Need assistance

[Cybe R. Wizard]

Robert Holtzman <holtzm at cox.net>  said:
> The time is ripe here for a little Dell story. A while back my 
> stepdaughter bought a Dell laptop. Within the warranty period it 
> developed a problem. Dell told her to ship it back for them to
> diagnose. She did and Dell contacted her to say that it was
> biologically contaminated and they would go no farther and would ship
> it back to her via some method (which I forget) that is used for
> contaminated goods. Dell told her they found a *spider* inside the
> laptop. It made no difference that the guts of laptop was never
> opened while in her possession. As far as Dell was concerned that was
> the end of the story. They wound up sending it back regular mail and
> she had to get it repaired locally.
> 
> I'm thinking about buying a laptop but it sure as hell won't be a
> Dell.

And another:
Elder Daughter went away to college with a nice, new, top-of-the-line,
all-decked-out Dell laptop with an extended, on-site, next-day service
warranty because she was going to be over a thousand miles away.  The
whole package set me back around US $4,000.00.

By her second year it was becoming dicey but it made it through till
summer break and died shortly after she came home.  Dell sent a tech
four days after the first call.  He changed out the screen and hard
drive, left with the box still not working.  The next visit, a
different tech a week later (phone calls from Daughter daily asking
about our next day service), changed the screen and hard drive and left
saying he would have to seek advice from his superior....
Much more of the same while a month goes by.  Constant phone calls.

Finally I call, telling them that I am sending the unit back as
defective per the agreement which said essentially that three attempted
fixes and they'll replace it.  OK, they claim.  
Another month, weekly calls since we need wait for shipping. (they
wouldn't ship the replacement first)

Since time was of the essence to get Daughter back to school with a
computer, we went and bought her a HP mid-line unit and away she went.
Dell /finally/ shipped a laptop with a smaller hard drive, no floppy
(the old one wouldn't fit the new bay), no zip drive (the old one
wouldn't fit the new bay), no extra battery (the old ones wouldn't fit
the new bay), and less RAM than the original.  The reason, they
claimed, was that we were getting a significant processor upgrade.
They /did/ ship an extra DVD drive although why one would need two I
don't know.

I am in the market for three new laptops and two new desktops.  Dell
won't be getting a call.

Cybe R. Wizard
-- 
Nice computers don't go down.
	Larry Niven, Steven Barnes
		"The Barsoom Project"