On Sun, 2003-10-19 at 15:26, Thomas Cameron wrote:
> So, after four and a half weeks of screwing with those idiots, I finally had
> to fix the damned thing myself.  Never again.  Dell will not get another
> penny from me or any of my clients again if I can help it.
-----
Unfortunately, Dell's customer service has considerably turned for the
worse but that slide came 2 or 3 years ago. They contract telephone
support from India which is much cheaper than hiring the University of
Texas students like they used to do.

I remember when you could call Gateway/Dell/etc and be on the phone with
support in under a minute but those days are gone - these are the days
of minimal markups and hence - minimal service.

Is there still a warranty on that computer - that was never really clear
but the warranty terms should be fairly clear. If it is under warranty,
they do have regional sales managers who can make the decision to extend
coverage - I have done that with Apple.

By your description, you got awful service from Dell - unfortunately,
the service standards for other manufacturers don't seem to be much
better. Myself, I've always gotten reasonable support from Dell but I
have had similar things happen with other vendors - including Apple
refusing to replace a G4 motherboard whose Firewire ports didn't work
because the customer brought the computer to the service dealer 2 days
out of warranty.

I tend to start with lower expectations these days.

Craig