Dell Customer Service

The people who knew me usually knows only different sides of me, but there’s always one thing that is constant. I’m a complainer. I will nag and mumble and babble about shit when they are not working as they supposed to. And I will harass every responsible parties till they got it working back to how it is supposed to be. You can read my previous rants and entries related to this shit.

So last April I bought a new laptop. I’ve chosen Dell Alienware M11X. Why Alienware? Well, it’s a known product for gamers. Why Dell? Dell is veeery reputable in their support and services. Are they, really? Well, read on.

So in the first month my unit got dusts inside the LCD. And since it is irritating as hell especially on bright display, I call up Dell asking whether I can bring it to one of their service center so that they can take care of the dusts. To my surprise Dell said they will send someboday to take care of it. And by taking care of it, I really mean they replace the whole damn lcd in 2 days. At my office. DAMN! Thats really good.

Then the following month, the unit hard disk completely break down. Out of nowhere. Again, I call up Dell. The following day the engineer comes with a new hard disk. They even allow me to keep the old hard disk for a week for recovery purposes.  Again, its good service.

And then the following month, the new hard disk are showing signs of dying. I call Dell again, and they guide me through a series of built-in tests and the next day, a new hard disk arrived. They allow me to keep the old hard disk again for backups.

You might think by now that my bad luck with this unit of M11X should have been over, but no. Last month the bluetooth is having some problems. So I call up Dell and by now, naturally, I want a permanent solution. So someone from Dell arranged up so that I can buy a newly refurbished M11X with the new Core i processor, and the price I need to play is only the difference between the new unit, and the old want. Since this is a really great deal, I took them up on this offer. And now I’m using the new M11X-R2 with Core i7. It arrives last week, and they allow me to keep the old Alienware for about 1-2 weeks for backup purposes. It arrives in good time too, as the old M11X had started to show signs of hinges problems.

Conclusion: Dell is indeed very good in support and services. but they really should improve on their quality control. I’ve used Asus netbooks before, and they almost NEVER breaks down. The only problem I had with one of my old Eee-pc from Asus was self-inflicted, as I tripped on the charging cables and sent the machine flying across the room. Even so, only the LCD was damaged. So Dell, learn from Asus and hire more QAs. That way you don’t have to only rely on good support. The best way to handle with problems is by making sure there is no problems in the first place. While I’m extremely satisfied with the new unit so far, it just had been 1 week. Who knows what may happen later on? To be on the safe side I’ve included 3 years complete cover warranty when I ordered this new R2 unit.

And Miss May Ong, the Dell person who handled my case, thank you for bearing with me. You deserve promotions. And HUGE bonuses.