# Dell Customer Support: was I a jerk? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 23, 2004, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dell-customer-support-was-i-a-jerk/276235 "2004-11-23T04:16:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dell-customer-support-was-i-a-jerk/276235/21 "2004-11-24T19:54:22Z")
IME Dell treat their home customers and their corporate customers very differently. Consider the effects on Dell of Dell losing the US Govt as a customer. It’s not stated what actually happenned, but in Tomndebb’s case, I’d have pointed out that my PC was still under warranty and if a new PC were required to fix the problem then I would expect Dell to honour the warranty by sending me that new PC FOC within the period stipulated by the warranty. But I’m a bit of a bastard. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dell-customer-support-was-i-a-jerk/276235/22 "2004-11-25T00:56:39Z")
> [@](#): > > did Dell just simply refuse to honor the warranty? Pretty much. Job related issues combined with the short remaining time on the warranty rendered a long fight with Dell impractical, so I found a newer, faster, motherboard/cpu/power unit combo for less than $200 and installed it the next day. Dell just saved themselves a cheap power unit and cost themselves several whole unit sales (and some bad publicity whenever they are mentioned in my presence) for the forseeable future. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dell-customer-support-was-i-a-jerk/276235/23 "2004-11-25T01:01:15Z")
(Actually, with only six weeks left on warranty, I’d have almost been willing to cut them some slack and just bought a power unit. It was discovering that no power unit would fit their motherboard and that they refused to tell me where I could find a replacement or adapter (as in, “I cannot give you that information” not “We don’t know either”) that they lost any hope of a repeat purchase.) ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dell-customer-support-was-i-a-jerk/276235/24 "2004-11-25T05:02:24Z")
My Dell also had a proprietary way of connecting the motherboard to the case. I love Dell, I’ve had no problem with their customer service ever - but while I’ll keep buying laptops from them, I’m sick of this proprietary stuff and will be building my own desktops from now on. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dell-customer-support-was-i-a-jerk/276235/25 "2004-11-25T18:02:06Z")
Interesting about the proprietary connection scheme. I had no idea. Sorry for your troubles, **tom**. As for my own troubles, I guess it’s true that if at first subtlety doesn’t work, hit it until it does work. I received my new CD/DVD drive yesterday and installed it last night. Everything seems to work fine. As **Quartz** said, though, it ight have been a product of this being a US government account as much as anything else. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dell-customer-support-was-i-a-jerk/276235.md?page=1)