Dell sending some jobs back to U.S. (outsourcing to reverse?)

From that point on, I decided that if a client with a Dell needs a hard drive replaced under warranty, and they're not capable of working with Dell telephone support, that I'm going to send them to Best Buy or some other place to buy a hard drive,

Does that void the waranty? I'm serious, I can see Dell complaining that you shouldn't of opened the box as the magic smoke might of leaked out.

They should really sell computers with two hard drives in them for just this very reason.

To be frank, I've never had any luck with ANY technical support for ANY computer I've ever owned.

Same here. Well not in the case of a business owned Sun 65000, got transferred to a kernel developer on my first phone call. But then again they cost around $750k, which is a little outside of my home price range.

Does that void the waranty? I'm serious, I can see Dell complaining that you shouldn't of opened the box as the magic smoke might of leaked out.
They should really sell computers with two hard drives in them for just this very reason.
That's a good question. If you don't have their on-site service, and you're directed by a telephone support person to open the computer, then the answer would be no. OTOH, if you do this on your own, it might... But then if you don't go after a warranty replacement of the hard drive, Dell would never know...
Then again, I don't know if doing an upgrade to the computer (adding a hard drive, DVD-ROM, etc) would void the warranty or not, although the new parts would not be covered, unless you bought them directly from Dell.
The example I gave was for a specific situation, where a client didn't feel comfortable with running the diagnostics themselves, and decided to have a technician come out, at their expense. From the errors that they read off to me over the phone, it was obvious that the hard drive was failing, but Dell wouldn't accept that. In that case, it would have been cheaper for them to buy a new hard drive than to have me come out and run the diags.

Mark

Dell offers up to a five year warranty for government entities. At least a couple of Dallas/Ft Worth school districts wrote their bids to have a 5 year warranty, which knocked out virtually everyone else. Same for some federal contracts. Dell uses this to retain customers forever, rather than to increase their level of service.

There are store-bought extended warranties that will go out to five years, but, except in just a couple of cases, I have never found a store warranty to be worth anything. IMHO, warranties backed by companies such as Warrantech leave a lot to be desired.

Can you even imagine what a nightmare farming out software development to these places is like?

Actually, yes, I can tell you what a nightmare it is. I spent the last three years doing quality control with my employer and I can tell you for a fact that the code from India is among the worst I have ever seen.

Just try and get a bug fixed. You can include screenshots and complete reproduction instructions and they just close it out. "Not a bug" or "Cannot reproduce in lab" (!!!)

I've given several "No Go" assessments due to this...

The good news is the code from China is even worse. The interesting news is that the code from Russia is about on-par with India for the first drop, but they respond to bugs filed the same day.

Anyone I call for support (banking, computer, utilities etc.) at a U.S. company has a need to speak English. I will politely tell the worker that I cannot understand them; and that I MUST speak with someone whom I can understand.

And woe to the non-English speaking telemarketer that calls my home!!!

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