Dissatisfaction with Dell Support

I just want to voice my current dissatisfaction with Dell online technical support.

I have two issues which I attempted to have addressed last night via "online chat support" only to be given pretty much the "runaround" by two different people. I ordered a new M1530 back in late March along with the Dell Bluetooth Keyboard and mouse and the X-Fi express card sound card. From day one the bluetooth mouse has been sluggish and constantly loses connection with the laptop. It's a pain to use the thing because it's performance is so lackluster and poor. I did some searching online and have found mutliple complaints about this same issue from several people, which leads me to believe this keyboard and mouse pair are not exactly "top shelf". As for the X-Fi it's been nothing but hiss, pops, static and feedback with enough bloatware to down a rat. It's performance is sub par to what I feel I paid extra for and from what I can tell it's sound quality is no better than my onboard "high definition audio" that also suffers from static and hiss at times. I'm no computer idiot so I tried to fix these problems myself by uninstalling and reinstalling, configuring, testing and all manner of "fix" I could manage. I even completely wiped the entire system OS on the second day and reinstalled it "clean". It was early on then so the reinstall did not delete a lot of my data then but now I have too much stuff on the laptop to simply "back it up" on CD's or DVDs quickly or easily. As anyone can understand once you "live in" a computer for more than a month the prospect of a complete OS blitz and reinstall is a real pain. All my "fixes" (which are pretty much what the dell online customer service people asked me to do, which you will read later in this rant) didn't fix either issue. So I just lived with the sub-par performance of these accessories for two months now and I finally got sick of them constantly happening so I contacted technical support online last night with the "chat" option.

After my inital "chat" I was told I had to disconnect so I could reset and run the F12 diagnostics and afterwards I was supposed to be able to "resume" that chat like the support person said, but it didn't work like that and I had to wait in line again to chat to another person. During this time I received an automated call from Dell telling me to call them on the phone at a number the automated system said ONCE and hung up before I could find paper and a pen to write it all down. After about an hour of waiting "in queue" for another support technician on chat I mentioned to him that Dell tried to call me. I guess he did something because Dell's automated system called me back but this time gave me the option to speak to someone. I chose that option at the chat person's request but when I got someone on the phone they wanted to hand me back off to the chat person. So I had the chat person trying to hand me off to the phone person and the phone person trying to hand me off to the chat person. I finally hung up and went with the chat person again.

I tried to reiterate my problems to this new chat person but I feel they did not want to listen to the issues I was having and were simply "reading from a list". Their answer to all my problems seemed to always be "just reinstall your OS" and they kept asking me to "backup your data and reinstall your OS". I kept telling them that I had no way (or wish) to back up my data at the moment and a complete OS reinstall was not "in the cards" for me. I believe that having a problem with a sluggish bluetooth mouse or a shoddily performing audio card (both of which I find numerous complaints online about regardless of system or OS) is not the fault of a virtually brand new OS install in which nothing has changed on (and that functions flawlessly) and a virtually brand new (less than two months old) M1530 laptop that functions flawlessly except for the audio static. I guess I "made the mistake" of telling them that the two accessories in question more or less "worked" (in the loosest definition of the word) and that the problem I was having was a "quality of operation" issue, to which the chat technician pretty much bluntly told me "I'm not going to replace any hardware that is working".

At this point I got increadibly frustrated and just stopped the chat session. I felt like I was chatting with "customer service bot 5000" and not a human who could see what kind of problem I'm having. I should have just come out and typed "I think the accessories I bought from you do not live up to my expectations and I want my money back" but I'm too polite a person and held back, plus I knew they'd play the "past 21 days" card anyway. I used to work in retail and I know how this "game" works. Now I just wish I had just contacted support on day one and asked to return these two items rather than waiting and trying to solve these problems myself as now so much time has passed that I cannot return these accessories that do not funciton to the level of quality I expect for the amount of money I paid for them.

I'm just going to shelve my audio card, live with the sub-par performance of my onboard audio and buy a new wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse that actually WORK to the level of quality I desire from these products. I can't in good concience sell either one as they just don't "work" to my satsifaction which means I'd be pawning junky accessories off on someone else and I just can't do that. I'm also not trying to get any more "help" from Dell support, I just want to let you know your technical support stinks and I'm very dissatisfied with it. I feel like I was conned into paying for shoddy support that doesn't want to support my problems and that I was tricked into buying accessories that don't work to the level of quality I expect.

FOR THE RECORD my M1530 works wonderfully (onboard audio issues aside) and this is a problem with the accessories. I'm not trying to bash Dell or their computers, I'm just very very frustrated with their technical support and I feel they "left me holding the bag".