Dell Horrible - refuses customer service on warranty laptop

Question

Hello,I have a really long story with my computer. One of my laptops, which is a Dell Inspiron N4010, purchased just a few months ago, started having random freezing problems from the first week. One day recently, it froze and then refused to boot up, as it kept looping on bootup. I did a full diagnostic, and it said that the hard drive was gone. Since it's still in warranty, I called Dell and after many days and hours of talking to them, they finally sent a technician over with a new Harddisk which he replaced. He reinstalled Windows 7, however he said the harddisk was completely blank and so I was supposed to call Dell and they would walk me through updating and installing all the drivers.I called them, but no one seemed to cooperate. They said to insert the CD I had already which came with the laptop, but my OS was 32 bit and the drivers on the CD were all for 64 bit. The Dell people told me that the laptop should've been 64 bit from the start, but somehow it was configured for 32 bit.Actually, this laptop was a gift from someone in Singapore, and at first Dell even refused to listen to me until I had completed a transfer of ownership, which I did, but that's a whole other story..,Anyway, after many many more gruelling hours talking to them on the phone, they say that since it was bought in Singapore, they can't do anything about it in the United States. Still, they agreed to send in another technician, who put in the 64 bit OS, and then the 64 drivers. Dell told me to fix the freezing problem by updating my BIOS. The technician told me to download a driver from the Dell support site, which I did, and as I was running it, a BSOD came up with the message saying DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE. It did a minidump... The weird thing was that pressing the power button on the laptop wasn't doing anything. Took the cord out, but it was still running on battery. In the end, I had to remove the battery to turn it off.I have just turned it back on, and am experiencing random problems - was a lag during the Welcome screen. Also, a message came up 'The computer has just recovered from an unexpected shutdown.' Since then, the computer has also crashed during a Windows update, and in the Event manager, there were some driver system errors related to the BIOS.  Dell seems to not be responding at all - even though its still in warranty, but I have no idea what to do anymore. There seems to be a very big problem, but I can't identify what it is. There are still a bunch of problems going on- the screen brightness is acting wonky and none of the brightness/volume buttons etc are showing on the screen (you know, like when it shows the volume increasing /decreasing when you press the button...)Dell is completely useless and they refuse to listen. They said they would call back, but they never did. One manager named Herbert said he would email me a solution I could download, but he never emailed. We did an entire transfer of ownership, yet Dell still refuses us any help on the matter.!! I work at Best Buy - I will be sure to let all customers know not to buy a Dell as they don't have any support for their customers. I need to go and inform all of Dell's customers over at twitter now.

ejn63 · Answer

'I work at Best Buy - I will be sure to let all customers know not to buy a Dell as they don't have any support for their customers. I need to go and inform all of Dell's customers over at twitter now.'   If you do this, you won't be working there for very long. Your story indicates you've done just about everything you can to make the problem more complicated.  Basically, unless you prove to them it's a hardware fault, it sounds like it's a software problem - which is covered only for the first 90 days and only for the factory installed OS.

faiz28 · Answer

One person on the phone did say they would send that. Infact, one person also said they needed to send me the motherboard and memory. Later, they refused for some reason. Then they said they would search for Dell compatible parts for my laptop and let me know within 24 hours. It's been 3 days since, and I know they won't call.

I don't suppose there is any "physical" store I could contact or meet up with anyone face to face? I just want my laptop to work.... is that too much to ask? It was so expensive, and didn't even last 3 months. The customer service people are really no good.

faiz28 · Answer

And just FYI - I started calling Dell on my 79th or 80th day of purchase. I suppose they simply whiled away the time so they could put this 'rule' on me for their own sakes?

faiz28 · Answer

But it's not a software problem - because the diagnostics test did say it was the harddrive, and now the OS has been completely installed again (Dell sent another OS CD through the technician..) If the OS is new, why is it crashing? And it hasn't been 90 days since Dell sent it to me anyway.

ejn63 · Answer

You're asking for support for a system purchased other than in the US. Your best bet now:

Ask them to send a pre-imaged hard drive with a US-standard WIndows 7-64 bit software load on it. What you're seeing sounds like an improperly loaded copy of Windows.

Locked Topics – Laptops General

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