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I would be happy to. I ordered the computer and installed it. It had video card problems immediately and a new card was sent out. Eventually a customer service rep came out to install the card. (this is only after hours on the phone and on my knees in front of the mother board as a woman from India read to me from her troubleshooting manual. sigh!!) Blue screens continued with Bios errors. The cusotmer service rep said he would not touch anything except the video card even though on the phones I was told he would also investigate the bios issues and the blue screens. He took me aside and said, exchange the machine.

After more hours on the phone they finally sent out a new machine. It arrived around twelve days ago and I scheduled someone to help me switch towers today. I opened the box and the config is wrong on the new box and the Read write CD thingie is not installed.

Soooo I call Dell and ask what to do. They initally tell me that they will send out a new Read write CD drive and send someone to install it. then they sent me over to customer service to set this up. This happened twice before Iwas actually connected to customer service. The nice man from India told me that yes, he would send out the Read Write part...but only after I sent back the first comptuer because there was only one service contract and it had to be transfered to the new computer before anything could be done.

Deep breath!!

Then they argued about sending me a rep to install it too.

I went back to customer service and told them I wanted my money back and to take both computers. They said no becasue the first comptuer more than a month out.
I was transferred to a man who refused to consider taking the computers back for twenty minutes. He would not even negotiate with me. He refused to transfer me to a superior or to let me talk to anyone else, including his manager. I was in tears by the end of our conversation. He told me that the exchagne could not be made. He then put me on hold for the second time, to review things, and then made the return.
After he processed the return paperwork, I told him that he didn't have to put me through this...and instead of having a disappointed customer, Dell now has an appalled ex-customer.

I found the customer service to be appalling and heard regret and I am sorry so much in the past month....it was awful.

I certainly would appreciate feedback.

Buy locally. Go to one of the big stores and buy what you want. If it breaks take it back. It doesn't sound like mail (web) order is for you.

That's my only advice.

Pity you were treated that way, but as I read it, you got one defective computer, and one mis-equipped computer, plus the NAFTA-esque service department (so-called), and a rude customer service rep.

I know this will sound crazy, but if you live in a city, I would recommend you go to a Staples or CompUSA or whatever, and buy a Dell from them. You'll get better service in person and if it is defective out of the box, just box it back up and take it back.

Best of luck.

Or better yet, when you go to that local 'bigbox' retailer, get a list of a few brands that fit your specs and price range and bring the info back here. I guarantee there will be at least half a dozen of us who can tell you it's a good deal or wave you off with a red flag.

The beauty of FR (thank you JimRob) is that there is at least a handful of people in ANY field of expertise you might imagine.

You didn't happen to have an ATI Radeon VE (sometomes called the Radeon 7000) in there did you? There was a plug and play problem with those and a run of their monitors. There was nothing wrong with the PC it was the monitor. (I think it was the E771 though the same monitor is used on several configurations like when they add a base with speakers they call it an MM model) This was one of the problems that frustrated me for a while until I found the problem. As a matter of fact when I called them on it they had just released the memo to the Gold Level support people and from there it takes a while to get to the lower levels.

This sounds suspiciosly similar.

Æ

From the weekly Infoworld Robert X. Cringley Newsletter of 13 Oct 2003 comes one more Dell tech support horror story:

Pardon Me, Miss, My mailbag is bulging with complaints about English-challenged support techies. The best one: A reader spent an hour talking to an off-shore Dell tech who kept calling him "madam," despite numerous attempts to convince the tech that he was in fact a 56-year-old man. After madam explained his problem (his PC failed to boot due to mismatched RAM chips), the tech offered to send him a new optical mouse. He must have heard the saying, "Are you a man or do you need a mouse?"