About two months ago, I decided it’s time to upgrade my computer. I have an Alienware now, and it’s worked perfectly for the past three years. I went back to them and ordered a pretty nice setup, and a week later it arrives - with a giant fucking hole in the box. Not a dent, or a scrape, but I giant gaping HOLE. Like it was repeatedly impaled by an angry toilet plunger. I opened it up and the contents seemed unscathed, so I hooked it up and went to town.
First thing I notice is the fan is rattling loudly, so I give it a gentle nudge and the noise subsides. When Windows starts up it says that the video card’s SLI has been removed or disabled. I open the setup program and re-enable it. Okay, everything else seems to be working fine. I installed their free copy of Battlefield 2 and start playing, and about 20 minutes later it blue screens. I notice that the case is hot, I mean REALLY hot - about 100 degrees. It wasn’t just the game either, just browsing the internet caused it to overheat and blue screen. I opened the case and looked inside. The foam “sound insulation” shit they put inside it was melted to the fucking case. I call tech support and deal with their runaround for an hour, until they finally admit it needs to be shipped back to them. They want me to ship it and pay for repairs and shipping, for a product that came out of the box busted. I mentioned the hole in the box, and they replied “it’s not our fault.” I asked to talk to a supervisor and they wouldn’t let me. Said it was against their policy. I had to fucking yell at them for another hour just to get a supervisor on the phone. I talked to him for a bit and he said he’d call me back.
He never did. I called them back and - oh I’ll spare you the rest of the crap between the supervisor and I. They charged me for shit I never ordered, repeteadly “forgot” the repair orders, and outright lied to me several times. I shipped the piece of shit back and stopped payment.
If it’s not clear by now, never, ever buy from Alienware. They’re a bunch of festering ass wound licking llama jizz eaters. How they stay in business is beyond me.
Now I decide to go with Falcon Northwest. They’re expensive as fuck, but hell, they claim to have unparalleled technicians that personally build and test each system. Sounds good, so I order the same setup. A month later, it hasn’t shipped. I call them and they tell me they had motherboard problems and my order “fell through the cracks,” whatever that means. Today I finally got it in the mail. Turned it on and… disk read errors. Fantastic. Quality craftmanship indeed. Now I get to deal with another round of tech support. But at least they gave me a nice Falconware mug, t-shirt, and bag of coffee beans (??). More to come, I’m sure. I’ll keep you posted.
As I’ve found, there are two ways to get a decent computer:
Buy the components and build it yourself.
Get a Mac.
Since you’re obviously seeking a PC, I would recommend building one yourself. The cost comes out to be about the same, if not cheaper, and it’s really easy to do, requiring less than an afternoon of work.
Ugh. A Dull? Tha company gave me one of the worst out-of-box experieces - a PC delivered with a fan that could out-loud a cement mixer, and the replacement fan delivered with a cracked blade that snapped off about 15 seconds after first use.
Or the laptop that was delivered with a footprint on the case? Not the box - the laptop itself. Amazingly, the laptop seemed undamaged. For that price, though, I wanted a clean one that hadn’t been stepped on.
I get plenty of calls asking if I work on Macs, they are not any kind of magical font of uberreliable computers.
The killer with dells that i have seen is the preponderance of systems with all integral components, everything is onboard, sound dies, new mobo, video problem, new mobo, NIC goes, new mobo. I always try to plug in an new video card and override the onboard stuff but it only works maybe 50% of the time in my experience.
Dell is far from the only one here, the bigger the name, the more pressure from shareholders to make a quick buck, therefore the cheaper and crappier the systems get.
Drach
Slowly but surely taking the computer repair biz by storm :D.
My last three PCs have all been Alienwares, and I haven’t had a single complaint. (Well, the power supply on the second one died on me, but that was about five years after I bought it.) I definetly plan to buy from them again when my current machine is too geriatric to keep up.
Due to a little known loophole in the Taft-Hartley Act, microprocessors have organized (and invited hard drives to join them) and they spend most of thier time looking for ways to file grievances rather than sucking it up and spitting out the next level of games.
Is the majority of computer sales in America over the net?
I still prefer to walk into a store and see what set-ups they have available, and pick the parts I want. I haven’t got the time to build my own. Every place I’ve been to I’ve been able to walk in with my box go “here’s my problem”, come back 3 days later and it’s done. I’ve known 2 places who would do this even after the warranty has expired free of charge.
Buying private costs a bit more, but it saves part of the hassle. Of course, you can still get completely fucked.
I’ve been thinking about pitting alienware for a long long time. I usually build my computers but on my last one I made a pretty bonehead mistake and fried my motherboard so I decided to order one. Big mistake.
When I first ordered it my Credit card was declined for no reason. They made no attempt to contact me or re-run my card. I never would have known if I hadn’t have called back to double check everything was ok.
There’s a little site you can use to check the status of your order. Mine stayed on step 3 (out of like 12 I think?) until I called them the day AFTER it was supposed to ship. Then suddenly it shot up to step 8. When I asked them how long before it would ship now they wouldn’t give me a straight answer. Just told me it takes about seven days to ship a computer after it reaches the step I was on. Considering my original ship date was only 5 days after I had placed the order how the fuck were they going to meet my first ship date? If they know it takes a week AFTER reaching step 8 why didn’t they give themselves a realistic ship date to begin with?
When I got it the DVD drive wasn’t working. I fucked with it and fucked with it. Then I pulled out their IDE cable and replaced it with one of my own. It worked fine then. Good thing I figured it out on my own without flipping out.
The fan really rattled until I re-secured it. I guess this might have come loose in shipping.
They forgot to ship it with a mouse. I had to call them and the first thing they asked “You SURE you ordered it?” I realize this is probably a standard question but do they really get people that say “No not sure at all…forget the whole thing” Bring up my order first willya? Then she told me that yes I did actually order a mouse and no it wasn’t packed in the packing log so I should call back the next day to make sure it was ‘approved’ to send me a new one. I was like “Why do I have to call back? You know I ordered one. Your own records show I didn’t get it. Why can’t you handle it without a follow up call?” I then decided I didn’t care enough so I didn’t call back. They did send me another one later though…it took them another week good thing I actually prefer my mouse, and just to be cute I guess they sent me an ‘order confirmation’ for the mouse with no indication that they didn’t charge me for it. They didn’t but they could have been clearer in the email.
After waiting about 8 weeks for my rebate I emailed them asking where the hell it was already. They emailed me back telling me it takes 12-24 weeks for a rebate. WHAT THE FUCK!?!? why not just make it 26-52 weeks and keep it a year if you feel like it. What is the good of keeping my money so long? Oh and as of last week it’s now been over 24 weeks still no rebate. I’m about to email them again.
I honestly have no idea how they get such high customer ratings and win so many awards. I’m going back to building my own computers.
I don’t like to spend huge amounts of money on my computers. I like to upgrade once every 3 years…but not the whole thing, just RAM or processors. If something dies, I replace.
So my recommendations are:
1- build. It’s easy.
-or-
2- Dell. Yes, a Dell. If you don’t want to spend 40-bajillion dollars on an Alienware, and instead you’re looking for middle-of-the-road crap that works well enough and has pretty superior service along with it, Dell is it. My Wife’s Dell has caused zero problems, and hasn’t minded when it’s upgraded or has parts removed or replaced.
Another build-it-yourself or Dell. I work at a university, and we order all our Dells with three-year warranties. Costs a little extra, but I’m able to send an email telling them what the problem is, and I usually have replacement parts in hand within three days. There’s a pre-printed prepaid return airbill in the box, and I send the defective parts back with no problems.
I know some people have had different expeiences, but I’ve found Dell for desktops and IBM for laptops to be the most trouble-free way to go, and this is after working on hundreds of them. Of course, IBM may be different now that the laptops are from a different company.
Personal tech support may be less satisfactory, but my three-year old Dimension and four year old Thinkpad at home have never had a single problem with hardware, so I’ve never had to find out.
This part fucking kills me. I got a Dell laptop in the summer of '04, intending for it to serve as my school computer for the next 4 years plus. Worked just fine, but when I actually got to school and plugged it into the ethernet port at school, I couldn’t get the networking to network! I was on a wireless network at home, so there was never any reason to suspect that anything could be wrong wit the wired networking. Futzed around with it for a few days until the tech center opened. Luckily, they’re a warranty repair center for Dell, so they just said they would fix the problem. Okay, sweet. So the place has it a week. When they call me and say its ready, I go get it and they tell me that the ethernet port was damaged, so they replaced the motherboard. WTF? Not only that, they actually had a new motherboard arrive earlier in the week, but it was broken, so they had to order another. Holy shit! That was not inspiring, believe me.
A few months later, the power supply died - the AC in port in the back of the computer stopped working. Down to the tech center for another warranty repair! Guess what? Another replaced motherboard! :rolleyes:
The computer itself works reasonably well, but two equipment failures in less than a year of ownership does not bode well. On top of that, with the only remedy apparently being a complete motherboard replacement, I get the shivers contemplating how much it’ll cost to fix a minor problem once the computer is out of warranty. Luckily, it’s been trouble-free since then (well, except for increasingly sluggish performance of late, but that’s par for the course with PCs, unfortunately). The warranty service has been good, but my next computer is going to be a self-built desktop. And if I have to buy another laptop in the future? Apple. If it must be a PC, I’ll try either Toshiba or IBM, I’ve heard good things about both. “Your Firewire port is damaged, we’ll have to replace the motherboard”? No thank you!
The $400 eMachines desktop that I bought a year and a half ago is working just fine. The $600 HP laptop I bought a year ago, ditto. The five year old Dell in the upstairs room is still perfectly usable, although a bit slow.
In this house there are two computers. The older one is a 5-year-old HP Pavilion, which is still working fine (especially after I purged all the malware that gets downloaded off the Net from it) – the only reason I bought a new computer was to have one that ran a bit faster.
I build all of my own desktops, I’m up to 5 now. With those I have no one to blame but my self. I know exactly what parts are in them, and how to make them work. If anyone is going to get a new computer, I’d highly recommend building it yourself. Most all parts come with instructions, and you may have a friend who is willing to walk you through the steps. (I’ll do it for any friend/coworker for pizza and beer) What you learn during the process in amazing.
Laptops – thats another story. I’ve had three toshibas, they’ve all been good. Currently have a gateway (for two months now) and so far so good.
I have no personal experience with Alienware but it sounds to me like your machine was damaged in the shipping. If your machine got dropped or rammed during shipping, it could have unseated a component or two which might have caused the overheating.
If you get a really badly damaged package you should a) call the shipper and kick ass until hell wont have it. Then b) refuse to accept it which means the carrier will have to return it. Don’t open the package - just drop it off at their facility and tell them you’re refusing.
Then c) call the company you bought from and explain what’s going on. If they won’t work with you, call your Visa people and dispute the charge. Reorder if necessary.
You’re not the first person I’ve heard complaining about Alienware customer service. Personally, I’ve been impressed with the service I’ve gotten from Falcon Northwest, if you want a boutique computer. And I too have had very good luck working with Dell, if you want a basic machine.
I’ve had the opposite experience with Alienware. I bought my computer 2 years ago, so maybe things have changed in the meantime.
My box arrived damaged, also. Not quite a big gaping hole in the side, but badly enough that I worried about the condition of the computer. I called Alienware immediately to make them aware of the issue, and they opened a service ticket just in case I did need to send it back. Fortunately, there were no problems, and it has worked fine ever since.
I have had to call them about minor things over the years, none of which involved a failure of the machine (in one case I had lost one of the screws that holds the cable cage onto the back; I think another had to do with installing an extra hard drive). In every case they were friendly, helpful, and thorough.
I like that the computer shipped with extra cables and parts. They assumed I would be tinkering with the machine over its life, so they facilitated such things.
I hope the bad experiences above are aberrations. I was planning on replacing this box with a new Alienware next year, but if their customer service really has slipped this much, maybe its time to try building my own.