Dell laptops leave me longing
By JR Hoeft | Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 | TechnologyWhen I bought my Dell M1530 XPS laptop three years ago (yes, only three years ago), I thought I was getting a product that was going to last me at least this long, if not longer – without having to mess with it.
Two replacement batteries of over $100 each, one complete motherboard swap-out, and a crashed hard-drive later, I’ve had enough.
Earlier today (actually, just a few minutes ago), I found out that the warranty that I thought lasted until 2013 actually does not apply to my system. Then, the tech rep with whom I was online chatting told me that he should be charging me for all the diagnostic work I had already done!
Here’s our conversation:
04/06/2011 01:22:37PM Session Started with Agent (###)
04/06/2011 01:22:42PM Agent (###): “Thank you for contacting Dell XPS Premium Support. My name is ### and my rep ID number is ###. How may I help you today?”
04/06/2011 01:24:52PM Agent (###): “This is not to rush you, but to ensure we are connected. Please respond if you are”
04/06/2011 01:24:53PM James Hoeft: “Hi, Pravith. My laptop fails to start / connect to the operating system. It does not get past the “Microsoft Corporation” with the scrolling yellow bar window. I have run system diagnostics and found the following error: HardDrive – DST Short Test. Error code 0142. Also Error code 0F00:065D.
04/06/2011 01:26:31PM James Hoeft: “The first error code was “Hard Drive 1 – Self Test unsuccessful. Status 70″ and the second one was Disk_0- the self test failed to read a portion of the test.”
04/06/2011 01:26:45PM Agent (###): “I will be glad to assist you James.”
04/06/2011 01:26:50PM Agent (###): “Give me two to three minutes while I pull up the account information.”
04/06/2011 01:26:56PM Agent (###): “In the mean time what would be the best time and number to reach you incase of a follow up.”
04/06/2011 01:27:02PM James Hoeft: “OK. Thanks.”
04/06/2011 01:27:12PM James Hoeft: “###.”
04/06/2011 01:27:38PM Agent (###): “Thank you for staying connected, Appreciate your time and patience.”
04/06/2011 01:28:17PM James Hoeft: “No problem. I’ve been fighting with this all day. At one point I thought everything was fixed, but then the computer crashed.”
04/06/2011 01:28:18PM Agent (###): “To confirm, the system you are using is xps m 1530 with vista as the Operating system. Is that correct?”
04/06/2011 01:28:26PM James Hoeft: “Correct.”
04/06/2011 01:28:59PM Agent (###): “Thank you and I have checked with the account details and the hardware warranty on the system is expired.”
04/06/2011 01:29:20PM James Hoeft: “I thought my warranty was good until 2013?”
04/06/2011 01:31:46PM Agent (###): “That is the north American tech support which would be active only when you have the basic hardware warranty active on the system.”
04/06/2011 01:32:51PM Agent (###): “The error is related to the hard drive and it seems that the hard drive here is crashed and Ideally I should be charging you with expired warranty fees.”
04/06/2011 01:34:12PM Agent (###): “The basic hardware warranty on the system is expired.”
04/06/2011 01:34:17PM James Hoeft: “You should be charging me? I’m the one who did all the work and you guys screwed me on fine print with the warranty! Have a nice day. I’m glad you have confirmed to me I will never buy a dell again.”
Perhaps I’m over-reacting, but, quite frankly, I’m tired of this nonsense.
Why would I get an additional warranty if it doesn’t apply? Thanks for the fine print, guys.
If you hadn’t noticed, I have been doing limited blogging the last three weeks because I have been out of the country working. So, this is a fine thing to come home to and spend all of a vacation day on.
Thanks, Dell.
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About the author
Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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16 Responses to "Dell laptops leave me longing"
I share your pain. Be glad that you don’t have an HP, though. Their tech support is even worse than Dell and their equipment is junk. Between two HP laptops that my wife and I had, we went through two WiFi adapters, two hard drives, and one CD/DVD optical drive in less than two years. Plus, HP loads up their laptops with garbageware that conflicts with Windows. Both Dell and HP, BTW, use Maxtor hard discs. They have the worst reliability rating in the industry. I have two crashed ones in my office that I use as bookends.
For anyone who is reading this and has a Dell or HP laptop that is not fully backed up, stop reading this now and go back up your drive. It is not a question of whether it is going to crash but when.
BTW, most computer geeks can recover the data on a crashed drive. My wife’s HP drive crashed while we were away visiting family for a week, with her draft doctoral dissertation on it of course. The back up drive was in her office at home. We took it to a local computer shop and they recovered the My Documents folder in about two hours for $200. Now we back up on line at Mozy.com.
I am now a very happy Mac user. I have a MacBook that is almost three years old and has never needed tech support for anything, hardware or software. It has never had a virus and it boots up to a full desktop in about 30 seconds. It has dual processors that lets me run both OS X and Windows, but who would want to run Windows? I have MS Office for Mac on it and my consulting clients can’t tell that my documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoints weren’t produced in a Windows environment. They can open and read them on their Windows machines without even knowing that they came from a Mac.
Dear JR,
I feel your pain. The warranties are worthless except for some initial set up help if needed. This is why I recently switched to Apple which now has gotten much better at running the few windows programs you might need. The best PC I had was a HP running windows 98. It lasted for 10 years and the only thing that was failing was the cd drive. Windows 98 was a stable and functional OS – possibly the best OS MS offered for 99% of people’s needs. My hp windows xp PC lasted 5 years and had major audio related problems within 4 months which required me to get a separate soundcard.Then after 4 years of increasing XP OS issues the whole system started to disintegrate and the harddisc died. My windows 7 hp failed almost immediately with connection problems which required a separate card. It seems much less well constructed and I assume it will fail before 5 years. Dell has an even worse reputation than HP which is saying something. BTW By all accounts the pc audio chips used in the 1990s were of better construction than the ones used now.
Maybe HP and Dell are making hardware for each other.
Tim J,
No, but they are using the same suppliers, such as Maxtor, and those suppliers are the cheapest ones available. Price a 60GB Maxtor drive against the same drive made by Seagate or Western Digital and you’ll see what I mean. Multiply that cost difference by several million production units per year and you can see how it affects the bottom line.
Valentinus,
Your experience with HP’s declining quality is not an accident. In 2001, HP bought Compaq who was on the verge of bankruptcy because of their quality issues. HP computers are now made by the former Compaq. I didn’t know that when I bought two HP tablets. Wish I had.
Ive always had a great experience with HP
James-I used to have a Dell, and I had all sorts of problems with it. The motherboard burnt out, all sorts of other issues. It is very unlikely that i’ll buy another Dell anytime soon.
I have an HP now and have had very few problems. Sorry to hear that HisRoc is having so much trouble.
I bought my two HP tablets in 2007 and scrapped them in 2008 and 2009, respectively. So, my experience with HP is not current. However, it was ugly enough that I will never own another HP product.
I don’t know anyone who has had a bad experience with an Apple Mac. Even if the HP hardware is better now, you still have to run Windows. OS X flies circles around it. Think about that the next time you get “Not Responding” or The Blue Screen of Death.
BTW, congratulations to all you Windows 7 owners who upgraded from Vista. You paid Bill Gates $125 for Vista Service Pack 3. That is why he is one of the wealthiest people in the world.
I’ve moved my corporation and my son has moved his medical practice to the iPad and the Cloud. We aren’t looking back.
customer service is antique
What does this have to do with Virginia politics?
John,
We’re hoping that Cuccinelli will sue Dell, HP, Bill Gates, and India.
Well, John, if you would like me to cover Virginia politics, I kinda need a system to work on.
Unless you plan on paying for this fine content, it’s still my personal blog and I and my contributors can write whatever the hell we want. Actually, even if you were paying for it, we’d still do that…and you can make a choice to read it or not.
I guess I misread line 2 of the site masthead.
John,
Consider this post a public service.
Unbelievable – 99.9% of our posts are about Virginia politics and you have to be a prick about one.
I never cease to be amazed by the demands placed on other human beings by those who hardly lift a finger in the public arena.
I just want to say that I for one appreciate the public service post about the quality issues with Dell. Mine just died on me about a month ago for no reason and since I couldn’t afford to have it repaired, I simply purchased a used Toshiba. Like you, Dell will never have my business again.
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