17 R4, terrible experience, long read

Question

WARNING: Long read, venting. I'm not sure if this is where I put this either, I'm sorry in advance. I'm just terribly frustrated. I've had this laptop for two years, and three months. Purchased on February 14, 2017. The warranty expired on May 16, 2018. I am appalled. I expected a lot out of Dell/Alienware, I've heard horror stories about dealing with this company but I never thought it honestly could be this bad. Since about a year into owning the laptop, I've had constant *HUGE* FPS spikes, had full hardware failure (they had to replace the MOBO and all parts), and the laptop overall runs very shoddy. On lowest settings on most games, I might get 60fps, and even then it's unsteady. I wanted to go over all of the issues I've had with Dell in hopes that somebody from Dell sees this and actually helps me. I've spoken with two supervisors, and a manager. I've wasted about 5 hours on the phone in the past week. Juggled between different departments, spending most of my time on hold. I've been told explicitly 'I'm going to be honest with you sir, nobody is going to help you,' and that is the only honest thing Dell has said to me yet.Since my first tech visits (March 2018), I had 3 total - the first person bricked the entire laptop, the second person told me they 'didn't know' how to work on the laptop outside of working on the keyboard, and the third person called me 5 minutes before my service time to ask me if they could go help someone else instead of me after I had been waiting over a week (I use my laptop for both work and gaming) for service. Once she did finally show up, she advised me that the parts were 'brand new', not refurbished (which I found out two days ago, was incorrect) - and that I did *not* have to worry about re-upping my Warranty, since the job she did would be indefinitely covered. In June of last year I called back to let them know that I was still experiencing inconsistent FPS, and that the laptop was running very slow. I was informed that since I was out of warranty (by approximately one month) that there was nothing they could do for me. I was extremely frustrated and attempted to try to work on it by myself thinking maybe it wasn't hardware related, maybe it was software. (nobody notated this instance, and it keeps being thrown in my face when I call. 'You're calling back XX days after', I've been calling every few months extremely frustrated.) I called back again in October, denied again - 'you have no warranty there's nothing we can do for you', this frustrates me to no end. I absolutely hate that the tech & rep both told me that I wouldn't have to re-up my warranty because at the time I had the money to. I didn't believe that the service repair that was done would be this useless. My girlfriends $400 laptop from Walmart is running better than this laptop. I took a video earlier, it drops to 0FPS and completely freezes for about 2-6 seconds every 3 seconds. Regardless of game, regardless of settings. I've reformatted, reset to factory, I've reinstalled drivers, everything is up to date, most recent BIOS, temp's are *not* running hot, everything appears to be in order, yet the Laptop does not function at a normal performance level. I don't know what to do with this laptop. I've called, requested help, two days ago I called in to the out of warranty department and a supervisor 'Alvaro' spoke to me for a few moments, lied to me and told me it was wrong department after I had been on the phone with his department for an hour and a half, put me on hold for 20 minutes, came back and coughed then hung up on me. No matter who I speak to, I'm mislead, the company has absolutely no communication between departments, nobody speaks to the other, notes are all over the place, nobody has updated my number to the correct number (I've requested this 6 times), and nobody will help me. I feel like after my warranty expired, regardless of the fact that I was lied to and seeked help soon after. They keep advising me somebody tried contacting me after my tech visit, but I had changed my number, and I let them know that as well - it wasn't updated then, either. I've now owned this laptop for 2 years and 3 months, it has been the biggest waste of my money I've ever had, I can't sell it because it's non-functioning, and $2,000+ for a laptop did not come easy to me. If anybody's able to help me with possible fixes, it's completely clean I take care of it, I've updated all drivers, reformatted, it's not overheating, I just cannot figure out why it freezes and doesn't work 99% of the time. And to any Dell representatives that see this, I am severely frustrated with your company. I cannot believe the way I've been treated as your customer. I have been disrespected, I have been lied to, and I have been scammed. Your company does not treat it's customers with any form of respect and I will strongly advise everyone I know to avoid you at all costs. Hopefully I can still be helped. If anyone has suggestions for somebody I could reach out to that will actually help me, I would be thankful for that as well.

DankCool · Answer

Sorry for the extremely late response, but do you happen to have a full specs for your laptop?

It could be the fan profile that dell have it preinstalled in the laptop causing the thermal paste between your internal components and heatsink of the laptop drying extremely fast causing your fps unstable in games.

I tend not to go with gtx 1070 above or rtx 2070 above as they are extremely hot components to cool in a laptop. Or even a core i9.

Regards,

Alienware

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