Shoddy, unprofessional, repair work and poor customer care

Dell has scared me away from buying any more $4,000 developer laptops, and for that matter, any Dell product. Two years ago, I bought a Linux developer's edition: Mobile Precision 7720 XCTO BASE. When I got it, the WIFI didn't work due to the wrong driver they installed with Linux. I had to spend several hours of my time researching and installing the correct driver for that Linux OS version. After that, I called Dell and complained. They did give me a few hundred dollars back so I was satisfied. However, the WIFI unit in the system started to fail after several hours of use. Since the WIFI unit worked most of the time and that I could reboot the machine and the WIFI would work again, I didn't want to go through the hassle of sending to repair (even though it was under warranty). I realize now that was a good call.

As a side note, I put in my own $500 1TB SSD drive in the second hard drive bay and had a lot of important data on it (2TB in total). Other than the WIFI unit, everything was working until on a business trip, I dropped my laptop at the airport and broke the power switch. The laptop did boot up sometimes but had some exterior damage and a faulty power circuit. Since I was at the hotel, I decided to call Dell to repair it and that is where the customer service nightmare started. Besides being routed around to offshore customer service reps who seemed clueless, I was able to send off my laptop, after paying for the FedEx box. What I didn't do on my part is remove the second hard drive I put in that had important data. But I did leave very clear written instructions, in the box, to fix only the hardware with their own hard drive inserted and use only their hard drive and software to fix any hardware issues and to put my hard drives back in, intact, when they were done. In essence, leave my hard drives alone. Now, you would think that would mean give me back my computer with all hard drives well connected and BIOS in the current setup. Well, you'd be wrong.

First, the BIOS was incorrectly set to RAID level 0 and I could not boot up into my Linux OS. Then after a while of being scared they blew away my data, I realized that they **bleep** up the BIOS configuration. Once I fixed that, I could boot into my Linux OS. Then I noticed I could not see my second hard drive. Since I didn't have any tools and I didn't want to void any workmanship, I called the offshore *technical* team. The technician just repeated the same words over and over again and didn't want to take the computer back. Finally, he just told me I have permission to open the computer up myself and check if the second hard drive is there and if it is, then connect it myself. Oh, so now I'm a Dell technician!!  No support ticket was put in to take my computer back and I was at a remote location without any tools. The next day, I realized I forgot I didn't need any tools (the *technician* didn't know that), so I just opened the battery compartment and found the second hard drive dangling from the connector and not secured by any screws, or the clip. Now, I want to make clear that I did turn on the computer before shipping it to Dell and both hard drives did work (so they were connected). And it would be highly unlikely that the second hard drive got disconnected in shipping, if it was **bleep** in and clipped in correctly.

Dell basically "repaired" and shipped my computer with a $500 hard drive bumping around in the bay with sensitive data and didn't care about it. They just told me to fix it myself! It could have damaged the hard drive. Without the hard drive properly grounded, it could have blown out sensitive CMOS transistors with static electricity. Unbelievable!  Fortunately, it worked and the data was there. 

Dell has really sunk to new lows from the days of Michael Dell. Now, this will be my last order from them. I don't care to go through the shoddy workmanship  and offshore merry-go-round teams in India and Philippians. Forget it!!