Jerked around for 3 months with broken alienware, no resolution.

I have been struggling with a Alienware M18 R3 I purchased as a Christmas gift to myself last year (well new years but that's irrelevant). Since three months after receiving I was getting the computer heating up to unreasonable levels under mild loads and then shutting down/restarting etc. I troubleshot extensively myself ( I am a computer systems integration engineer) before contacting Dell. At first they said it was drivers, so we did some tweaking on that front (they were all up to date, they removed everything and reinstalled them twice). This seemed to abate it somewhat. I then started experiencing this with increased frequency over the summer. I narrowed it down to one GPU and contacted Dell for replacement in September. Since then I have had multiple onsite repairs, sent it into the Depot, and even sent a letter to the CEO which resulted in a rep from the Advanced Resolution Group contacting me.

That's where things went seriously wrong. At this point I had spent dozens of hours trying to get this resolved, or just following up, to have the issue still present. I had been insulted, mislead, ignored, and every other horrible support experience you can imagine.This rep, whose supposedly the best Dell has to offer for consumer products resolution, was condescending from the outset, and was more intent on 'proving' Dell was the best by quoting sales statistics and refusing to acknowledge the hundreds of posts I'd found with Alienware owners complaining they had GPU cooling/overheat issues, then actually listening to me or resolving the issue. After replacing a 4th graphics card within less then 3 months and still having the issue I contacted him a second time. He acknowledged that the issue was extreme at this point (he still refused to extend the warranty which was my initial request given the instability of the machine) and said he would schedule a replacement.

With a refurbished machine that he refused to guarantee would be in the same physical condition as my current machine (which is immaculate aside from the hardware issues). This is beyond insulting considering how expensive these machines are, however I was (am) at the end of my rope with Dell's support so I told him that if that's all he was willing to do then fine. He also told me the new-ish machine WOULD NOT HAVE A NEW WARRANTY AND WOULD USE THE CLOCK FROM MY CURRENT MACHINE. That is absurd, it felt like Dell was holding me hostage for $300 for the extension. I begrudgingly agreed to let him do that.

After 2 weeks of radio silence I requested an update, as every day without a resolution was increasing both my frustration and decreasing the amount of warranty time I had before having to cough up another 300 bucks. HE THEN RESPONDED TO TELL ME HE WOULD NOT BE REPLACING BUT WANTED TO DO MORE TROUBLESHOOTING!! Further he said, and I quote, "During my absence I had reached out to the NVidia team and I have word from them that the graphics card can shoot up to temperatures of 80 degrees, I would like to set up an appointment with you wherein I can remote in to your system to check the units functionality." I had already sent him photo's of the issue, after one minute on a lightweight benchmark, one GPU spiked to 90-93 degrees celcius AND STAYED THEIR while the other leveled off at about 55 degrees celcius (normal) with max at maybe 69-70. The issue is that after more then 30 minutes of use under a mild load the computer is hot enough to produce burns should you touch it for more then a few seconds, and within 30 or so minutes after that the system will become unstable and crash programs or force a reboot.

This issue has been identified to Dell for over 3 months, they have replaced 4 GPUs, heatsinks, fans, and the motherboard due to this issue. I have sent screenshots, done remote sessions, and repeated the details of the problem to Dell at least ten separate times. And now this joker wants to go back to square one. This is not even covering the fact that I was directed to a hijacking/MitM site by an Alienware rep at one point ( I have shots of the broken certificate and *** URL I was directed to as well as a recording of the call where I asked the agent three times to confirm the URL he read was correct), I had the Advanced Resolution Specialist schedule an emergency troubleshooting session for, and I quote again, "Let’s set up an appointment for tomorrow between 4 to 5:30 PM MST." this was sent Friday at 1pm. I replied to him to ask him to narrow down/confirm date and time. He did not respond and as such I wasted two hours on a saturday due to his lack of accuracy and miscommunication.

I work with Dell on the enterprise side for work, I have to say I am shocked and appalled at how abysmal and incompetent the consumer side is, even among the 'Premium' Alienware group. I am on the verge of filing a complaint with my state *** related to consumer fraud and failure to adequately honor a warranty contract. The kicker? I REALLY wanted to believe in Dell, they have been so responsive and professional on the Ent side when I need to contact them, I assumed that the same professionalism (with longer hold times, because it is consumer) would apply to a personal product. I was so sorely wrong I have gone from recommending colleagues, friends and family by Dell for personal machines to warning them away.

I AM AT MY WITS END.