Inspiron 5515, failed SSD repair / tech support escalation

I have been a loyal customer of Dell computers since the early 2000s at the latest. I’d always been pleased with their products and technical service, but since purchasing my Inspiron 5515 laptop back in November. I have been treated to a labyrinthian nightmare of technical support, with both Dell and their third-party support partner Unisys, admitting to ignoring my inquiries, and after eight days of zero contact, replacing my 1 TB SSD with a 500 GB SSD.

At the beginning of the New Year, the 1TB SSD which came inside my two-month-old Inspiron laptop had started to fail. There was an intermittent error wherein the system would crash and report the hard drive was not installed. At this point, I called Dell technical support in hopes of simply procuring a replacement SSD under my warranty.

At this point, I’d begin speaking with my case manager Aditya. His first case of action upon remoting into my computer to install a plethora of drivers (none of which were related to the SSD) from the Dell website. Despite my pleas that this was not going to be the right solution, Aditya insisted on installing these drivers. After installing the drivers, the SSD had completely failed upon reboot, with months of data lost. This was all after I’d already asked for a replacement SSD to be mailed so I can complete the repair myself.

Finally, now that my computer was completely inoperable, Aditya agreed to replace the SSD. Except, instead of just mailing it to me, Aditya insisted on setting up an on-site repair through Unisys despite my COVID concerns: I assist my elderly family on a daily basis and prefer not to have strangers in my home for repairs I can complete myself. Again, my concerns were ignored in favor of following a script.

Aditya then scheduled a repair with Unisys. I was thinking it’d be easier from here, but what I have in bold below details the absolute worst experience I have ever had in technical support: 

Dell’s on-site support partner, Unisys, is a company that has declared bankruptcy and should not be operating alongside Dell. I called Unisys three separate times yesterday to ask to speak to my on-site technician, and each time, the same agent Veena would pick up, place me on hold for a short time, and tell me that the on-site technician would call me in 15 minutes.

The THIRD time this happened without a call back, I confronted Veena and asked if she was actually doing any work in the times she put me on hold. She admitted, over recorded line, that no, she did not actually contact my on-site technician or complete any work. After another hour of redirects and hold music, I was actually able to get an email confirmation of my appointment time: the very next day, 8 AM - 5 PM. The lack of a specific time means I had to take an entire day off work myself, again, for a repair I could have completed in 15 minutes if the part had just been mailed to me.

This brings us to today. Eight days since my original call, my agent shows up roughly at noon. I’ve got no complaints about this guy. He’s a hard worker, traveling miles to people’s places to complete his repairs. Only thing, I had a 1 TB SSD before the repair. The part that my case manager Aditya ordered, was a 500 GB SSD. Simply, I’ve been ripped off.

I attempted to reach Dell Tier II support via phone, but upon being told I was being directed, I was hung up on after being on hold for an hour. I emailed Aditya, and the best he could do is say he scheduled a call for tomorrow, again, refusing to specify a time — so I have to call out of work, again. Honestly, at this point, I just want to speak to someone in Tier II or escalations who can assist with this issue. At this rate, I am not considering ever purchasing Dell products for myself or my business ever again.

EDIT: Immediately after this post, I had received a call from Aditya wherein he is escalating this to another team at high priority. Currently awaiting an email confirmation which he advised should be sent within a few hours time. Fingers crossed escalations will be able to take care of this.