Dell Installs an Older Processor than the one I purchased!

Question

I purchased a Dell Inspiron 6400 Dual Core laptop on July 7, 2006 for my father online.  He is a frequent business traveller and therefore, is always out of town.  He noticed that the system was quite slow, and asked me about it a few months later.  I had the chance to look at the computer this week and noticed that Dell installed an older, slower processor on my father's system, a T2400 1.83 processor.  My father is not a hardware specialist, and he trusted me on my choice on Dell, and hence did not need to think that Dell would have installed a wrong processor in the laptop.   I have a printout summary of what I actually selected under catalog number '70703 Retail cabsdt1'.  The Product Code selected was 'KD21HC' which is a T2600 2.16Ghz processor.  There is no option for a 1.8 T2400 procesor at the time.  I have a print summary of what I ordered in hard copy, and the same price from the invoice.  Therefore, I paid the exact price, but Dell gave me an inferior processor.   I called into customer care to a representative called Christine, and also spoke to the manager John.  I was outraged by the fact I was treated like I was a thief, and that they wouldn't accept the fact that this was a inherent Dell mistake.  John even said there was no way to check the catalog number or the product code because there are many promotions going on each week, which I find to be untruthful.   It is unfortunate that without any sort of resolution by Dell on this matter, they will have lost me as a customer forever.  It is not about the money as the Core Duo has now been replaced by the Core 2 Duo, but it is the fact that Dell made the mistake but is unwilling to even apologize is why I am so upset.  The laptop I purchased was not a low grade laptop, with upgrades to the ram to 2gb and hard drive to the best specifications available.  I am disappointed that Dell will not try to retify the situation and instead, place the blame on me for not checking the computer beforehand.  I felt embarassed when I called into customer service, and it was one of the worst experiences I have ever had to deal with.   If there is anyone here that can get me a contact to speak with a higher management representative at Dell about my situation, it would be appreciated.

ejn63 · Answer

If you do some searching, you will find that Intel is the one that did the switching. System builders can only build with what Intel ships them, and they were the ones that came up with the switch of these CPUs.

It's not a Dell problem - Intel did it to all the OEMs.

ejn63 · Answer

Sorry - I thought you were speaking about the T2300 vs. the other Core Duos (the T2300 was a late entrant to production).

If you did not receive what you ordered, you have 21 days from the date of shipment to return the system for a refund. If you did not check within that period and can't document exactly what you ordered, you're out of luck.

gillianchung · Answer

Wait a minute, I believe it's Dell's fault not notifying me if that is the case.  Do you have a web link to confirm what you just said? Even if it was Intel, I had no notification whatsoever with having a much slower processor than the one I actually paid for.  If I knew, I would not have purchased this knowing I would be getting a slower processor.

jothemango · Answer

It was unfortunate that no one checked that your Dell 9400 was not as specified when it was received.   However, I am concerned that you say that the machine is slow. I regularly use an older 8200 1.6Ghz with 1Gb of memory which races along for most applications. Perhaps you should investigate why your father has this problem. He may have spyware or other software issues that are causing the problem.   I recommend that you do some notebook housekeeping for him and then test it in PCPitstop at:   http://www.pcpitstop.com/   Regards   Barry

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