status. That's just no right.) What's worse is they told me to check back near the end of the week. Come Wednesday (that's yesterday) I decided to post for status. About an hour later, my laptop arrived. Whoo hoo!

Or so I thought.

After using it, plugged in, I realized that the batteries weren't charging. I couldn't get them to. Nor could I get it to power for long on just AC power. So, back to Dell I call. The first 30 minute call ended up in a disconnect. The next call ended up with someone that I could understand fairly well and that went through all kinds of things. After all, the motherboard, CPU, heatsink, and keyboard (hey, not complaining!) had been replaced. But by the end, the machine was misbehaving even more. He came to the conclusion that the replacement parts must be defective. !?

Off to Dell my laptop goes. I told the Dell Technical support guy about the conference call thing, and he said they don't do that. But this guy gave me a reference number and, for whatever reason, an account number. I got a third number for Airborne Express (side note: the primary number the first guy told me to use was an adult 800 number... the "oh by the way, if that doesn't work try this one number" was an Airborne Express number) that was much better than the other working one. And this time I was able to schedule immediately. No 4, 4-6, or 24 hour waiting. It just worked.

So, it's back on it's way to Dell. If things are just as fast, I'll get it back again next Wednesday. I sent my AC adapter in this time, though. I hope it comes back. I didn't send my broken CDRW/DVD drive though. They don't seem to ever want to fix it.

Blah!