I have a customer with a High Spec Dell Latitude D620 with the highest level of next business day on-site Warranty including Accidental Damage cover.

Last week the laptop refused to boot up at all, nothing on the screen. So there was very little in the way of trouble shooting that could be carried out.

So I contacted Del Technical Support for the end user and after a short time Dell agreed to replace the motherboard and committed an engineer to come to site.

The day before the on-site visit was to take place the end user was contacted and was told that Dell did not have a replacement motherboard and the end user would re-contact when one was available.

However no commitment was made in relation to time scales.

The now very unhappy end user contacted me, stranded computer less with no idea when the issue would be resolved by Dell.

Although this client did not any maintenance or support agreement directly with me I offered him a loan laptop until this issue is resolved. If Dell can’t help my end users then I will.

The parts delay at Dell was explained to me by Dell’s Mark Alexander as being down to Nvidia. This Latitude D620 had an Nvidia based video card and there is well documented problems with these (see here).

I was rather disturbed as during the conversation with Mark as I got the impression that these older Nvidia based laptop’s were dropping like flies, hence the lack of available parts.

During this process the case was professionally handled by Mark and as I previously discovered Next business day warranty is subject to Dell having available parts.

As it stands the laptop is still Dead.

The customer isn’t particularly happy and I am down a loan laptop.

Every time I use Dell Technical support I write up my experience both good and bad. Hopefully this will help potential customers of Dell’s equipment get a feeling for the aftercare that is on offer.

In this case I had a remote customer who’s Dell Optiplex GX620 died in it’s 2nd year but had 3 years on-site warranty.

So the call was placed to Dell Technical Support on Monday 10th and as the PC was dead there was little in the way of diagnostic work to do, so the call was booked to send an engineer to site on Tuesday.

The engineer arrived at 5pm on Tuesday but one of his parts was dead on arrival so the call had to be aborted.

On Wednesday the company that Dell outsource their hardware warranty to called me. This is a company called Banctec. They said that due to a parts shortage the anticipated a repair would be about another  3 days.

I asked who was responsible for having access to the parts and Banctec said Dell.

So I contacted my old Dell Resolution manager and asked him to get someone to help and he forwarded my request onto a chap who did get involved.

I was told again due to the parts shortage that the part was due in by the end of business next Monday a full 7 days after the original call was made. This was very annoying so I started quoting the Next Business Day terms and conditions and my Dell Resolution Manager quickly pointed me to the “Subject to parts availability”. See main picture, yes he did include it in an e-mail to me in a big picture.

Link to the PDF version of the Dell Next Business Day Terms:

So I guess I’ve lost this one, I can’t fight for my customers rights if the T&C’s cover Dell for this.

However I can highlight a few salient facts.

1) Dell sent an engineer to site with Dead on Arrival Parts. If you read the T&C’s closely (Page 4) you will see they are allowed to replace with reconditioned or refurbished parts.  Not exactly confidence inspiring is it?

2) Dell did not have access to more than 1 Dell Optiplex GX620 Motherboard. This model was a mainstream and popular business model. The new motherboard is coming from Holland apparently, hence the delay.

3) As you can see from their T&C’s Dell don’t really have to fix your problem in a fixed time frame.

For me this completely destroys my faith in the whole concept of Dell’s Next Business Day Warranty and with a customer base of 250 Dell Users who sleep peacefully thinking Dell won’t leave them hanging for a week. I guess they will be pretty disappointed too.

I’ve been dealing with Dell for over a decade and not once have parts availability been an issue.

Texas I think we have a problem…

I have had an offline on-going dialogue with Dell for a couple of weeks.

The short version of the story is I gave my  Dell XPS M1210 laptop to a client after his failed twice in a month. This left me with his older M1210 to get repaired for the 3rd time. (posts about this here).

I was also slightly worse off as the clients M1210 was a slightly lower spec than the one I gave him.

Jamie my Resolution Manager at Dell initially said as I elected to replace the Clients machine Dell were only obligated fix the broken laptop under warranty. I agreed.

However the next day Jamie called me and offered to send an engineer to replace the CPU, Screen and upgrade the Ram and the Warranty. This would bring the machine back into line with the one I gave away.

I was really pleased Dell offered me this but I was thinking this seems to be a lot of trouble to go to for the now repaired  2 year old laptop.

I then asked if I could perhaps get a discount towards a new machine. He enquired which one I was interested in, I said the Dell XPS M1530.

A day passed then Jamie called and offered a direct swap. My old XPS M1210 for a new XPS M1530.

That’s a pretty good deal, so I took it. Thanks Dell.

Dell were alarmed by a couple of posts I published  recently in my dealings with Dell Technical Support.

Permanent Link to Dell Technical Support Review June 2008

Permanent Link to That XPS M1210 Died

Jamie (from Dell) contacted me and we discussed at length my posts and my experiences in dealing with Dell Technical Support.

After 3 long telephone calls over 3 days we finally reached an amicable resolution.

I have updated each of the posts above with the outcomes.

I would like to thank Dell for taking the time to investigate each issue.

Link: www.dell.co.uk

Every time I use Dell Technical support I write up my experience both good and bad. Hopefully this will help potential customers of Dell’s equipment get a feeling for the aftercare that is on offer.

You can read other reviews here

In this case I had a client with a Dell Optiplex GX280 about 3.5 years old that had 5 years on-site warranty.

The user turned on the PC and within a few moments detected a strong burning smell followed by a visible cloud of smoke.

The user quickly turned off the machine and contacted me.

I manage the Dell Technical support process for my clients so they don’t have to.

Once again my support call was miss directed to Inspiron support when I clearly gave them an Optiplex Service Tag.

It took me a while to get to Optiplex support.

The quality of the phone line to India wasn’t great so the support agent had to call me back.

I described the case as above, he then gave me two choices:

1) If I wanted to elect a part to be replaced like a power supply he would send an engineer. The onus was placed on me to identify the faulty part.

or

2) Replace the entire machine.

After discussing the options with my client they chose to get the new machine.

The only problem is they have to wait approximately two weeks for it to be ordered and delivered.

I then sorted the on-site logistics with my client of getting the user setup on a spare PC.

***Update 11th June 2008***

Dell contacted me to discuss this issue. Apparently they have a Safety Capture Procedure that supercedes any Next Business Day warranty.

In the event of a “Safety” based problem they want to replace and recover not repair the machine.

In this case I should have not been given the option of an on-site repair.

Dell originally offered to replace the faulty machine with a Dell Optiplex 330 but have now upgraded that to a Dell Optiplex GX755 instead.

I appreciate the time taken by Dell to explain in detail how “Safety Capture” works.