Return it if you can.   Your horror story is not dissimilar to my own.  Despite having "next business day" support, Dell plays games with parts on "backorder" in order to delay as much as possible, from my experience.  Then even if they verify you will be at home at such and such a time, then never come. Dell also likes to make claims of having contacted you either by e-mail or phone, when they have not.  You'd think in this day and age of verifiable phone and exchange server logs they wouldn't even try that, but they do.

Thanks for the reply. I'll probably give them to the end of the week before I start pushing for a refund. It all seems very shady.

Next day support.. what a joke.

Anyone else have any ideas/stories?

Sounds like a packaged your laptop for delivery. What type of power supply does it say you received on your invoice? I got a 240W with mine but I got a pretty powerful system. Has a Dell technician physically been out to your house yet to diagnose, it's seems stupid and pointless to order out parts for a system that they haven't actually looked at yet? Or is that just me? Haha. It's possible that if you tried to run a system on an inadequate power supply that it could cause some system issues with internal hardware etc (fluctuating voltages cause havoc) but nine times out of ten it would just refuse to charge. Strange one there. If you're over the   around with support go the refund I say.

On my invoice it says I was supposed to get a 180W adapter (cheapskates). But another problem was the power cord they supplied me with (to connect the adapter to the wall) was not compatible with the 180W adapter. I dont really know how to explain it but the 180W adapter required a plug with three o's in a triangle format, while the power cord supplied was three I's. My mate who ordered a slightly more powerful laptop than me received a 240W adapter with the "three I" plug and that was compatible.

I used a compatible "three o" plug I had from another laptop so the computer could run.. and it ran fine for a day (battery was charging and no warning message on start up etc). It's like the computer just realised something was amiss and decided to call it a day (there was a bit of an electrical sounding noise from inside the computer as well)

No a technician has not been out to look at it.. they literally went off what I wrote here, said they'd organise a technician then called the next day to say "the parts" weren't in stock. Now apparently the case manager is conveniently away..

It all seems very, as you said 'shady', with the dodgy call logs, random parts ordering and case managers being 'away' (or more likely not wanting to converse with a frustrated customer) something just doesn't appear to be right. Also it's very interesting that your laptop ran fine for a day and then decided to stop working. But then again we all know how temperamental computers can be. . Hope it all works out for you mate. Let me know the outcome.

Thanks mate, after more prodding today I finally got an answer that they were waiting on replacement power supply stuff. Apparently the part was still on back order so they are sending me an equivalent part, they were adamant this would fix it even though they haven't even looked at the machine. Either way it's progress and if it doesn't work they are hopefully out of excuses not to come and have a look at it or work out a refund. Will keep this thread updated!

Just a follow up to this. They sent me a stupid worthless power cord. Not only did it not fix the problem, it actually introduced a whole lot of screen flickering and off colour when plugged into AC power! Even when I now go back to my old cold! (which is identical to the one they sent me).

Dell is a joke, they insulted my intelligence by being adament this would fix it when I had my doubts but it only made it worse, their service contract even states that they only send a replacement part out AFTER a technician has had a look at the problem and diagnosed all it requires is a new part. NO ONE HAS EVEN LOOKED AT THIS COMPUTER YET DELL! Not only that, they even closed the service request! I don't think so Dell you aren't getting a ticket completed for this abomination

Hopefully I can now get them to finally come out to actually look at it. I have lodged a complaint with consumer protection and am telling everyone I know not to ever buy a Dell product.. and I can think of much better places the cords can be used...

well goodluck with that.....

Dell willnot send anyone out to *look at* the system .. everyhting is done remotely via you on phone or dell connecting via remote connection to diagnose if unable to diagnose they send someone out with parts to swap on what they beleive the issue is( if parts are required for systemor if power supply)

all the techs that come out do is swap parts and turn system on.. then leave they dont do software they dont diagnose they  just parts changers like most mechanics nowadays...

That's what I meant by look at..

Any whoo, the last 3 days have actually been good. The technician came out and swapped out the motherboard, graphics card and gave me a 240W adapter.. But by the process of elimination it was the motherboard as the other two things were done first and didn't fix it.

And that's not correct about the techs, the guy that came out was very helpful and willing to make sure it was all up and working again.

So in the end a lot of messing around but hopefully a happy ending! Just keep calling alienware support until you get a good person on the other end!

yea he changed parts and made sure it worked before he left..... thats normal... just never happens most of the time....

what i meant was he dosent redo windows ect....  hell  everytime a dell tech touched mine to fix it , m R1 and R2 they bricked it so...lol