Stolen Computer-Need to find Service Tag online

I just went through a horrible experience with Dell earlier this week involving some stolen Laptops.  A person was stopped and arrested with several hundred counterfeit dvd's, and he also had 3 Dell laptops with him.  We had reason to belive they were stolen so we took those as well when he was booked in to the jail.  I spent about 2 hours on the phone with a variety of people from Dell who continued to refer me to other phone numbers, other people, or just simply bounced me back to the main menu queue.  I tried to explain to them that I did not want them to give me the owner's name or other information, but if they would contact the owner and give them my information and ask them to contact me I could give them their comptuers back, but I didn't find anyone who either understood what I wanted, spoke English, or seemed to care.  Several of them referred me to the Dell website to report the comptuers stolen. 

 

After fighting through the phone system for 2 hours I finally got hold of someone who both spoke English and was willing to help.  She said she had never done anything like that before but would give it a shot.  Within 10 minutes she had located 2 of the owners for me and they had emailed or called me so I could get them their compturs back.  I found the 3rd owner the next day.

 

The short point of the story is if you computer gets stolen and the police call Dell trying to get it back to you you're probably never going to get it.  You can report it stolen, but they have no way of providing that information to the police who took the report for your laptop.  One of the laptops I was calling about in fact had been reported stolen through their website but they had no way of finding that our and letting the person know that it had been recovered and they could come pick it up.  I guess they just won't work on one that's reported stolen, but they really won't make any effort at all to get it back to you (with the notable exception of Customer Service person named Jamet that is).

 

We recover stacks of computers every year that we can't find owners for because most people are just not going to spend 2 hours talking to India or Bangledesh trying to find the owner of a computer.  They all get auctioned off eventually, so keep an eye on your local PD's "abaondoned property" auctions.

 

Steve

Thanks for the reply- I already gave up on ever getting it back the minute I knew it was stolen, which is what angered me so much-not the computer, just the info being irreplaceable.

I just thought I'd give it a shot :)

 

 

And this is why I'm so happy I have all my Servers up on Dell's site in my account.

I can log into dell's site and go to "MY ACCOUNT" and "MY SYSTEMS".

There they are, all happily listed, waiting for me to research something about them.

 

If this happened to me, I could supply all the numbers necessary in under an hour.

 

"OFF SITE STORAGE"  I keep a CD with all identification numbers off-site.

 

Paranoia pays off sometimes.

 

Semper Fi

Art