I'm finished with Dell. No more.

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After 15 years, I've bought my last computer from Dell.

When I have to deal with people that are hiding behind the fax machine, and refuse to give me the number of a voice line so I can speak with them directly, I don't have any more use for them.

One little drone who thinks he or she is a tyrant within Dell with poor decision making skills has ended it.

Bye bye.
 
My Dell compter is great, but woe is the person who modifies their order or needs a return.
 
I didn't care much for the pushy Dell staff whilst inquiring about their products. And I don't care for any of the desktops I've used - mostly because of lack of configuration.
 
I am done with Gateway Computers.

I updated a bios for the Intel Motherboard from the Intel site. I fried the board by not using the Gateway download. This is on an older XP system. I got my monies worth so not too bad I guess.
I guess I should have done more research before I used the Intel download. Would have been nice for Gateway to have a warning to not use the Intel down load though...........

Then my Gateway Media Center system just stopped working after my move. I tried everything, seems to be a bad motherboard.......
mad.gif

Meanwhile the little Athlon XP system I built from scratch is humming along.

I will buy something like a Systemax or build my next system.
 
Dell is the biggest shop that offers Ubuntu pre-installed, so they'll have my support for that reason unless and until they abandon their support of it.

I think there are going to be nightmare stories a-plenty with the support staff of any and all major manufacturers. Profit margins on hardware systems are so razor thin that these companies feel like every conceivable corner must be cut to maintain these bargain basement prices.
 
Dell's support has been a cut above for me/us. HP's support has been awful too often, I stopped using them. Toshiba's support reads from a script and while they took care of the issue, it took 3 phone calls and I had to wait 3 business days for the warranty to "be associated in (their) system".
 
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Toshiba's support reads from a script


They *all* read from a script. If any of these "tech support" operators were in any way trained, they wouldn't be cheap enough to work for these companies. Their jobs appear to be to scour the same web site support area as you c/w/should, and forward you to a higher level of support tech if the need arises.

I don't think you're going to find a major computer manufacturer deviating from this formula. If we prefer to have computers and computer parts this insanely cheap (and I know *I* do!), then c-r-a-ptacular tech support is just the nature of the beast.
 
I can't speak to their end user support, but Dell has improved significantly over the years. For the past decade, IMO, they made total junk PC's, but in the past few years they have improved. Particularly their laptops. Still not sure I'd buy one for personal use, but now I'd actually consider it.
 
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Dell's support has been a cut above for me/us.


Is this personal support, or business support?
 
Do you guys seriously need support from dell or another vendor that you purchase a PC from?

What are you calling about?

I mean seriously.

I've owned 4-5 dells in the past 5 years, and just bought another one. I've never called dell, nor have I had a problem with ANY of their machines.

I just bought another one this past week, a dual core machine with a 22 inch monitor, windows vista, and a 3 year warranty for 430 dollars shipped to my door.

They are giving the PC's away.
 
Yes they are giving PC's away! Good friends of ours bought a Dell Inspiron 530s, E5200 Core2Duo CPU, 320GB HD, 3GB RAM, base video, Vista basic: $299.00

$299, w/free shipping! It's REALLY hard to build your own computer with Intel CPU's when they're priced THIS low.
 
The Dells we have at work seem to be fine if you leave them alone, but we have had BIOS compatibility problems when using add on PCI cards (Serial/GPIB/Data Aquisition, etc).
 
I refuse to buy Dell only on the basis that they refused to credit me back the $30 NSF fee on a five and some change overdraft charge (remainder of interest I had forgotten about).

Otherwise, good computers.
 
Tech support is expensive, and every company (including credit card) is trying to lower that cost by providing as little as possible, or provide lower quality on that (Indian tech support for my credit card account).

The only way to get around that IMO is to use a business account or move into buying business machines. They know that if you are buying 100k worth of stuff at a shot and frustrated you, you will leave. They also know that since you are spending other people's money you are more than likely to overpay than the stingy consumers.

They are all the same, or they will be out of businesses.
 
Originally Posted By: Cutehumor
they give them away to make money on parts and tech support?


They give the PCs away once in a while so they can make the volume to get the volume discount from their suppliers.
 
My relationship with them has been up and down. At times they have been fantastic, but others they have gotten me so steaming mad. . .

Where they've been great is on the next-day on site service. Most manufacturers are cutting that out completely. It is rare to get that on a lot of home purchases anymore.

Where they have lacked is dealing with advanced users who can troubleshoot. Often I've gotten in touch with them, told them the problem, and the diagnostics I've done. Instead of verifying with one test, they make me do the whole battery again. One time I bet the service guy $10 what the problem was before we started--I had already diagnosed it. He said I didn't know what I was talking about. Two hours later, my diagnosis was proved correct.

If I had to buy again, I would consider it. Although I would shop around for sure.
 
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