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Dell's Customer Service & would you buy from them?


Dell and Rodney

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As to the slipstreaming issues - that OEM CD you have from Dell has some special files on it that denote it as an OEM CD (and as such, it will only install properly on Dell hardware it recognizes, otherwise it'll require activation right away). Slipstreaming is NOT SUPPORTED on OEM CD's, period, for this reason - those special files are not included in the SP2 distribution that you get from Microsoft, and if it finds these files when you attempt a slipstream, it will refuse to continue.

When you buy an OEM computer that comes with an OEM version of Windows (tied to the hardware), you will not be able to slipstream any service packs onto it. This is not Dell's fault, per se, but you will likely have to purchase a new OEM Windows CD if you want one with an updated service pack.1

As far as building your own, there are people out there who (for whatever reason) are unwilling or unable to build a PC on their own. For those people, purchasing a computer from a *respected* third party OEM is their best bet, both for performance and support. Alienware, Falcon, and Velocity Micro are just a few companies that come to mind that I've dealt with that had both good hardware and good support, albeit for price - you do get what you pay for when someone else builds a PC for you :).

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I think i know why dell's support is so crap. Most of the students here do a programming course in colleges, after they graduate they get jobs in call centers easily, why, bcoz programming comes in the IT field. Dont ask me how computer programming is related hardware troubleshooting. :P

So once ppl are recruited they get a crash course in pc hardware and start taking calls from ppl in US.

Once my friend who works in dell's call center came to my place. My pc was not working properly and was showing machine check exception BSOD. My friend told me that itz bcoz of my hdd had crashed i was getting those errors and i should get a new hdd, he said that he was 100% sure bcoz he tells the same thing to any customer who complains about that particular bsod error.

When i told him its bcoz my C: had lots of bad sectors, he would not listen to me. when i asked him do you guys atleast back up your customers data, his reply was negative, they just replace the hdd, end of story.

im thinking of all those poor american customers who had their hdd replaced and also lost all their data, photos, videos etc.

He also told me about couple of customers in the age group of 55+ who call him regularly bcoz they have no one else to talk to. :)

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After reading this forum about the usbehci.sys corrupted error message i took on the challenge to call Dell and tell them i would either like them to replace my CD with one the has SP2 or give me a resolution that i can slipstream my CD that i paid for thinking there are no problems.

I sent them 6 emails - there promise was to reply within 24 hours - guess what i never got a reply. I went to the US website who had a 6 hour response. I received a reply which was my same mail i sent them. 1 week later i still have not received a reply.

I finally decided to call these idiots and straight away they tell me - this can not be done. I asked "why not" they tell me as long as i can install my operating system then there is no problem. The options given were to either buy a CD AGAIN or just install over again which will take me 2 days as the CD i have is very old.

I explained and said that if i knew you had given me a CD that would not slipstream and was made clear about this i could have left buying from Dell and buy from someone/ place who are more reliable - they went on and on about the same options they gave me as if they are a tape recorder. I asked for a resoltion or them to tell me what files i should modify and how to resolve this - no, they wouldnt tell me either.

Myself personally am not going to buy anything from Dell, it will be from IBM or i will build a machine myself. So just to know how many fans we have out there supporting Dell,

A - Is Dells's customer service crap?

B - Would you buy from Dell knowing this has happened?

You kno every once and a while i come accross people like you,

You should have called them first (they answer prompty) and asked if that could be done!

And it not dells fault that that cant be done!!! your just trying to place blame!

And dell always askes you u rate there service and if u had a problem with there coustomer service u should have told them!

And dell has been EXCELLENT to me!

so to answer your questions

A} NO it is nothing near ''crap" as you put it, It is EXCELLENT

B} Of course i would buy from dell (there prices are right and the quality is excellent, PLUS - there is no reason to stop buying dell products because dell cant do something that is impossible to do)

Edited by wolf7448
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I called Dell today regarding a friend's laptop which I am repairing. ALL I WANTED WAS THE REPAIR CD!! They had to verify the person's address, telephone number, which I had no knowledge of (I only know them where they work and who they are)... Let's just say I ended up ending the call with them...

And honestly, do they HAVE to have the call centers in India? No offense to anyone, but the connection was awful and I could not understand half of what "John" was trying to tell me... :wacko:

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As to the slipstreaming issues - that OEM CD you have from Dell has some special files on it that denote it as an OEM CD (and as such, it will only install properly on Dell hardware it recognizes, otherwise it'll require activation right away). Slipstreaming is NOT SUPPORTED on OEM CD's, period, for this reason - those special files are not included in the SP2 distribution that you get from Microsoft, and if it finds these files when you attempt a slipstream, it will refuse to continue.

When you buy an OEM computer that comes with an OEM version of Windows (tied to the hardware), you will not be able to slipstream any service packs onto it. This is not Dell's fault, per se, but you will likely have to purchase a new OEM Windows CD if you want one with an updated service pack.1

As far as building your own, there are people out there who (for whatever reason) are unwilling or unable to build a PC on their own. For those people, purchasing a computer from a *respected* third party OEM is their best bet, both for performance and support. Alienware, Falcon, and Velocity Micro are just a few companies that come to mind that I've dealt with that had both good hardware and good support, albeit for price - you do get what you pay for when someone else builds a PC for you :).

I have had no problem slipstreaming SP2 onto my Dell OEM XP sp1 (home). I did it three ways, one manually, one using nlite, one using autostreamer. All the OEM files are in there. With nlite, I also slipstreamed post SP2 updates onto the previously slipstreamed XP SP2 disk, no problems.

There are some Dell OEM XP Pro disks that have additional non slipstreamed patch updates, for those to slipstream them you need to remove a couple of files.

http://vbdotnet.home.comcast.net/XP_SP2.htm

As for Dell, I have had my Dimension 8300 for about 2.5 years now. The only time I had a problem requiring customer support was when the NEC 1100 DVD writer died. The call took about ten minutes, and they agreed to send someone round to replace the drive, which was done at the agreed date and time. Dell support even rang back unsolicited to check that everything had gone OK. It may be that I was lucky, I agree that there are many complaints about Dell's customer support. However their user forum is one of the best for getting problems solved

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/

Edited by JRosenfeld
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Dell quality has gone down the tubes and the only way they could get an award for their service today is if they give it to themselves.

We have Dell Optiplex GX270's and Dell Latitude D600's at work. The GX270's have a problem with the capacitors on the motherboard (http://news.com.com/PCs+plagued+by+bad+capacitors/2100-1041_3-5942647.html) and we have had a lot of hard drive failures on the D600's.

I had one D600 laptop that started having problems from the first day I got it. The video would just stop updating and the only thing you could do was reboot the system. After installing SP2 I started getting errors that the video had stopped responding or something like that. The first thing I did was swap the hard drive with a different system and the problem stayed with the original system, which clearly indicates a hardware problem with the original system. I worked on this issue with Dell tech support for the better part of two days before they would dispatch to replace the motherboard. During this time I reloaded the system and tried several software fixes. The big problem was that I couldn’t make the system fail on demand so every time we did something I’d have to wait for the systems to fail before calling them back. Note replacing the motherboard which I wanted to do from the start fixed the problem.

Even though there is a known issue with the GX270 motherboards they always want to follow a troubleshooting flow chart. I finally started telling tech support "I need a new mother board and I don't have a spare system I can used to swap parts with" and "if the capacitors on the motherboard are leaking it needs to be replaced".

I had to call Dell tech support yesterday and they have some new voice recognition system where you speak the information instead of using the buttons on the phone. Note that "fu@K you I want to speak to someone" doesn't work.

When you dial in you have to enter your express service code. However once you get a tech the first thing they ask you for is your express service code. Then they keep put you on hold while they set up a parts dispatch. I think it's funny they have a POS (parts only service) option when ordering parts. I always thought that stood for something else. Also the spare parts come in a box that states "may contain the equivalent to new parts". What the hell is this it’s new or it's not.

If all this isn't enough they use DHL to ship replacement parts. This company must hire the mentally handicapped as our driver continually delivers the part to the wrong location. When you call them they give you the name of the person who signed for the part. I have to point out to them that first we don’t have a person by that name working here and second DHL didn’t make any deliveries to us on that day. Once they figure out they delivered the part to the wrong place they have to do a package recovery. Thus my next day parts service turns into the next few days’ parts service. I let this go the first few times but one time they lost an important package and couldn’t recover it. I had to wait almost a week before they finally said they couldn’t find the package. Now I use the tracking information to track the parts. If it gets lost I call Dell and have them ship me another part and complain how bad DHL sucks. The funny thing is that I got a call and several emails (which I ignored) from Dell stating that they didn’t receive the broken part back. When they called me I explained to them that I never received the replacement parts and they could take the issue up with DHL. The lady said this happens a lot.

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