Raymond Camden's Blog Rss

My Day In H(D)ell

10

Posted in Misc | Posted on 08-05-2005 | 1,832 views

If you read my earlier entry, you know I'm fighting a war against Dell today. I spent another hour and a half on the phone with them, and got pushed into the wrong queue for the fifth time. I demanded a manager again. Turns out - one of the major call centers for laptop support had a failuare today.

So I asked the manager why I wasn't told that. Turns out - there are other laptop centers - and I just got "unlucky."

Nice.

So - he took my number and promised I would get a call. He also confirmed that the new battery I got should have added at least an hour to my uptime. Of course, if the problem is with the laptop, it is already out of warranty (I only got a year). I tell ya - I'm this close to buying a Powerbook and forgetting about it.

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Rob Brooks-Bilson said on 08-05-2005 at 6:33 PM #
IBM Laptops. They're relatively light, powerful, extremely durable, and I'm getting around 6hrs battery life.
John Dowdell said on 08-05-2005 at 7:00 PM #
Sorry to hear it, Ray, but you're not alone... there was a lot of traffic on search term "jarvis dell" recently too.
Dave G said on 08-05-2005 at 8:25 PM #
I had similar issues with Dell a year and a half back ordering a computer for my 6 year old son. It took 14 weeks, 22 calls to customer service, and a letter to each person liested on their Investor Relations website, to be delivered (and it was their dumbed-down advertised special). I was told it was back ordered because they were out of ribbon cables...give me a break. I vowed after that to never buy another Dell again and tell as many people that I could to avoid the same fate. The last two machines I've bought were from Alienware and I have been extremely happy. I bought a desktop in December of 2004 and was so happy I bought a laptop 2 months ago (best purchase I ever made next to the motor for my Chopper :)

Go Alienware, you won't be disappointed!
Tariq Ahmed said on 08-05-2005 at 8:52 PM #
Man I'm the supreme hater of Dell laptops. I'm on my 4th Dell laptop; I had 3 die in the first 4mos. The 4th one seems to be lasting for awhile. And my coworkers are all on their non first Dell laptop. They all died within a year. :(
Tariq Ahmed said on 08-05-2005 at 8:52 PM #
^^ Note that these are company paid laptops...so not like I have a choice.
Tom said on 08-05-2005 at 11:55 PM #
Have to say I've had 3 Dell laptops over the last 8 years and never had a problem. All three of those were refurbs too.
Peter Tilbrook said on 08-06-2005 at 4:08 AM #
Glad I went for an Acer it seems. Only had one problem and that was self inflicted (upgrading BIOS).

It's an Aspire 1800 with Pentium 4. Only 60 gig HDD and 512 RAM so they will be upgraded when I can.

Plays Battlefield 2 and Joint Operations well (when I shut down JRun, CFMX, SQL Server etc first of course).
Raymond Camden said on 08-06-2005 at 7:41 AM #
Tom - bare in mind - I'm talking about customer support here. I've had hardware issues (obviously, the battery was sucking), but to be honest, I feel the hardware issues I've had with Dell hardware are 'normal'. Ie, I use the heck out of my machines. Over the last 5 years that I've been on Dell, I feel the problems I've had are normal for my usage.
Bill Rawlinson said on 08-06-2005 at 11:22 AM #
It is odd that you have such bad customer service with them (in my experience). In fact, just this past week in about year four of my laptop I broke the hinge area that holds the lcd panel to the main computer. My extended warranty expired in May 2004.

I called the phone number I had, gave them my service tag number, explained the problem and was forwarded to tech support. I repeated the tag number and problem explaination and was forwarded to 'spare parts' since my warranty was expired.

I repeatd the problem again and the guy told me what part I needed, explained that it would fix my problem, suggested I install it myself instead of hiring a technician, and said the part would be here by tuesday.

So, as long as the part shows up and it actually fixes my problem the resolution only cost me about $40 and 10 minutes of my time.

Maybe I just got lucky, I don't know. But when the machine was under warranty and it was dropped and cracked the case (shoulder strap on bag broke) they sent someone to our office that day to fix it.

Battery life does suck but I think that is as much the nature of a laptop battery and that whole "memory thing". During the day my machine is in a docking station and at night the battery lasts about 1.5 hours. I have two batteries in the system and I doubt one of them holds any charge at all.
Peter Tilbrook said on 08-07-2005 at 4:11 AM #
Further to my comment above however my battery lasts only about one hour. I think correctly conditioning the battery can help - or have a spare at least. Might check with Acer if I can buy a stronger one.

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