Tech Support Advice of the Day

What is the best advice for someone that has bought an Alienware laptop that broken down 6 times in a year? According to Dell tech support managers, just don't buy their computers.

I asked him as an individual and not a manager that if he was in the same situation would he think that it is okay for a computer to break down five times within the 1 year warranty period. He said no. I asked what my viable options were. This is where things got really stupid. And this is exactly what the manager of the tech department said to me. "You could always resell the machine to someone and buy another computer that's not from Dell."

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I'd say the same thing if this guy had a whiny tone. But then again, I would probably lose my job...

Sounds like sage advice coming from a dell rep. I sure wouldn't buy from them.

ASUS FTW.

Probably was an annoying ass they wanted to get rid of.

A while back I went to a store to get a basic cheap computer to strap a GPU in from this guy. He had 5 now second hand computers he wanted to get rid of.

Apparently this guy had come in bought a dual core tower, brought it back the next day and said it didn't work. Exchange policy meant he got a new one, but then came back the next day to exchange as it "didn't work", then the next day he upgraded to a better CPU, then the last day he came in and got a better quad core which still was "broken" the nexr day.
At which point they told him to go shop somewhere else.

I got the computer for a reduced amount, took it home, and booted up fine. All the guy had apparently done was log on, make a user account called user, not even install anything, then take it back for "not working". All the hardware was tested and came back fine...and still works...

Sometimes customers aren't worth the trouble.

After reading the article, it doesn't sound like an real advice, but rather Dell's tired of dealing with him.

After reading the article... i am glad that i live in a country where a repeated RMA for same error means you can request refund (that means you RMA it, they say they repaired it, you get it back, problem occurs again, and at this moment you can request full refund from the seller).

DeathPrincess said:

Probably was an annoying ass they wanted to get rid of.

...snip...

Sometimes customers aren't worth the trouble.

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As a store/consulting company owner, I deal with this regularly. Very rarely is there actually a hardware problem with equipment, people just don't know what they're doing and can't be convinced otherwise. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and walk away. It should have been handled more diplomatically (buy the machine back) to avoid the publicity that this has caused, but the end effect is the same.

FWIW, we resell Dell (SMB lines) and have <3% that ever need warranty work.

Unfortunately, I've yet to come across a customer that had no problems with Alienware laptops. Seeing the problems I've seen so far in about the last 6 to 7 years of Alienware laptop problems, I've now gone on to not recommend them even after Dell purchased Alienware. Quality has not improved.

So, this Dell employee telling him not to purchase a computer from Dell/Alienware and get another brand is a good idea.

Problems I've seen so far: (Again, this covers nearly 7 years of Alienware laptop models.)

• Overheating GPU; or GPU failing after 6 months of use.
• LCD backlighting failing within 6 months after purchase.
• Cracked LCD screen just by closing the lid.
• Lid unable to lock or close flat within a year after purchase.
• Poor Wi-Fi signal and reception; or Wi-Fi signal completely drops or makes no connection to the router.
• BSOD and freezing experienced within one year.
• Optical drive failing within one year.
• Motherboard failing within one year. (Dell tech actually coming over to replace the board.)
• AC adapter failing to power the laptop after one year of use.
• Keyboard being unresponsive after one year of use.
• Laptop case defects or small cracks seen after one year of normal use. (And, this customer took real good care of it since it cost him $2000-plus-- left on desk in apartment majority of the time, never dropped.)

I'm sure if you look up Alienware problems on Google, you will find most if not all of the problems I've listed.

Well, I would trust the Dell guy. I have seen many "new" Dell laptops that die for no apparent reason, and many other that have a defective battery or power adapter after some months of use.

My mother in law bought two Latitude (don't remember the exact model) at about $1500 a piece, plus extended warranty. In less than a year, buth computer have been repaired several times because various issues with hardware, incluiding HDD, LCD, keyboard, power adapter and motherboard (fan failed and cpu/motherboard fried).

From my experience, newer Toshibas are also crap.

My wife has a Gateway T-1628 that's like 4 years old and I have an Asus F8Va that's about 3 years old, and neither of them has given any kind of problem.

Alienware has some great machines, a lot of the issues stem from from user abuse. (Not that this is the case here).

Glock24 said:

Well, I would trust the Dell guy. I have seen many "new" Dell laptops that die for no apparent reason, and many other that have a defective battery or power adapter after some months of use.

My mother in law bought two Latitude (don't remember the exact model) at about $1500 a piece, plus extended warranty. In less than a year, buth computer have been repaired several times because various issues with hardware, incluiding HDD, LCD, keyboard, power adapter and motherboard (fan failed and cpu/motherboard fried).

From my experience, newer Toshibas are also crap.

My wife has a Gateway T-1628 that's like 4 years old and I have an Asus F8Va that's about 3 years old, and neither of them has given any kind of problem.

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I can definitely vouch for the defective battery or power adapter. My current Dell laptop has trouble staying on when plugged in. The plug doesn't stay connected firmly enough. The battery used to keep the laptop powered on for 2 and a half hours, but a year after purchase, the battery life dropped down to 45 minutes to 1 hour. It's going to cost me about $80 or so for the adapter and about $130 for the battery.

My next laptop is going to be Acer or ASUS, but I'm definitely looking at one of the Acer Aspire laptops.

octoberasian said:

I can definitely vouch for the defective battery or power adapter. My current Dell laptop has trouble staying on when plugged in. The plug doesn't stay connected firmly enough. The battery used to keep the laptop powered on for 2 and a half hours, but a year after purchase, the battery life dropped down to 45 minutes to 1 hour. It's going to cost me about $80 or so for the adapter and about $130 for the battery.

My next laptop is going to be Acer or ASUS, but I'm definitely looking at one of the Acer Aspire laptops.

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Find your battery on Amazon. It's always a magnitude cheaper than buying OEM replacements.

I used to sell/deal with a lot of Dell machines years ago. The Optiplex/latitude line couldn't be beat for commercial application. They've always made solid laptops with a few bad designs here and there.

Alienware on the other hand was just simply overpriced. They made good machines but at way too much of a premium. Since Dell bought them there's absolutely no point in buying Alienware. Dell was trying to get into "hardcore" machines and thought the Alienware name would sell them. IMO all they did was ruin the brand and degraded the Dell brand in the process.

I think where Dell has really fallen flat is with their support. Back in the day if you had a couple related issues they would actually upgrade you to a point or at least try something different. I remember several times getting upgraded or updated components to fix recurring issues. Now you hear repeated stories of people stuck in the red tape jungle and/or incompetent support.

In all fairness it sounds like this guy had several different issues, but I think they should have offered to replace the machine all together with something of similar value to try and resolve it after about the 4th breakdown. Especially on their "flagship" brand. Maybe Dell has gone so low quality that they have a ton of repeat issues like that so they avoid doing any more than is absolutely necessary for cost reasons.

Glock24 said:

My wife has a Gateway T-1628 that's like 4 years old and I have an Asus F8Va that's about 3 years old, and neither of them has given any kind of problem.

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I have a gateway 6860fx that's been used extensively for gaming for some years now. Other than kids abusing it and breaking off one of the shift keys it's still going strong. The thing dumps a ton of heat too.

ViperGrendal said:

I have a gateway 6860fx that's been used extensively for gaming for some years now. Other than kids abusing it and breaking off one of the shift keys it's still going strong. The thing dumps a ton of heat too.

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i always wished i had bit on one of those when they were going around for a reasonable price.


that said, i have a multitude of laptops, my older hp/compaqs are still running strong (new ones are junk), and my acer, and toshiba are bother running after years of abuse.

only ones i consistently have issues with and have to repair for others are dells, usually involving batteries dying or some kind of power issue.

This story and the posts kinda make me a little sad. I always wanted and Alienware laptop. I actually started looking at them a while back and it seems like you pay a premium for the name. I did not want to get screwed over like that again after I bought a MacBook. In the end I spent a lot less on an Asus and while not a gaming machine it still plays them just fine.

I have only owned one Dell laptop and it was a Pentium 2 machine and that worked great for a long time. The school district that I used to work for had a lot of the Dell Optiplex machines, I was not happy with them when the Caps would go bad on the machines and you would have to fight with them to get the board replaced. Especially when they knew it was an issue with all of the Optiplex machines at the time.

While I can appreciate the theory that a lot of people don't know what they're doing so they ticket a non-existent problem over and over again, I will say I've seen quite a number of problems with dell laptops that shouldn't have been there. Now, there easily could be a link to the fact that because dell laptops are so widespread it increases the probability of running into someone with problems, but still...

I have had a DellXPS 8300, A Christmas present.It has had 3 new motherboards and 2 PSU s replacd in the 4 months I've had it, Its not working right again random restarts and shutdowns.I have been in tech suport since 1981 so I know when a computer is broken and well this one is broken again> I havnt' called Dells tech support yet because I don't like dealing with people in India.At least when I had to get my HP laptop fixed i was dealing with people in US based call centers. I am supposed to have next day service ,my Dell was out of service for 3 weeks last time I needed service. I like the computer when its working, I5 2400,I upgraded to 16 GB, lol for 75 dollars as opposed to the 450 Dell wanted to upgrade to 16 GB. I think my best bet is to repklace the PSU with a higher powered good brand one. I will get a 680 once the newness of the card wears off and they are more available,only one slot available for a vid card . Its not a conmputer I;d have chosen but it was a gift and I;m trying to make it as good as I can, with its limited upgrade ability. Overall though I am not happy withy Dell quality. I

I own several Dell/Alienware laptops never had any issues from what i have seen on other forums most of these issues with alienware unit is from abuse. Guys trying to overclock the piss out of the cpu or gpu's and general thing i would not recommend with a laptop even if it is supposed to be a desktop replacement. I own 2 M15X's the only one i had issue with had a nvidia GPU replaced with AMD 5850 problem solved. My M11x no issues wifes Inspiron 15R no issues solid. Most of the time the problems i see are heat related which alienware units have great cooling as long as you let theem breath. I fix so many laptops that have failed because "I only use it on my bed or my couch" That rep sounds like a douch i have had nothing but bend over backward service from alienware support.

I haven't had much trouble from Dells at work, we have a ton of them all the way from a couple old PII boxes up to the newest Optiplex models. We can usually get service pretty quickly, though that is for a business customer, not sure how they handle the non business clients.

When I went a few weeks ago to get a new laptop, I finally bought a Samsung with an A6 processor. So far it seems to be a good laptop, but I guess time will tell. The reason I purchased the Samsung was mainly because it was the only one that seems to still come with a non glossy screen. The Dells at work all have the glossy screen and those things are horrible if you try to use them outside or in brightly lit rooms. Why have they moved to those things anyhow?

jedijeb said:

I haven't had much trouble from Dells at work, we have a ton of them all the way from a couple old PII boxes up to the newest Optiplex models. We can usually get service pretty quickly, though that is for a business customer, not sure how they handle the non business clients.

When I went a few weeks ago to get a new laptop, I finally bought a Samsung with an A6 processor. So far it seems to be a good laptop, but I guess time will tell. The reason I purchased the Samsung was mainly because it was the only one that seems to still come with a non glossy screen. The Dells at work all have the glossy screen and those things are horrible if you try to use them outside or in brightly lit rooms. Why have they moved to those things anyhow?

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Should have checked out Xoticpc.com. (don't work there, but have made purchases) They have a range of laptops and there is a much bigger selection of them with the matte screen than I've found anywhere else.

I've owned a range of laptops. Dell, MSi, Asus, Sager, Alienware (m11x). I really haven't had any problems with any of them. Well, except the case on the MSI netbook was crap at the lcd hinge. Still works fine, just has a broken corner.

If they were recording that call, I wonder if the manager will be written up/fired.

HisSvt76 said:

...i have had nothing but bend over backward service from alienware support.

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Same here. When I bought my m9700 the motherboard died the first day and they took care of it immediately. I have had my m17 for 3 years and not a problem. It is the most stable machine I have ever owned. This was all before Dell fully took over though. I don't know how the newer models are. I probably wouldn't buy one. It's just not the same anymore.

I've had no troubles with Dell. Takes some work, but I feel things get resolved properly.

First computer: E1505. Those things are tanks--sold it to someone and it's still running. The battery craps out (goes from 4+ hours as it's a nearly-year-old 9-cell) to 15 minutes...overnight...two days before warranty is up.

Talked them into overnighting + return shipping.

Upgraded to an Outlet (refurb) XPS m1530 because a friend has an m1330. It comes with "XPS priority support" which means in-home repairs, no shipping the machine off and playing the waiting game.

This thing is a piece of work. First the battery pulls the same "off the cliff" routine as the battery I just mentioned. Sure, it's refurbished but from 2 hours of runtime to 10 minutes of runtime in the span of 3 uses? Something's wrong here! Then they send me the wrong battery as a replacement. Support insists there's nothing wrong since they're "both 56Whr batteries." Literal case of "square battery, round laptop." Got that sorted. Then I found out about the guaranteed-GPU-death (NVIDIA 8400GS mobile) so I get that replaced under warranty. Two days later, the hard drive fails. I get that replaced, and suffer a SECOND hard drive failure. To boot, the idle temps are now hitting 80C.

I did online chat and convinced them that it would be better for both of us if they just replace the stupid laptop. In a way, replacing it with a (loaded) XPS 1640 is kinda-sorta-screw-you because those have horrible throttling issues. That is, if the CPU hits 60C the BIOS panics and cuts the CPU to 700MHz (instead of 2.53GHz). Since the CPU and GPU share the same heatsink, this is trivially easy playing video games or even Blu-Ray movies. God forbid, games on a gaming laptop! This problem has been extensively documented and while Dell generally won't do anything, especially in my case since it's a massive upgrade compared to what I had, it's fixable via software (ThrottleStop). Also, the 90w AC adapters are insufficient and have been tested with Kill-A-Watts to max out around 70w. Not nearly enough for the XPS1640--if you call and say "XPS 1640 throttling" instant free shipping of a 130w adapter. Mind, that doesn't fix the BIOS problem but it does prevent the hardware from being power-starved.

I've also coached two friends on how to get upgrades for their systems (m1530, m1330) which both had bevies of problems similar to mine.

Dell's fine--you just have to know how to talk to them.

I do tech support for a living. Customers blame viruses the way liberals blame bush.

XamediX said:

I'd say the same thing if this guy had a whiny tone. But then again, I would probably lose my job...

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Agreed. Being a supervisor I always get the bitchy ones. There are days that I'm so tempted...

We have quite a few Dell Latitudes at the office.

The D820's, D830's are 4 to 6 year old, and still working fine. A few have the system board/video card replace (due to the defective nvida chips), but otherwise they've been reliable. They do go through batteries every 14-18 months, but that's the biggest problem.

Also have alot of the newer E series, and have had almost no problems over the last 2 years.

Alienware M17x repaired 3 times, replaced twice (I now have an r3). The issue I had the last one replaced for (soundcard keeps cutting out when plugging in any USB device) still occurs on the new laptop, I've just given up and live with it. It's used as a work machine and never moves off the desk so I call BS on all the 'it's abuse' people. They're excellent performance, just s**t build quality.

sounds like a 20 year old kid who doesn't know how to use a computer.

I would have told him to go sell his alienware and get an ipad.

gpu, cpu, mobo...... he's had ALL these problems in ONE computer?

if you think about it, what are the chances of ALL the critical components failing in the same computer ?
I've never seen it happen in any computer, unless you plug up all the ventilation of course.


computer makers should make users view an orientation video on how to care for their laptops before they are allowed to start using them.
I often see people complaining about overheating laptops, when the problem is that they have cat fur and cig ash clogged in their heatsink. So they go out and buy a bulky cooling pad which doesn't do shit to help, and they continue to complain.

M'ichal said:

ASUS FTW.

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2002-2009 ASUS was ftw, 2010-present their products have seriously started to suck.
They focused far too much on being the bleeding-edge rather than making a solid, stable product, imo.

I would have told him to go sell his alienware and get an ipad.

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This.

I have had and worked on all brands almost seams like hit or miss. I don't know if this is just a string of good luck or what but only problem I have had with all my MacBooks over the years is they get stollen. I had one stollen while my wife was locked in a room and one that was in the trunk and they broke the window and took it out of the trunk. Both occations they cleaned me out. In my house they took everything even destroyed the wall trying to get the monitors and TVs and in the car they got me for $10 that was viewable and they took some jackets and of corse my MacBook.

One thing I have to say is keep an eye on your apple products! I have yet to have any hardware issues though.

dr.kevin said:

gpu, cpu, mobo...... he's had ALL these problems in ONE computer?

if you think about it, what are the chances of ALL the critical components failing in the same computer ?
I've never seen it happen in any computer, unless you plug up all the ventilation of course.

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In a gaming laptop ? Relatively high, as all 3 you mentoined are one PCB .

I don't think the manager was telling him to specifically go buy a competitors product he more or less was telling him that to get him off the phone so he doesn't have to deal with him. I'm sure the guy has called in numerous times about it and they just got sick of hearing him cry.

What irritates me about this, is that this customer asked for a personal opinion from this supervisor, off-the-record, and then basically posted it in front of the world as coming from a Dell supervisor. This is why when a customer asks you "what you would do personally", you tell them the same thing you'd have to tell them as an employee. This customer sucks.

Nerdydave said:

I had one stollen while my wife was locked in a room.

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Stollen is nice, though no reason to lock up your wife...

Thats pretty funny coming from a rep who's supposed to be promoting their pcs.