On the amazing Dell pro support

Question

A couple of weeks ago I bought this laptop through ebay (from UK to Belgium) and the seller does not know the details of the original owner and therefore I cannot do the automatic warranty transfer. I have a problem with the fan of my laptop, so I reached out to Dell for support and naturally customer support requested some validation. I immediately provided everything that was requested (picture of the service tag+ handwritten name+ date in one picture, ebay invoice, paypal invoice, seller ebay page etc.) and one day later I received that the validation somehow did not pass and they are closing the case. I have not heard back from them since and they stopped answering my emails immediately!

I think this is unacceptable to treat me like I am some kind of a fraud, considering that everything that I provided is genuine. Furthermore, Dell support never responded to my emails where I suggested that I can provide more information to fix this misunderstanding.

I then called Dell Belgium where the customer support representative told me that he sees the data that I provided and he sees “NOTHING WRONG” with it, but since it didn’t pass validation he cannot help me further. He suggested that I contact the seller for further help with the validation.

I then contacted the seller again (as suggested by Dell), and the seller provided me with a picture of his invoice from ebay, which I forwarded to Dell UK, to which I was treated with the usual silence. I never heard back from them.

I find this completely unacceptable. I have a laptop which is 5 months old, under warranty for additional 2y and 7 months and I cannot get simple support for my problem with the CPU fan. I find it extremely insulting that Dell stopped replying to my e-mails and does zero efforts to fix the situation, although I provided all the information that they requested. I feel like I am treated very rude...

At this point I gave up and ordered a new fan myself. But what happens when the motherboard dies or the keyboard dies? After having 2 latitudes from my work, 2 personal latitudes and 2 personal inspirons, I think this 7400 would be my last Dell.

Best regards,

Ivaylo

ejn63 · Answer

'I bought this laptop through ebay (from UK to Belgium) and the seller does not know the details of the original owner and therefore I cannot do the automatic warranty transfer' Stop right there, and return the system to the seller for a refund.

hitsov · Answer

Why? The seller sells a lot of laptops/tablets/phones and has stellar reputation and 100% feedback. Why should he take the fall for that? It is possible to transfer the warranty without prior knowledge of the original owner details.

In any case warranty is warranty, it is not on the name of the owner but on the product itself. And Dell should honor it.

ejn63 · Answer

The warranty is (as it is with most purchases) to the original, registered buyer of the system. In order to have an existing warranty transferred, you must have the registered owner details and provide them to Dell; it's been Dell's policy going back many years. If the seller isn't the registered owner, or cannot provide the information of the individual/business that is, then you either:

1. Return the system to the seller for a refund, or

2. Accept that what you have is a no-warranty, no-support orphan system.

It's up to you, but if the seller's reputation is that good, then he or she should be willing either to provide the information you need to register and transfer the warranty (and beware that transferring a warranty internationally has conditions: not all extended warranties will transfer, and in order to do so, the model in question must be sold in the market you're transferring to and it must have on-site service) to yourself.

It's clear you don't like the ramifications of the policy, but it's there to protect owners' security and to protect against the sale of stolen, replaced, or unauthorized-source purchases.

DELL-Cares · Answer

I have replied to you via a private message.   -Gautam.

DELL-Cares · Answer

Hi,

I'm Gautam and I'm going to be your support assistant.

I understand that you're issues related to Fan and ownership transfer. I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused.

I see that you had contacted us on Whats App for the issue. Kindly continue working with us on a single platform i.e. WhatsApp (to avoid any confusions) and we'd assist you further.

hitsov · Answer

Dear Gautam,

Thank you for your message. Indeed I was chatting with someone on Whatsapp and I was promissed this would be solved until the person said they are overloaded and disappeared. Understandable.

Then a chatbot (presumably) offered me some automated solution for the fan. I replied the warranty transfer is more of a pressing issue and its probably best to sort this out first. To which I got another chatbot message and I gave up, since I really need human assistance.

So please, if you really want to solve this, send me an e-mail or call me, or even write here. These chatbot messages are not helpful and quite frankly frustrating.

Best regards,

Ivaylo

hitsov · Answer

Hi,   I contacted your colleagues on WhatsApp but I am getting ignored again...   Best regards, Ivaylo

DELL-Cares · Answer

We have replied to your message on whatsapp.

hitsov · Answer

Thank you very much to the person who chatted with me on WhatsApp yesterday! He/she was very helpful. After they contacted the UK guys they finally replied to me.

Basically the UK guy said the validation failed because the details of the original owner are not correct. Well of course they are not, because if I knew them I would do the whole thing from the website. Now he says, well you're out of luck so thanks for contacting us and bye bye.

Why did he then requested my paypal invoce, ebay invoice, ebay seller profile etc and picture of the service tag? For fun? If anyone ever had similar experience and managed to transfer their warranty without knowing the original owner please write here. Lets see if this is really not possible.

DELL-Cares · Answer

Hi,   I have replied to you via a direct message.   -Gautam.

hitsov · Answer

I'm just gonna leave this here:

The WhatsApp support has been less than helpful lately as well. For days replaying "we are checking on this" or some other message like this. In the meantime my replacement fan arrived and I solved this problem.

But get this. In the EU you have 2y mandatory warranty. Now with BREXIT the UK standard warranty is 5y. How come this is not honored by Dell? I wonder what the ombudsman for consumers has to say about this...

Warranty registration is not mandatory for warranty in general, how come Dell plays it that they are special and above the law?

DELL-Cares · Answer

Hi, please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused. This is definitely not the experience we want our customer to face.

Latitude

On the amazing Dell pro support

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