BUYER BEWARE: XPS 430s **DO NOT** ship with Digital Cable Support!!??

Dell marketing or product management do not monitor or use these boards. These are user to user help forums. I would suggest if you are dissatisifed that you contact Dell and return the system. You have 21 days from the ship date to return for exchange or full refund.

Please look at the Vista COA label on the back of the unit.  Are there 2 sets of 25 digit product keys (5 x 5 key).  If so, the one on the right should be labeled as digital cable key or something similar.  If you do see this second key then you need to go into Windows and activate that key with your current installation (Sorry - I don't have a Vista machine handy right now so I can't give you more specific instructions right now).

As I said: Buyer beware! I have open support case with an L3 tech, for nearly a week now, with no contact. I even had one support supervisor tell me that he knows for a fact that QAM is not supported by Media Center and tried to make it seem like I was the problem. Well, a trip to microsoft.com set him straight... still no luck finding a SKU for VHP x64 with digital cable support.

I hate to tell you this but the only option you have to get this corrected is for them to send you a new system. They will NOT send you the needed code and your system board has not been setup correctly to accept it. Call them and demand that they send you a new system configured correctly or just return this one and re-order.

I agree -- all roads seem to point to that (needing a special OCUR support key in the BIOS, needing a second license key for digital MCE). HOWEVER, to this point, nobody has offered to replace the system with one configured correctly. My assumption: it's simply not being built in the way we (consumers) expect it to at all at this point.

Thanks for that! Never saw one yet... although I paid for it. :(

I'd keep my system if someone at Dell would take a moment of their time to:

1) Sent me the digital cable support COA sticker

2) Sent me the correct CD-ROM with Windows x64 with Digital Cable Support

3) Sent me the patch to add OCUR support to the XPS 430's BIOS

I've been a customer of Dell's since Pentium 90s came out (and were summarily replaced). Never have I seen Dell so broadly disorganized and customer-unfocused as I have this past week. Anyone looking to buy a high-end computer with the ability to record the modern digital cable TV system that will be in place in February of '09 should, frankly, look elsewhere - DESPITE what the Dell website says. If you see in your cart product code VHP61E or the SKU [420-9132], then run like the wind from the nonsense that I've been through in the past week or you'll live through me vicariously.

Thanks, Dell marketing.

If anyone is interested, here is what the COA with digital cable support looks like (with the good stuff blocked out of course)

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/271271/VistaPremiumLabel.jpg

Glenm201,

Please contact me in a private conversation.  I need the following information to send it up the line -
Name:
Email Address:
Shipping address:
Phone number:
Service tag number:
Reason: XPS 430 ordered with Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium w/ Digital Cable Support SP1 but did not receive the additional 25 digit COA Digital Cable Product key nor was the bios OCUR enabled.

Note - When this occured on the XPS 420, all we could do was have Customer Care issue a system exchange.

UPDATE: A whole lot of nothing came from Dell, I am amazed how poorly Dell treats its customers, even when it's so clearly their mistake. No call from escallation to Level 3 technicians, no call from anyone to make good on the whole experience and offer to configure another system for me. The whole pile went back, and I have a big hole in my desk waiting for a new computer to take its place.

As a CIO and IT director who bought this system through Dell Home privately for personal use, this is one SERIOUSLY bad experience that will make me take my CORPORATE business elsewhere. Hey, if one business unit can treat customers this way, it's not long before the other does. If my friends and relatives can ask me for advice and I used to tell them to buy Dell because of my corporate experience with the company, than the reverse is true -- I can no longer recommend Dell because of my personal experience. I've got 4 Optiplex 755s sitting unopened at work that will be going back on Monday, and I'm not looking back either.

Dell thinks well this is just a lowly home user, so what the hey, send them to technicians and customer service reps with strange accents who have no 7-digit extensions and won't give you their last name, won't call you on your cell phone because it's important enough to you that you gave them your private number (which corporate sales person wouldn't want the CIO's personal number?) and won't reply to emails the same day. Heck, they don't have to get it right every time, it's only one little-guy "consumer," right? Just take it back and walk away, right? 

Well this consumer has some serious buying power besides word of (bad) mouth that every consumer is entitled to. I'd be belly laughing right now at how I'm going to stick it to Dell for sticking it to me if it wasn't for this lousy experience where I lost hours of my valuable time with no compensation and no setting things right.

Hello glenm201, This is not an isolated issue. I too, have been a life long Dell loyal customer. I say life long, because I have purchased Dell systems since Dell went into business.

I have purchased or recommended Dell systems for hundreds of customers, and personally purchased well over several hundred systems for 4 different businesses that I purchase and maintain computer networks and systems for.

I always built my personal systems in order to get exactly what I wanted, since Dell would not.

Just this past year, I decided to purchase a Dell system for personal use.

It was defective right out of the box. Dell has done nothing to resolve the issue, and I still have the defective system.

Dell has lost all my business and the many business associates, friends, family, and others that I have always recommended for them to purchase Dell systems.

Dell does not seem to be concerned about any of this.

Just some confirmation as to the issues you seem to have with Dell.

Thanks for that Hanspuppa. Here's the "resolution" -- they pulled the XPS 430 from the website. I was communicating with this guy Chris Mixon who trolls the forum from corporate communications (PR), who was the only person at Dell to even kind-of follow up and track the case, but he's not tech support or customer service and generally forwards things up.

Chris_Mixon sent you the following message: