Aurora-R6, nothing but problems

Question

Spent around 3,400.00 on the Aurora R6 14 months ago. About 6 months ago systems started failing. After 3 on-site technician visits, and 2 weeks off in the mail I wake up a few weeks later trash again. I keep a paying though. Asked today for support to connect me to a manager to explore my options. I want out. 25 years of computing, having purchased dozens of machines from refurbished Toshiba's to brand new boxes from Sam's Club, Best Buy, NewEgg and the old geeks(dot)com folks. Never in my life have I had so many hardware failures, endless downtime and the constant threat of "sorry we may have to delete everything you have ever done as part of our efforts, blah". I just plugged in a ten year old Toshiba laptop, broken keyboard, complete broken screen, and probably zero remaining working fans. Guess what? It booted right up and here I am. I think I paid 799.00 for the thing at the time. This has continually interrupted my work and caused on two occasions embarrassment to my clients as I have had no access to their latest work as it sits on a very broke, very high end piece of equipment awaiting repairs. What is to be done? Customer support said, we can exchange you for a refurbished or you can keep mailing yours back and forth. These are the only two options. This prompted a google search to find 250 complaints to an agency to the same? A few have succeeded in . To top it all off, I visited the "self-exchange" site one of them sent me to and behold my trade in value for my pc is 300.00. What? Clearly they know something is wrong with this model/their stuff or it would have probably held its value a little better. So 6 months I have been making my 250/mo payments for equipment that doesn't work. They don't want it back. I don't want it. I have already paid almost 3,000 to them for it. Is this just how it is? Anyone have any ideas for getting back into feeling better with Dell/Alien or is the legacy over and the equipment no longer worth the extra hefty price tag? At this moment I am only thinking 1) never again and 2) . Wish there was a #3 that might help turn things around.

First technician: replaced coolant system, pump had stopped working after weeks of going back and forth with support to try things and collect system data and continually send them the screen shots of all the RED #'s talking about help me, I am overheating! Man should I be doing this with it at 180 - 200deg? Yea, it'll be fine.

Second technician: replaced mother board as the system wouldn't simply not turn on or give any diagnostics, didn't have power supply with him, repair didn't help

Third technician: 3rd mother board, 2nd power supply, still nothing works. He says it is all refurbished equipment, tested before sent, but refurbished. Gotta send the machine off by mail.

2 weeks later. Paper says replaced processor, motherboard, power supply and cables.

2 weeks after that. Sorry, no boot sector, check cabling. BIOS review shows 1TB secondary drive but no sign of the on-board SSD. You know the C:\ drive with the boot sectors and most recent work.

ARGHARGHARGHARGH

Sorry whoever is reading this, I needed to vent somewhere, we just don't have the money as a family to have one of our biggest purchases constantly so stressful and it always starts, as today, at the beginning of a 3-day/holiday weekend when I would finally get a chance to work on my stuff. It's about to become a boat anchor.

beamermt79 · Answer

I would do a trade in for a refurb system. I buy refurb systems from Dell exclusively and never had any issues myself.

JamesIq · Answer

Should I push for a different model?  The internet seems to not like this R6 now that it has been out a while.  Do you own one?  In a sense, they have replaced everything in this case, isn't that a 'refurb' ?

speedstep · Answer

You cant buy a car and keep using it for a year then take back to the dealer and get another car. Not sure why you think you can do the same with a computer.

If you have business work on a machine you can buy an optiplex and have onsite service and support but this is not free.

Tesla1856 · Answer

@JamesIq wrote:

This has continually interrupted my work and caused on two occasions embarrassment to my clients as I have had no access to their latest work as it sits on a very broke, very high end piece of equipment awaiting repairs.

I could not imagine running a business with only one computer. Most businesses have at least two (one can be a laptop or tablet). And what's the deal with no external backups?

I'm not sure what your line-of-work is, but for most ... a business-class computer is better suited. For Dell, that is OptiPlex, Latitude, and Precision.

Tesla1856 · Answer

@JamesIq wrote:

The internet seems to not like this R6 now that it has been out a while. Do you own one?

I own a (loaded) Aurora-R6 . After one-year of ownership, I would describe it as "fast and rock-solid". It's one of the nicest computers we currently own.

Sure, it shipped with bad Nvidia drivers pre-installed and the 850w Power-Supply quickly exhibited a bad fan, but all that was taken care of by Dell within the first month-or-so.

JamesIq · Answer

If you pay 40K for a car, and 1 year later all sorts of things beyond your control are falling apart, I imagine you should be able to. And if they discovered for some reason that this was happening to others, I would expect them to come up with a better idea. If they took your car and continued to replace all the new parts, with refurbished parts, and kept doing that, one day you look up and you paid full price, for a used car, and all the challenges that can come from breakdown. If they were unable or unwilling to do so, and apply some bit of "purchased brand new as is" clause, I would expect there to be a dozen NGOs and GOs that would step in to protect one from such a challenging situation.

Having said that, I purchased every possible insurance, and they have come on-site repeatedly as well as had it returned to the factory most recently.

I don't want to be unreasonable but I also want a fair exchange for goods.

JamesIq · Answer

This is fair and useful feedback, I just completed backing up the 1TB second drive, and was headed to do just that with the primary when it unexpectedly failed again, unfortunately, this time the primary drive may be involved in the failure.

I will be migrating my life to the cloud after this and will look at a second machine in the business class of products, thanks. -J

Tesla1856 · Answer

@JamesIq wrote:

If you pay 40K for a car, and 1 year later all sorts of things beyond your control are falling apart, I imagine you should be able to. And if they discovered for some reason that this was happening to others, I would expect them to come up with a better idea. If they took your car and continued to replace all the new parts, with refurbished parts, and kept doing that, one day you look up and you paid full price, for a used car, and all the challenges that can come from breakdown. If they were unable or unwilling to do so, and apply some bit of "purchased brand new as is" clause, I would expect there to be a dozen NGOs and GOs that would step in to protect one from such a challenging situation.

Having said that, I purchased every possible insurance, and they have come on-site repeatedly as well as had it returned to the factory most recently.

I don't want to be unreasonable but I also want a fair exchange for goods.

I've never heard of a vehicle transaction like that, nor have I ever needed that escalation. Maybe because I have been buying new Hondas and Acuras most of my adult life.

In Texas, we have the Lemon Law, but laws vary by state and country.

https://lemonlawnow.com/is-the-lemon-law-just-for-vehicles/

However, it sounds like Dell might be working within the confines of their Extended Warranty Contract. If you feel they are not, I suggest you get a copy and read it. Then, you can ask them why not.

https://www.dell.com/support/incidents-online/us/en/19/email/unresolved

Believe it or not, Dell would rather your computer be working properly, and for you to be satisfied. :Smile:

Alienware Desktops

Aurora-R6, nothing but problems

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