Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 10:12 am
The story I promised...
In addition to my normal Q1 orders from Dell, usually a 25% replacement of desktops, laptops, and servers in the company, I was also ordering two home PCs for me and my network support tech. A little perk is that we can tweak these more than the standard builds we purchase.
As I was researching I noticed that Alienware is now a part of Dell. I did not know that and began specing out a PC through them.
I called my Dell sales rep and he told me that he couldn't sell me an Alienware machine. I'm still confused by this stupidity and said so in my letter to Michael Dell.
Well, I did have the option of simply not ordering these two PCs through him, but decided that I'd get the XPSs. He's been a good sales rep, the XPSs I got before were pretty good, and the machine just won machine of the year in some media member's mind (I forgot who).
Now when I ordered my last XPS, in was ordered the same way, totally customized. It also took a week and a half before I got a notice that it was finally ready to ship. This time, I got the notice on the 2nd day after I placed the order. That worried me.
The XPSs arrived and had obviously just had a ghost image slapped onto them that didn't match the configuration I ordered. First of all, it wasn't "tweaked" at all, which they advertise that it's supposed to be.
The biggest problem that was most apparent was the hard drive space. Drive C was "fine" (if you can call 4 partitions on a 250GB drive fine). Drive D, however was supposed to be a 750GB drive and it was showing only 238GB.
I tried to change this through Windows and was told access denied no matter which way I attempted.
I then inserted the Windows CD and tried to change the partition by booting from it only to hit the blue screen of death every single time. Apparently, that is a flaw in Windows Media Center which was the only OS without "Vista" in it that we were allowed to put on the system via Dell's fantastic "customization" options.
I had to insert the CD while the PC was running and to be able to access the part of setup where I can toy with the partitions.
As it turned out, they simply didn't bother adding the other 500GB to my partition for drive D.
There were other little nitpicky things, not to mention the horde of crap software they preload, so to save time and undue any other shit they might've fucked up I went ahead and just scratched and reloaded. I mean, how can I trust a PC that was built with an image that doesn't apply to it?
Worse yet, on the drivers CD that is supposed to contain all your systems drivers, only a single driver on that CD applied to my system. They system did not come with any CD that had my video drivers. I had to go get them off the web.
Even worse is that had I bought an Alienware, they DO tweak and test their systems. They get them to the best possible performance before shipping them out the door.
Keep in mind, this is THE SAME COMPANY, and these are competing products. One branch slaps on a generalized image and doesn't give a fuck what state your PC is in, the other tweaks and tests to send out the best possible product.
The most frustrating part, however, is that I have no recourse within Dell. My sales rep has no power to do anything about my total dissatisfaction with what occurred, nor is he responsible for building it. But he's my only option in terms of talking to someone. Thus, the letter to Michael Dell, my rep, and my rep's boss, which was sent out at the end of day yesterday.
In no way is it acceptable for Dell to ship out a PC in that state. Take away all the questions about RAM, the crap customization options, the complete negligence and apathy that went into building the system, all the minor issues that were either bullshit or broken, and just focus on the hard drives alone, and you're still left with a system that shouldn't have shipped. The average user would not have realized that they received less than half of the 1 TB they ordered. Even if they did, who would've fixed it for them? Dell support? Does anyone think an Indian reading out of a book could've walked someone through this process?
The whole process reeks of corporate penny pinching and a lack of respect for consumers.
In contrast, the other desktops and laptops I ordered all came perfect. I NEVER have any trouble with the business machines I order.
So, in summary, I ordered a machine and it did not arrive as advertised. I have it there now, but I had to scratch, reload, and tweak it myself. That shouldn't happen when you're buying a product that's guaranteed to work out of the box. Thus, Michael Dell got a letter. If by some miracle I ever get a response, I'll let you all know.
In addition to my normal Q1 orders from Dell, usually a 25% replacement of desktops, laptops, and servers in the company, I was also ordering two home PCs for me and my network support tech. A little perk is that we can tweak these more than the standard builds we purchase.
As I was researching I noticed that Alienware is now a part of Dell. I did not know that and began specing out a PC through them.
I called my Dell sales rep and he told me that he couldn't sell me an Alienware machine. I'm still confused by this stupidity and said so in my letter to Michael Dell.
Well, I did have the option of simply not ordering these two PCs through him, but decided that I'd get the XPSs. He's been a good sales rep, the XPSs I got before were pretty good, and the machine just won machine of the year in some media member's mind (I forgot who).
Now when I ordered my last XPS, in was ordered the same way, totally customized. It also took a week and a half before I got a notice that it was finally ready to ship. This time, I got the notice on the 2nd day after I placed the order. That worried me.
The XPSs arrived and had obviously just had a ghost image slapped onto them that didn't match the configuration I ordered. First of all, it wasn't "tweaked" at all, which they advertise that it's supposed to be.
The biggest problem that was most apparent was the hard drive space. Drive C was "fine" (if you can call 4 partitions on a 250GB drive fine). Drive D, however was supposed to be a 750GB drive and it was showing only 238GB.
I tried to change this through Windows and was told access denied no matter which way I attempted.
I then inserted the Windows CD and tried to change the partition by booting from it only to hit the blue screen of death every single time. Apparently, that is a flaw in Windows Media Center which was the only OS without "Vista" in it that we were allowed to put on the system via Dell's fantastic "customization" options.
I had to insert the CD while the PC was running and to be able to access the part of setup where I can toy with the partitions.
As it turned out, they simply didn't bother adding the other 500GB to my partition for drive D.
There were other little nitpicky things, not to mention the horde of crap software they preload, so to save time and undue any other shit they might've fucked up I went ahead and just scratched and reloaded. I mean, how can I trust a PC that was built with an image that doesn't apply to it?
Worse yet, on the drivers CD that is supposed to contain all your systems drivers, only a single driver on that CD applied to my system. They system did not come with any CD that had my video drivers. I had to go get them off the web.
Even worse is that had I bought an Alienware, they DO tweak and test their systems. They get them to the best possible performance before shipping them out the door.
Keep in mind, this is THE SAME COMPANY, and these are competing products. One branch slaps on a generalized image and doesn't give a fuck what state your PC is in, the other tweaks and tests to send out the best possible product.
The most frustrating part, however, is that I have no recourse within Dell. My sales rep has no power to do anything about my total dissatisfaction with what occurred, nor is he responsible for building it. But he's my only option in terms of talking to someone. Thus, the letter to Michael Dell, my rep, and my rep's boss, which was sent out at the end of day yesterday.
In no way is it acceptable for Dell to ship out a PC in that state. Take away all the questions about RAM, the crap customization options, the complete negligence and apathy that went into building the system, all the minor issues that were either bullshit or broken, and just focus on the hard drives alone, and you're still left with a system that shouldn't have shipped. The average user would not have realized that they received less than half of the 1 TB they ordered. Even if they did, who would've fixed it for them? Dell support? Does anyone think an Indian reading out of a book could've walked someone through this process?
The whole process reeks of corporate penny pinching and a lack of respect for consumers.
In contrast, the other desktops and laptops I ordered all came perfect. I NEVER have any trouble with the business machines I order.
So, in summary, I ordered a machine and it did not arrive as advertised. I have it there now, but I had to scratch, reload, and tweak it myself. That shouldn't happen when you're buying a product that's guaranteed to work out of the box. Thus, Michael Dell got a letter. If by some miracle I ever get a response, I'll let you all know.