Dell XPS 15 9570 - Tech support stripped screws and wiped hard drive

Where to begin. I'm going to start this post stating that I was a fan of Dell before I started engaging with your companies customer service team. I wasn't even initially that upset my computer died and needed a new motherboard only 5 months after purchasing. I am now, after my experience with your support teams, never recommending dell to anyone I know.

Mid September my XPS 15 9570 failed to start when I pressed the power button. I promptly called tech support and after holding for some time a tech diagnosed the problem as the motherboard after a some short diagnostics. The tech on the phone went ahead and dispatched a local dell tech to come by and make the motherboard replacement in the coming days.

Replacing the motherboard seemed like a pretty drastic repair for a computer that was only 5 months old. If the hardware has established that it could fail after only 5 months and would warrant an entire replacement I concerned that my warranty would be out the next time that the hardware failed. I wanted to speak with someone about a complimentary warranty extension. To keep a long and frustrating saga short, I was passed between departments on the phone for over an hour before coming back full circle to an "operator" who then hung up on me. Ok, fine, ill try your live chat. Again, I made little progress with an agent before I was disconnected. When I reconnected within 2 minutes of being disconnected the new agent told me that the agent I was just speaking with was on break; this made me wonder if they disconnected the session to go on break. The live chat I entered specifically was labeled warranty extension yet the second agent was adamant they could not help and that I should make my case here: https://www.dell.com/support/incidents-online/US/en/19/email/extend-warranty.

On this webpage I made my case and spent close to half an hour documenting my experience and concerns so far. I received an email and a call from an Inside Sales Representative whos name I will not use here. He had no record of my case which I took time documenting on the web form and was basically cold calling me with no context. After reexplaining the situation to him he hung up on me. Luckily, I had his email and his managers email which I used to contact him afterwards. He briefly replied back and said he hung up because it was a waste of both of our time. There has been no further follow up regarding this and I have essentially given up on extending my warranty. I trust dell has recordings of these phone calls and I would encourage your company to review them.

That is only the beginning however because within the next few days the dispatched service tech showed up with my replacement motherboard. After about an hour into the repair he came to me and explained that he stripped three internal screws that were required to complete the repair (pictures attached) and that I would need to mail my computer to nearest depot. The next day the box shows up for mailing my laptop out and I drive across the city to the nearest purolator depot. This is an important bit because with the mailing box came a form that I needed to fill out. On the form I was required to fill out some personal information and describe the problem. One of the last things on the form was box which I could check if I consented the repair depot to reformat my hard drive. I DID NOT CHECK THIS BOX. In fact I wrote NO next to the box. I have personal work on this computer, it his how I make a living,  and I did not see why the hard drive would need to be reformatted to replace the motherboard. At the very least I figured they would reach out to me if this was necessary and offer some sort of back up solution because I could no longer back up the hard drive.

Shortly after the depot received my computer I started receiving emails from an agent with dell warranty support. I have never seen a more insulting use of a copy paste emails. This agent forgot to put their name in the template a couple of times and never addressed any of my concerns, namely the proper replacement of the internally stripped screws.

After a couple of days at the depot I received a call from a tech at the depot asking for some sort of 48 digit reset pin for my hard drive. This caught me off guard because they way they spoke to me it sounded like they had reformatted my hard drive and sounded genuinely surprised when I told them they should not be reformatting my hard drive.

Guess what just showed up in the mail, my laptop - reformatted. I now have lost personal and work data. To top of it off there is also a piece of ram included in the box (not sure where this goes or why its outside the computer) and one of the case screws has been stripped as well (picture attached) which means I cannot check to see this ram belongs inside my computer or if the internally stripped screws have been replaced.

Out of frustration I am here, because if I receive one more copy paste email from the warranty support agent that says "Thank you for choosing Dell!" at the bottom I might lose it. This repair is incomplete, I have more stripped screws, data loss and who knows what else. This was an expensive computer and it is 5 months old, I'm a little bit flabbergasted. Save your money folks, this is a cautionary tale.