Friday November 18th, 2005:

In my on going battle with Dell to get them to live up to their obligations, and actually do something about my sick computer; -I had gotten them to at least promise to have a Dell Canada service technician call me. This was supposed to be in 5 to 7 business days, which would mean I could not expect a call from them before this coming Monday.

Well last night someone actually called me. While I was out, of course.
Naturally she did not leave me her full name, or a contact number, which leaves me no option but to wait for a call back.

When I tried to get through to her this afternoon in a forlorn attempt to speed things up, I was balked by the person at the other end of the line at Dell Canada's (?) office. She forwarded me with the promise that I would be able to find my way to the extension of the person who had called me last night. But of course instead I ended up talking to one of those useless lumps in India. He "put me back in the queue", to try again to get through to the Canadian tech/rep. I got another useless lump in India instead, who soon started mouthing off about the warranty having expired in the mean time. I ended the conversation right there.

This leaves me waiting with growing frustration for a telephone call that probably won't come until next week, if it ever comes at all.

Let this be a warning to you all out there in cyberspace:

DO NOT BUY AN EXTENDED WARRANTY FROM DELL!!!!

The last time I checked, Dell USA and Dell Canada administer the first year of the computer's warranty, but after that it is overseen by a third party. It has taken me a lot of trouble to get as far as I have with Dell Canada up to this point, and I'm still not sure that I'm going to get any satisfaction after I finally do speak to someone from this country.

You might think that I would not recommend buying a Dell computer at all, after all this. But I don't know what to tell you at this point, other than that you should accept only a one year warranty from Dell. When you look at the ratings done by Consumers Union of all the computer manufacturers out there, you find that Dell comes in second only to Apple, for overall customer satisfaction. Considering my recent experiences with Dell, I do not find that very encouraging at all.
Who can you trust if you cannot or do not wish to build a computer yourself? As the ancient Romans once said: "Let the buyer beware"

Fight the good fight Nameless! Sorry to hear about your issues. Thinking of building your own soon?

sorry to hear you have so much trouble. Whats wrong with your dell?

Big E asked:


Pretty much sums it up right there.



My next computer will be AMD all the way!

May as well wait till games and programs utilize 64 bit and multi core.

I hope everything go fine with your computer nameless.

Well Halleluleah, Halleluleah. The lady from Dell scheduling actually called me back 5 minutes ago. I explained to her once again what has been going on with the power supply, and she has agreed to send someone to replace it, at long last. She has also promised to cover the cost of any perhipheral damage to the system that may have occured from the bad power supply, although that may require a return visit from a technician. (Oh boy! More waiting! ) -We have to wait and see if there has been any damage, first.-

She promised that the tech will call and schedule a visit tomorrow or the next day.

I'll let you all know how it goes. In the mean time, remember what I said: A one year warrany, NO MORE.

Well to my great surprise a repair tech from Unisys, the company that does Dell's warranty service, called me this morning and told me he could come out in half an hour. I gave him directions, and he was here early.

In great contrast to the 'phone jockeys I had been dealing with, he was very good, and efficient. He expressed some surprise at the way I had been treated by Dell, but did agree that "Dell India" was really pissing off a lot of Dell customers. To make a short story shorter, he replaced the bad power supply, and the vid card, and also the cpu fan, as it was rather noisey. The vid card turns out to be a bit of an upgrade, as it is an ATI 9800 Pro, and my old card was a 9700 Pro. (Both with 128 MB memory.) He mentioned in passing while we were talking that I deserved an upgrade, for the way Dell had treated me.
So after a month of frustration, all is well now. Finally.

However, I do have two questions at this point.

How much of an upgrade is a 9800 Pro over a 9700 Pro, in layman's terms?

And can a hard drive make noise sort of like a fan while it is running? Is that a bad sign? It was a noisey fan that was the first sign of problems way back when, and either it is the 3 new fans that are in this box all blowing away lustily, or something else has gotten noisey too. And I wonder if it could be the hard drive.

P.S.
Don't forget what I said about Dell warranties. Make do with one year. If you want to go with a longer warranty, play dumb and do not open the box to fool around inside under any circumstances. Keep insisting that they send someone to help you, because you don't know nothin'. The phone jockey will resist, and suggest that nothing can happen until you do his bidding, but you must stand firm, and insist that they send a tech out to your place.
Or better yet, don't buy an extended warranty. Use the money you save to pay someone local to fix the problem. Oh, I said that already, didn't I?

Nameless, it might help of you speak Indian. From what I hear Dell support doesn't support english anymore. sorry for you troubles :(