Dell's bad service is adding up.

Sorry this had to happen to you. Most, not all, of the in-home Dell techs are not really techs. They have no formal training or degree. For the most part they are just part swappers and don't get paid to trouble shoot..or it would seem.

What you need to do is get a USB drive,format it to be a bootable device and put windows on it. That way you can install windows on your m11. I know you are not able to do this right now but you need to do it asap.

I could also point you to a DL copy of windows but you may play heck trying to install it from the windows desktop environment if you don't know what you are doing. If you decide to do this just send me a PM.

GL

www.maximumpc.com/.../how_install_windows_7_usb_key

Brodes,

Send me a Private Message (click my username, click Send Message) with the following data so I can look into this -
Email Address:
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I had a very similar situation with a service call. I was also a loyal Dell fan for years. Its sad really. I wish you the best of luck mate! You will need it when dealing with the current Dell.

Here in Europe, and I cant see it would be any different in the US, Dell outsource all their on-site tech visits to companies that offer such a service to all manufacturers. This means the tech that comes does not work for Dell, has little to no training on your particular machine, and he does not even have a manual. In the case of Alienware, most have never even seen one before.

They work on the premise that all computers are basically the same, which is true. Therefore they fly by the seat of their pants pulling it apart in the most logical order. You have to watch over them like a hawk as they have a tendancy to not replace all screws when reassembling.

In their defence I would point out that a next day service means that Dell sends them the parts they require by overnight courier. There is no possibility for them to quality control them so it is quite possible that the received parts could be DOA. The Dell warehouse has no way to check them either. It's just an off the shelf and on to repair company exercise.

You might ask why the parts were not checked prior to boxing? Made in China or Taiwan, checked, bounced around during transit, most survive but some won't. Neither of these countries are renown for high quality manfacturing...

In conclusion, many people get the idea that Dell is a gigantic company with support outlets and Dell trained employees based in every city worldwide. That's a total fallacy! They could never afford it and it simply would not be practical. Their outsourcing to local tech firms is the only viable solution and they have no control over who the 3rd party company employs. Such companies are also forced to work within tiny budgets (Dell pays next to nothing for an on-site visit) and this means they hire the cheapest labor available. That's why you often get someone who can't even speak English fluently.

What is good is that such a service actually exists. I had an Asus and no such service was offered. Instead, it had to be sent to their laboratory for repairs with a guarantee I would have it back within 10 days. After a month it finally came back and nothing had been done to it. Needless to say Asus lost me as a customer and I have a very poor opinion of them which I convey to anyone that dares to mention their name to me.

As C_RONIC said, "you will need it when dealing with the current Dell." What he means by that is that those of us who have been loyal to Dell for many years have been used to a far superior service. We always bought Dell because we knew we would be looked after and their products were very reliable. We would recommend them to anyone considering buying a new machine. But that Dell died a couple of years ago.

Today we have a Dell who has transferred the majority of its jobs overseas for lower labor costs and tax advantages. Top notch goods and customer service have been substituted for low cost alternatives. The customer believes this to be motivated by a desire for higher profits. As a businessman, I wonder if that is really the case?

Fierce competition allied to lightning fast development have resulted in retail prices coming down and down yet manufacturing costs have increased. Employee salaries increase too. In fact, every single cost from design, manufacture, boxing, shipping, and service has increased while the retail prices keep on coming down. It's a mission impossible! Something has to break somewhere or the company would simply go under.

Would I buy another Alienware? ---- No.
Would I buy another Dell? ---- Possibly.

It's easy to say Dell are at fault because they are but I have to ask if the grass is truly greener elsewhere? Consider that ALL manufacturers are in the same boat and have been forced to reduce their overheads in order to stay afloat.

There may still be a few smaller outfits operating locally and providing top notch service but don't be surprised if you have to pay double to become their customer.

I refuse to let the in-home techs pull my last few Dell machines apart, after multiple casings was damaged while they tried to leverage it open to replace a graphics card, once even left the keyboard raised up so high it applied pressure to the screen when closed and damaged the screen.

One thing that I've forgiven Dell for, is that in the end they resort to a new replacement and bribery, like people who 'magically' had their replacement machine tricked out with better hard drives, more ram, or fast processors to shut them up or had their m17x R1 replace with an R3 or their R3 with an M18x etc. I can deal with being messed around if I know a golden parachute is coming with the actual fix but this practice seems rarer than the decent support I'm used to from dell.

The local smaller outfit to me, was unable to provide a Dual SLI, Dual HDD, Over-Clockable Laptop, and the warranty they described to me wasn't ideal, and the 'platinum' level which included full replacement after 2nd fail of same fault and after 5 repairs was pretty much 25% of the laptop cost and only 2 years.

I did get for the Malibal Nine (google it) tho, but they pretty much told me UK support was almost none-existent but their machines made me :)

Ok, just another update on this subject for those who are interested.

I've received & installed the new HDD & of course re-installed the OS, drivers, apps, etc again too for the second time to see if this solves the freezing issue. Hasn't frozen yet but after I re-installed Windows the first time it took a few days for the first freeze to happen. So we'll see what happens with this set up. Fingers crossed it's ok, but if it's not I'll be asking for a full swap or refund, I'm tired of this freezing, losing work files, re-installing Windows, etc, but it's not the initial system fault that bothers me too much, it happens to any product, but it's the way which Dell handles it that annoys me..... ok I'll stop whinging now or else I won't stop.

Also just to note, on the Dell downloads page where ya get all the latest up to drivers, apps, etc for re-installs, I placed my service tag # as it asked and it gives me a list of all old R1 files that's not compatible with my R3??? After around 1GB later of downloading the wrong files I realise this and had to start the downloads again with entering the model # instead. If anyone from Dell reads this then I think they should take a look and correct this.

Hey Brodes... I don't know if it could help you but in case it's happening again, I had several issues of freezing computers in the past... desktops, laptops... and one thing that is close to always work for me is to swap around the ram sitcks (give the same sticks different position) I know that sounds crazy but I guess it's worth the try... personnaly I don't trust those ''jack of all trades'' that comes around with next to no knowledge of what exactly is going on in your particuliar case... I always popped the hood on my computer myself... they're not gonna bite you after all... hope it helps!

I find this interesting as the the two companies that have sent tech's my way have always sent very experienced people to switch out my items.  I guess it all depends on who is contracted out in your area....

I think one of the issues is most laptop vendors use modified cases, usually Clevo cases which are fairly standard so if you've pulled one Clevo apart you've pulled a Origin PC apart, an Asus and various others who use that case.

However some companies like Alienware use a custom cast and moulded case which is unusual. However given the number of people with issues, you'd think they'd be experts :P

Cheers Magana for the suggestion, if it does happen again I'll give that a go for sure. And yeh this time I told the tech to leave the equipment with me and I'll do it, which has worked out well so far. BTW just a question, before you swap the RAM sticks is there any prep to do program wise before you do it? As in do you have to make sure they are completely wiped of memory or something similar? Might be a dumb question but I just want to make sure I do it right that's all.

Cheers

As soon as you shutdown computers the ram content is gone... So you don't have to do anything else... I saw on a video a guy pressing the power button after removing the battery probably to drain the capacitors lolll personally I think it's overkill... Make sure you don't wear that wool shirt that day tho... It's no rocket science after all

The pressing the power button after removing the battery is indeed to drain any residual power but its not about clearing the memory its about making sure nothing blows up (or you get a jolt) from the remaining charge.

Ram isn't robust in anyway shape or form, if you touch the chips accidentally and they are charged, you'll probably end up with hi-tech looking ice cream wafer.

Pressing the power button just makes sure there are no charges left in the machine, its unusual for these residuals to cause issues, but when dealing with these sums of money, do you REALLY wanna try your luck ?

To quote Dirty Harry, Well d'ya punk ? :P

Seriously, for the extra 20 seconds its adds to your working time, its not worth the potential hassle :)

Ok this is getting too much. Now I'm getting the blue screen of death, got it 3 times today....... More hours of hunting for the cause of another problem now. I've just about had enough.

 One day People will figure out that alienware is junk, dell is a joke . They sent me a brand new area 51 to replace an xps 600 that was still under warranty, NOTHING BUT JUNK, I tossed it out of a third story window and ordered a new machine from Falcon NW, that was a year ago and I haven't had the first issue with the new machine.

 For the first 3 months they actually phoned me several times just to see if I was satisfied with the purchase, LOL you wont get that from dell. This computer will smoke an alienware without so much as a hiccup.

 Dell don't care if our having trouble, dell don't care if your brand new computer doesn't work right out of the box, they got your money and thats all they care about!