Is Customer Service Alien to Alienware

@ jezzabUK

I'm not pointing the finger at Dell here but more often than not it's all about the money. I'm talking about deceptive business practices. Here in France, and I believe it's the same in the UK, we have a law prohibiting misrepresentation in advertising. Get caught and you get heavily fined!

A simple search online brings up a list of all the companies that have been prosecuted for breach of this law. Strangely enough, the same names come up over and over again and they are paying fines from a few 100k to over a million euros! Who are they? It's the large hyper/supermarket chains and they continue doing it because the fines are a pittance when compared with the profits made from lying to consumers.

Incidentally, the Guardian report you linked to about Dell was from 2008. In those days their service was pretty good. They were at their best when all support was based in Montpellier, France. You got to speak to someone from you own country who had been well trained and really looked after you. It was that kind of service that locked their customers in permanently. Alas, like all the other PC manufacturers, with ever rising costs they succombed to outsourcing which lowered their overheads. The penalty for that is poor communication between support techs and customers, plenty of wasted on-site visits (parts replaced that didn't need replacing), and loss of customer loyalty.

One of the things that infuriates me with Dell support is their policy concerning who owns the case. Nobody does! This means that each time you phone you invariably get a new person and have to waste loads of time explaining the situation over and over again. This should be unnecessary as everything that happened in past calls is supposed to have been logged to your case file. But even so, what needs to happen is that the first tech you are placed in contact with should OWN your case so that all subsequent dealings are always with him/her. That's how we operated at HP which is about the only positive thing I can say for them.

Thanks for the links Cenobitez, even if they weren't really for me. ;)

At least I got a chance to see what other manufacturers are offering.

Personally, I found them all to be rather ugly in comparison with the Alienware and I think the brand name also plays a part in how proud you are of your machine. Therefore an unknown brand isn't going to make anyone jealous.

Your post did make me look further into what the mainstream competition are offering and I was quite amazed to find that many now offer a similar keyboard to the Alienware's. In some cases the competition's version is even better! I was shocked at the beauty of the MSI GT780DXR and its amazing keyboard. Apparently it has a steel reflector plate behind the keyboard which causes the lighting to glow. Looks absolutely stunning!!! A small caveat though: apparently the spec changes depending on which country you are in. On Amazon.co.uk buyers were less than happy and returned their machines because despite all the buttons being there for the keyboard FX and the software being installed, they were not supplied with backlit keyboards.

Toshiba's Qosmio doesn't have a multi-colored backlit keyboard but it still looks dynamite and its sound system allied to Harmann Kardon speakes are to die for! Its feature set leave Alienware in its dust, especially the 3D screen that does not require you to wear glasses although that is only available on the 15.4" screen version at the moment.

The Asus G75VW looks very smart and has a nice design but I hate Asus due to my previous bad experience with them.

Sony have a competent range of VAIO gaming rigs but their color schemes just don't do it for me besides which their largest screen size is 15.4" for the gaming range.

My award for ugliness goes to HP's Envy 17" 3D gaming rig.

In a year from now I will be changing my M17x R2 and despite the beautiful keyboard on the MSI I'm sold on Toshiba's Qosmio. Its feature set is just too mouth-watering for me to consider anything else and who knows, maybe they will add a multi-colored backlit keyboard option by then (current one lights up in red only on the 17.3" X770 model)?

I will put my hands up and admit I was the same way as you. What I really wanted was a Dell Precision M6500 laptop but it was 1000 euros more than the Alienware and I couldn't afford it. Dell didn't want to replace my machine either. Their sales rep tried his best to get me to accept a refund even going so far as saying "Look, while it is possible you could receive a good machine it's also possible you will get another bad one. If that happens you will go down exactly the same route again and perhaps lose a few more months of your production time (I should add I use my Alienware for business purposes). Your best option is to accept the refund and buy something that meets your needs."

I refused. I wanted a working Alienware. I knew that some customers were very satisfied besides which, you cannot run a business selling a product you know to be defective, so I insisted on the replacement and it's actually quite good in many respects although I think the XPS 17" would probably have been a better bet as that comes with JBL speakers. In fact the only real problem I have with it is due to me trying it out as a gaming machine. I repeat, I bought it for business and it performs all my grahics tasks admirably. I never intended using it for gaming. I haven't played games on a computer since the late '90's. But as it is supposedly a gaming rig that got a great review for its performance the temptation was too strong for me and I bought the game The Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim.

That's when I became hooked on gaming again and Dell ruined it for me with their policy of not supporting driver updates beyond 12 months of a product's release date. Even though I received it in March 2011, I have a machine originally released in 2009. Dell says you can only use their own drivers but their last driver update was in 2010. Skyrim, like so many modern games, requires updated drivers in order to run in Crossfire (SLI) mode. Because Dell won't provide updated drivers I can only run the game on a single graphics card. Therefore I'm losing out on the blistering graphics performance the machine was touted as having and cannot run it with HD textures enabled.

Jeremy, the Alienware you receive today will run all the games he throws at it, especially if it's the newly released M17x R4. A year down the road and the story will no longer be the same. Games he buys in the future may run fine on it but maybe they won't. Certainly Dell stack the cards in the favor of "they won't".

Some people here are computer geeks and take the attitude "who cares what Dell says, I'm downloading Nvidia's latest drivers and I will tweak them until they work with my machine!" But how many are capable of doing that? I'm one of those people who, like you, buys something and expects it to run as advertised straight out of the box. Things like ongoing drive support come with the territory and we, as customers, expect Dell to honour their side of the deal. But not only do they refuse, they won't give any reason for this stupid policy!"

Aaaaarrgghhh!!!!

Chris I fully understand the rules. However I would very politely point out that all 3rd partly legalistic or other opinions are in the public domain are properly referenced from internationally respected publications, that any claims I have made about the product have not been challenged and it is here for inspection. I would not publicly post any report on what has been communicated to me by Dell if I was not prepared to swear this in front of whoever it might be necessary to & I was without any evidence to back it up. I don't believe I've violated anyone's privacy & I feel your interpretation of profanity - especially in the hypothetical context it was used - is draconian.

I do, however, recognise you have the rights as posted above and my expectation is that as it makes uncomfortable reading for Dell it will either be edited or deleted.

Couldn't agree more. Thus my reference to teflon. Everybody wants to pass the buck and send me back to Bratislava where I have been told things that are not true, have been spoken to in, how shall I say, customer unfriendly terms, have repeatedly suffered from broken commitments to respond to our communication, plus been informed by them our reasonable requested is not possible. If I was asking Dell to bend space & time then I might have to accept I was being unreasonable. But I'm not. I'm asking them to deliver what we ordered. If we'd spent a few hundred dollars on a low or mid range piece of kit, well, you expect at best some teething problems. However in this case my son has saved up a sum of money  that represents approximately 60% of the average UK family monthly take home income (& despite our problems we are still in the G8), so why shouldn't he expect to receive a that not only lives up to all the advertised hype but actually works when it's unpacked and switched on!

I know I'm repeating myself and I expect everyone involved at Dell would have been happier if I'd thrown a bucket of water over the pile of junk, claimed accidental spillage & got a replacement that way. However for the benefit of the Bratislavan help desk & to improve their customer education, not all customers are like that, not all customers want to open themselves to be described in the same way a described Dell and ultimately, most weirdly, some customers actually want what they ordered!    

from my perspective, Alienware is gaining fat and loosing the race anyway.

If it were my children, I would just convince them that this brand is not as cool as it used to be and that having a powerful AND reliable laptop is what should count most.

If they want some bling factor, I am sure you can buy from another serious gaming brand and customize the case to their liking elsewhere (laser etch, vinyl, engrave... no way you will find someone else with the same laptop).

I am a semi-satified customer myself, satisfied because my M11x works perfect now, unsatisfied because it was really painful to get there.

My next gaming laptop / desktop will never be an Alienware again, I would personnaly take the money and run away as fast as possible.

Good luck with your quest, I hope for the best.

Alienware still not dead, but making good progress to get there.

Thank you all for your shared experiences, advice & support. I would just point out to the moderators of the site that however upset they think I might be I'm actually being quite reasonable by so far sharing my thoughts & experiences either here or via various dell Twitter users. Of course if I am deprived of the opportunity of fully expressing my views & sharing information properly obtained from credible sources on here I will have to consider other ways of making my voice heard.

I got a reply from Dell's Facebook social media support concerning my request for updated video card drivers.

Anyone want to guess what the answer was?

quote*

Your post did make me look further into what the mainstream competition are offering and I was quite amazed to find that many now offer a similar keyboard to the Alienware's. In some cases the competition's version is even better! I was shocked at the beauty of the MSI GT780DXR and its amazing keyboard. Apparently it has a steel reflector plate behind the keyboard which causes the lighting to glow. Looks absolutely stunning!!! A small caveat though: apparently the spec changes depending on which country you are in. On Amazon.co.uk buyers were less than happy and returned their machines because despite all the buttons being there for the keyboard FX and the software being installed, they were not supplied with backlit keyboards.

.. league you know the funny part ..  on this i dont have model off hand(at work atm)  but i got an older msi laptop with a 8600M GS in it its from 2007 and my daughter is now using it... know what the only thing i ever had to do so far on it.. NOTHING (i added a ssd for speed tho)  but original drive is still good upgraded ram is about all its a core2 duo ... odd how i choose to keep this over my criticaly acclaimed M17X :O only thing i can say when someone shows me they got an alienware is ... atleast mine hasent had an issue in 5 years.... how long you going on now 5 hours? 6 hours? no issues.... BAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

I do not understand the comment you have put a couple of posts back ''An engineer coming to the house getting cheap parts from the back of his van and applying them to the system'' you said something along them lines anyway.

First of all I would like to point out that the parts the engineers use are sent out by Dell, they actually show you the box Dell sent the equipment with, in the UK repairs are carried out via a 3rd party company, the guys that fix the machines are not as you describe, in fact they're professionally good, they work with a large amount of Dell computers.

It appears as if your trying to get an representative of Dell to change the stance on not supplying you with an up to date Laptop that is in question. Since you refuse to provide an answer to A. And B. you'll be left with only a engineer to fix the Laptop. I'd also like to point out that most of the team, working for an other company that works on behalf of Dell, don't actually drive vans. :]

Sadly showing an horrible attitude will make the situation worse, My MIO went funny on me, I give Dell one quick phone call, had a quick talk, then the day after calling a guy was sent out to replace the broken MIO, That was an one day phone call and an next day fix.

Machines will sometimes rattle and shake in the box they're shipped in, causing wires to come out, or graphics cards to wiggle out, in this amount of time you've complained, you could have open up the Laptop, and then look to ensure everything is connected as it should be. Sometimes it takes a little self diagnostic to fix problems. People that fix computers are not cowboy builders, they're geeky nerds like all of us that have a passion for computers and handle them with the best of care, I shall only call your act stupid, as the issue could all ready have been solved in as little as a day. Like it or not, sending your Laptop to get fixed in factory conditions is not as safe as getting a guy to come, and watching him over to make sure he does what he's suppose to do. You'd only need to wait a day, yet sending it of to Dell, will take a week.

ive dealt ALOT with dell service tech some are good and i trust them other deserve to be shot  cut into pieces and buried to never touch another computer again, i got in an arguement with one  and was the last time i dealth with one after he damaged my M17X R2 with a simple swapping video card 2., think he was certified form a cracker jack box, i knew more then he did, he bricked the machine,   yet previous person i had i would trust with my life, he set himself up grounded hmself, nice terry cloth on table for all scrathable parts IE screen, keyboard, casing ect,  but this guy was APPLE certified,acer,IBM aka LENOVO, HP and worked for unisys(dell 3rd party) and i knew he was since i bought parts for desktop were he worked .....although he never touched an alienware yet and even admitted it , but had a very detailed teardown guide from dell which i seen MAN it was detailed to the last screw location. and he had worked on my M1530(new mobo) few weeks prior :)  

Parts most of time are certified working or refurb parts. although damage can happen or improper testing/QA dept... every company has issues , some more then others.

issues during shipping with laptops is rare ive yet to see parts come loose since thats the purpose of a laptop.. portability so it has to withstand daily bumps and moving around, and tend to have locks for all connections or screwed down .

it all comes to location and if the person actually likes his job, has a good family life and got some  the night before:O

@ lalapro, with all due respect you are one of the lucky ones. The kind of Dell service you have described is how it used to be until about 2008/9. Since then we have been dealing with a different beast whose primary motive appears to be reducing overheads.

I live in France. The company Dell uses in my area (if you can call it that) for handling on-site repairs has only 1 technician who has to cover 3 departments. The combined surface area of these 3 departments is the size of the whole of the south of England. Is it any wonder that he cannot assure the next-day service Dell's customers have paid for?

Does he know what he is doing? Well he is Microsoft trained but in his own words "Alienware! I have never seen one of these before. The office told me it was an XPS." He did not have a tear down manual and when I asked him if he would like me to download one for him his response was no.

As with 89fordprobee's experience, he then went out about trying to fathom out how to take the laptop apart and in so doing broke the locking tabs off the touch-sensitive panel and scratched the screen. Of course Dell replaced them but that meant a second visit and another 12 days wait as the screen was not in stock. This might have been avoided had he consulted a manual.

It also underlines the importance of having an on-site repair because as has been pointed out, if the lappy had been returned to Dell I would have had no way of knowing what had happened. Furthermore, and I'm not saying that Dell do this, however; when I worked for HP all scratched screens were automatically blamed on the customer making him foot the bill for a replacement. Frankly, it's a risk I wouldn't want to take.

They want to give you a FULL refund. You'd really prefer to accept a replacement product or an alternative from a company that has already angered/ disappointed you and that you no longer trust anyway? Where's the common sense behind that? 
 
Just take your money back and buy a different gaming PC? There's plenty to choose from, probably cheaper in comparison too. Beats throwing tantrums in public imo. If your kid will only accept Alienware and nothing else, then it might be a good idea to have a chat with him about compromise and the fact that it's just a part of life sometimes.  

So DELL had your sons cash for 3 weeks? He saved up patiently for 2 years and now 3 weeks is a big deal? It's not like they stole his money and don't want to give it back. They're more or less begging you to take your money back.  
 
DELL even PM'd you after your first post, why come back here and continue to flood the place with stubbornness and sarcasm? Is that the way you roll or are you just having too much fun sharing?

Hey lalapro

I'm sure most engineers who work directly for Dell or their 3rd party agents are great guys & for all I care they can drive Bugatti Veyrons. The point here is:

Our system was tightly, securely and well packed. There is no reason why the issues might have been caused by the system's transport.

Firstly -I am not going to open the system. I'll probably invalidate the warranty.  

Secondly - Without even getting to the point of having the system up & running there are 2 (not 1) obvious issues

Thirdly - Sensibly, if I could, I would take the full refund, discuss with my son & if he was still sure that was the system he wanted we'd just order another. Absolutely nothing to do with us Dell decided to replace it with a new model during the 1st couple of days of trying to resolve this. Now to get something similar it's going to cost £200 or £300 more.

Fourthly - You have, apparently, not had a similar experience to mine with their customer support desk. If Dell decide a support/help desk member of staff somewhere in Eastern Europe is the only way I can raise an issue/complaint and despite all my attempts to discuss this with somebody more senior with Dell I have been thwarted what do you expect me to do.