Complaint

I've been a long-time supporter of dell and they're products owning multiple PCs within my family (6 pieces) including one Alienware laptop. As a loyal customer of Dell I always recommended to friends and relatives of mine to purchase dell machines for their magnificent quality, support etc. My appreciation of Dell changed when I found myself in need of their help with regards to my Alienware laptop which I had bought barely a year ago for the extravagant amount of 3200 euros.

 

Although it was supposed to be excellent machine- which I bought solely for academic reasons such as “demanding” simulations and programming (F.Y.I.  I have never played a single game in my life)- since the beginning I was getting BSOD for no obvious reason. Contacting Dell in the UK never lead anywhere but in waste of time as the “customer support technicians” never really helped but instead just went over a robotized manuscript requiring you to perform the same steps every single time even when they were able to verify that you had done exactly the same process the previous day. God bless a Greek Dell’s technician was able to realize that the existing issue was owning to “simple” software malfunction of Dell’s Alienware software and fixed; several times; along with similar issues.

 

So everything was fine for a brief (REALLY brief) period before I started facing the same issues all over again. Then I finally decided it was time to format my laptop. That only fixed the problems for a day or so.

 

Fed up (when I finally had some spare time) I started looking into repairing the frequently occurring problems I was constantly facing with my laptop. As such I contacted the department of dell in Greece who as quickly as humanly possible (2 days) sent me the necessary parts they demanded responsible for my problems along with the technician who at the time changed my graphics card along with the motherboard. 

 

Afterwards when I returned to the UK (because I started my PhD) once again I faced BSOD. It was now realised by a Greek dell technician that the cause was the HDD of my machine (keep in mind the same machine also has got an SSD on which the OS is installed).  At that point Ι didn’t know that a torturous way lied ahead of me.

 

Although I was in the UK I firstly contacted the Greek department of Dell which they always seemed to better grasp my problems. They suggested I should perform a few diagnostics and recommended I should then communicate with the corresponding department in the UK. So I handed up with the one department to call the other. The test had only finished when they picked up and a guy (who it is worth saying was nowhere close to fluently speaking English) continuously insisted on re-running the same tests all over again to verify himself (no-idea how) that I had indeed did so. At any case I spent another 2 hours of my life running the same tests until he was finally convinced at which point he finally accepted on sending someone over to replace my HDD. 

 

This took place on Friday the 22nd of January. On Monday 25th of January they sent their “specialized” technician to “repair” my laptop. After two hours of uncertainty and trembling over my laptop he finally managed to put it together and turn it on only to realize that for some unknown reason the keyboard was not working.  Connecting an external keyboard that I had he was now attempting to understand as to why we weren’t able to “see” the connected and new HHD that he had replaced proposing (for reasons unknown and incomprehensible) we should now format the SSD too. After minutes of quarreling I convinced we shouldn’t do so but instead search for the new hardware via the “Disk Management” and so we did and do we resolved this issue. Still for some reason the keyboard was not working. He had failed to mention that for no reason he had replace my motherboard (which I had changed not a month ago) and in the process he short circuited the keyboard by failing to connect the pieces correctly. At that point he announced me he had exceeded the amount of time he could spent with me and told that after communication with Dell he might come the next day. And so my laptop was still not repaired.

 

On the next day (23rd of January) he came again and changed my motherboard, graphics card as well as keyboard. I was only gone 30 minutes when I came back realizing that now my laptop wouldn’t turn on at all. At that point once again he told me he couldn’t spent any more time with me. We called Dell and then arranged for my laptop to be picked up and be sent to Dell’s main office.

 

After 15 days they finally returned it to me just to find out that once again I got BSOD. When I called them on Friday (12th of February) they were now not able to help me any further as my laptop was bought in Greece. At that point I hanged up furious with they told me.

 

I am curious why don’t they respect the money I’ve spent for Dell. Why to make their customers life so difficult? Why their technical team is so inelastic in actually helping Dell’s customers? Why exactly have they not replaced my laptop with a new one after all the problems that I’ve faced? But mainly how can a company such as Dell fail to be able to deliver the high quality services they promise?

 

I would be in great dept to you if you could actually finally help me resolve and finish this agonizing chase of problems constantly arising with regards to my laptop. 

 

Kind regards,

 

An obviously disappointed customer of Dell

 

Gerasimos Politis

 

Service tag