Really only 3 things to do, although, not easy.
- Upon receival of your order, ensure ALL items on the packing slip are included. Missing a Windows XP CD? You have 14 days to tell them, or tough $hI0t.
- If anything doesn’t even remotely work perfect within the first 30 days, return it to get a refund. If you don’t, you won’t like the next item.
- Keep calling until the problem is resolved.
That last one sounds pretty brief, and it is. It requires more explanation.
Alienware’s support system is pretty simple. Support on the other line MUST determine the problem with your laptop remotely. That means minutes to hours on the phone, with you phsyically following the directions from the support person on the other end. Rebooting, tweaking the bios, etc.
There is no “I want to FedEx this laptop to you guys”. You either deal with them on the phone to determine/resolve the problem, or your computer will remain broke, period. It’s black and white.
Once they find the problem, they’ll send you a replacement part, have you physically ship the system in to them to fix it, or if you ordered a special plan, they’ll send someone on site.
Again, NONE of those 3 things will ever happen unless you resolve it on the phone. My wife made 2 calls, and got cut off the first time.
I made 3, after getting cut off the 2nd, but dammit, I resolved that mofo!
Our personal experience: 2 months, 3 phone calls, and 7 hours worth of phone calls later, we found out what’s wrong with her majesty’s Area-51 (7700) laptop. 1 of the RAID drives went bad apparently. They are shipping a new replacement drive, and I have to ship them the defective one to remove an $80 charge on my credit card. I managed to sweet talk the guy on the other end to send me a Windows XP CD to install Windows since my copy here for another computer doesn’t work. We never got ours in the shipment (see list item 1).
If my putting the hard drive in doesn’t fix it, it’s off to the phones for another 3 hour remote-hardware debugging session.
If you buy an Alienware, be aware they assume you’ll either fix any hardware or software problems yourself, otherwise, you HAVE to deal with their support staff. Their support staff that I talked to are nice and patient mind you, I as a full-time contractor, however, don’t have time for that crap. Time is money for me, and support calls cost me more money than Alienware.
After reading Ray’s on going battles with Dell support, apparently the competition isn’t any better. Anyone know of a computer company’s support options that DON’T suck; mainly, I can just send them the computer and let them fix it? Until I give up my career in software and start learning hardware, I don’t have time to make support calls.
???
