worst customer service ever

Dell,

I am writing this to show my extreme dissatisfaction with my purchase of a dell XPS 15 (9530). This computer is terrible if you are into music production, audio engineering, mixing and mastering ect. I am writing to warn any music producer, or audio engineer to stay away from this product (this writing will explain why later). Not only that, but my experience with dell has been the worst of any costumer service (well dell doesn't even seem to have that) and their technical support has been more than a nightmare.

I have been producing music for 8 years. When I started I bought a dell inspiron 5567. It did all my production needs running ableton and VSTs well. However as I have gotten better a lot of my live sets have around 100 tracks, and running newer VST etc I decided to upgrade.

July 9th – bought XPS 9530. was $1700 but I got it on sale for $1400. I didn't even open it for a couple weeks cause I was finishing up some mixes and masters on dell inspirion. I would like to say I choose a Dell XPS cause I was happy with ho my older dell performed.

Started setting up computer. Got all my VSTs and licenses transferred. Took me about 3 days to do this. When I was done I turned it on and one morning and got the black screen. After calling support they advised RAM needed replace.

Unable to use my computer cause black screen

Aug 7th Tech comes to house and puts RAM in. Does not fix issue.

Aug 9th. Tech comes to house and replaces motherboard.

Start working on music and I start getting audio dropouts and audio glitches.

I never had these issues with my old computer.

I have a focusrite 2i2 and 18i20 for audio interface. Testing both interfaces on all ports, I have the dropouts. My old dell has no issues with the interfaces.

Keep dealing with drop outs but just trying to get stuff done. Cause I have to work on computer. Issues just get worse and worse. I should have contacted focusrite or dell sooner but I was trying to catch up on some things where I couldn't use my computer for a while.

Oct 10th. Contact focusrite and work with them for a couple weeks trying all different usb c ports, drivers, performance settings etc.

cant use computer for intended purpose

Oct 30th - Nov 20 Contact Dell. Around 40 emails. Allow Tech over the phone to change various settings. Run programs like latencymon many times for them etc.

They are unwilling to exchange the computer

cant use my computer for its intended purpose

Nov 6th. Ship to Dell. They update the BIOS

cant use computer

Nov 13th Get computer back. Issue is not resolved. Several more hour long conversations with tech on phone where he takes control of system. During this time computer gets formatted and that means I will get to spend 3 more days putting all my audio software VSTs ect on comp. Issue is not resolved.

Nov 18th -22nd. I take my computer to a local computer repair guy. The following is part of an email from him.

“To troubleshoot further, I tested the audio interface on two other Dell laptops (an Alienware 14 and an Inspiron 15), where it functioned without issue. This suggests the problem is specific to XPS system.

Through my investigation, I discovered that the audio dropout coincides with a reset of the Intel(R) Graphics System Controller Firmware Interface (GSCx64), as recorded in Windows Event Viewer. Each time the GSCx64 warning appears, the audio interface loses connection, requiring the associated software to be closed and reopened. XPS system is running the latest Dell-provided drivers, and Windows 11 is fully updated.

To ensure stability, I have been forced to disable either the Intel Arc A370M graphics card or the Intel UHD graphics card. When both are enabled, the firmware reset occurs, disrupting audio functionality. While this workaround stabilizes the system, it is not an acceptable long-term solution for a high-end laptop.

In summary, this laptop has exhibited problems from the outset, including:

• Faulty RAM at delivery.

• A motherboard replacement that failed to resolve the primary issue.

• Multiple factory resets and OS installations with no improvement.

Given these issues and the extensive troubleshooting I have undertaken, I propose an exchange for a new XPS laptop with similar specifications, but without a discrete GPU. As compensation for the omitted GPU, I suggest an upgrade in either memory or storage capacity.”

Send this information to dell, and they just want me to keep running logs and tests. They want me to take videos of issue and send it to them. I do all this. You would think after they saw videos of my acoustically treated room, monitors, midi keyboard, mics and instruments and audio dropouts that they could see that im just a music producer that wants to have a nice computer to do his job. Thats what I paid for, but didnt get. A person that is not trying to take advantage of dell, but a human that whats his issues resolved. I have spent hours and hours and hours and had to spend more money to send to a local technician that discovers the issue and they still will not help me.

It is beyond unreasonable the way that this computer has performed. It is a lemon and it is not to be used for audio production. Dell has done nothing to help me. I have not been able to use my computer for its intended use, for months and months. Have spent hours on the phone with dell and hours with emails and hours running programs for them. They should have fixed everything when I sent it to them in Texas.

If you are into the audio space and use interfaces and DAWs spend your money on something that works.

I hope this helps someone.

Jacob