Dell XPS 15 Support Experience Nightmare

Over the past 20 years, I have purchased over a dozen Dells but my last purchase of a 2019 Dell XPS 15 seems to be the last Dell in our house.

In August 2019 we purchased a new $2K Dell XPS for our daughter to take to college. The issues started in October when it would occasionally overheat and crash. Eventually we decided to call Dell Tech Support and after a number of attempts to get to a live representative, they suggested to run a few diagnostic tests that all came clean without any errors. We were basically told the system was working as expected even though it would overheat and crash every other day. Unfortunately, our return period through Costco had ended and we were stuck with a malfunctioning laptop and clean bill of health from Dell Support. We were left with no choice but to try to address the issue on our own and turned to a solution suggested on this forum. One of the suggestions was to upgrade the BIOS to the latest version which we did and the latest BIOS diagnostic check finally clearly showed a video card fan failure. We took printouts of the errors and called Dell Support again and they finally agreed that it illustrated a system issue and offered a warranty repair.

On December 16th we sent our XPS to the Dell Service Center. The message we then received from Dell Support on Dec 23rd was that the part (video card fan) needed for repair was out of stock and the expected date kept moving past Dec 26th by 2-3 days till they actually got the part on Jan 9th and shipped the laptop back to us on Jan 10th and we finally received it on Jan 14th.

When we opened the box, we saw a few new nicks and scratches on both the front and back lids. What surprised us even more was that they reinstalled the Windows operating system back to the Windows 10 Home edition (even though it was upgraded to Windows 10 Pro at an additional $100). It was also missing all of the preloaded Dell tools and drivers. To be fair yet another Dell Support Tech offered to replace the front cover but we reluctantly decided to leave it as is and not risk yet another “repair” for a non-essential issue we could live with.  But it is beyond my understanding why would they wipe out the OS clean for a fan replacement. We called the Dell Service Center and yet another Dell tech rep tried to explain that “they had to restore it to the original Windows version when it manufactured” and suggested to download all the recent tools and patches on our own. We patiently spent another day downloading all of the recent patches, MS Office, other software and Dell tools. However, some of the tools such as Dell Mobile Connect still were not working.

So my daughter placed yet another call to Dell Support and after another 2-3 hours of troubleshooting yet another Dell Tech rep pronounced the diagnosis that actually prompted me to write this review. Apparently, they installed a “non-Dell Windows 10 image that does not include Dell tools” and it is not covered under Dell warranty since this is a software issue and they now want money for this repair. Did you really get it – Dell Repair service center unnecessary reinstalled XPS laptop with non-Dell Windows image and now want money to fix it!!! This is NOT a response I expected for 5-month $2K laptop that spent close to a month in Dell “Service” hands!!!