The first report of a problem with the laptop was that the screen went "funky". Our advice was to hibernate the system and power it back on. If it occured again, the user should call us when it occured. The problem of course recurred, and I was called. The drive was moved to a new laptop and the user continued on their merry way. A call to technical support went smoothly, with the result being the laptop being shipped to the repair depot, where they replaced the screen.
Fast forward a month, I am setting up the laptop for a new user and the screen problems return. I deploy a different laptop the new user and make another service call. The laptop takes another trip to the depot, where the motherboard is replaced.
Fast forward a month, the laptop is out on short term loan to an engineer on vacation. He calls me up and tells me the screen is "woogie". He was able to work around the problem for the week by simply suspending and awaking the machine whenever the screen went south. A trip to the depot replaces the screen (again in theory).
The laptop is returned to us in a worse state than it was sent it; some of the damage likely from the poor packing job by the repair depot. My call to technical support reports a broken wireless switch (it falls off), a flakey screen (same problem), and a horrible whine. It only took me 20 minutes to get them to send a technican onsite to make these repairs (as opposed to sending it back to the depot again). I am told that I will be contacted by the repair person the next day and they would be out to do the repairs the following day.
When I haven't heard from the repair person by the end of the second day, I call Dell. Who can't escalate the matter as the people it would be escalated to have gone for the weekend. I am promised a call on Monday morning from the support escalation team. Monday morning passes and I finally hear from the repairman. He asks when would be convenient for him to come out. He doesn't catch the sarcasm when I reply "Three days ago". We setup an appointment for the following day.
The next day arrives, I show the repairman into a conference room, where he opens the boxes with the parts and learns what work he will be performing on the laptop. In about an hour he replaces the screen, motherboard, and wireless switch. I check the laptop out and everything appears to be in working order. About 30 minutes into a Windows install, the screen problem comes back. About 30 minutes later the whine comes back. The trip from the repairman however did yield one useful piece of information; after the second repair, I should have called Customer Service instead of Technical Support.
That's just what I did. They listened to my complaint, they offered to transfer for me to Technical Support, I asked for a new laptop, and 20 minutes later the agreed. Four days later a new laptop shows up.
Too bad the laptop only vaguely resembles our standard issue laptops. The CPU is faster (great), there is more ram (no problem), the hard drive is bigger (sure), it has the Intel wireless card instead of the Dell one (annoying as I like consistency), the Nvidia graphics card instead of the Intel one (seriously annoying for the automated installer we use), has a fingerprint reader (annoying in that it is a driver that I now need to deal with for just one laptop), has a dvd writer instead of a dvd/cd writer (sure, whatever), has the extended battery (eww, it makes the laptop bigger), it has a more expensive version of Office (not cool as it is yet another special case I have to track).
Sigh. I guess this will become my test/development machine.
The first report of a problem with the laptop was that the screen went "funky". Our advice was to hibernate the system and power it back on. If it occured again, the user should call us when it occured. The problem of course recurred, and I was called. The drive was moved to a new laptop and the user continued on their merry way. A call to technical support went smoothly, with the result being the laptop being shipped to the repair depot, where they replaced the screen.
Fast forward a month, I am setting up the laptop for a new user and the screen problems return. I deploy a different laptop the new user and make another service call. The laptop takes another trip to the depot, where the motherboard is replaced.
Fast forward a month, the laptop is out on short term loan to an engineer on vacation. He calls me up and tells me the screen is "woogie". He was able to work around the problem for the week by simply suspending and awaking the machine whenever the screen went south. A trip to the depot replaces the screen (again in theory).
The laptop is returned to us in a worse state than it was sent it; some of the damage likely from the poor packing job by the repair depot. My call to technical support reports a broken wireless switch (it falls off), a flakey screen (same problem), and a horrible whine. It only took me 20 minutes to get them to send a technican onsite to make these repairs (as opposed to sending it back to the depot again). I am told that I will be contacted by the repair person the next day and they would be out to do the repairs the following day.
When I haven't heard from the repair person by the end of the second day, I call Dell. Who can't escalate the matter as the people it would be escalated to have gone for the weekend. I am promised a call on Monday morning from the support escalation team. Monday morning passes and I finally hear from the repairman. He asks when would be convenient for him to come out. He doesn't catch the sarcasm when I reply "Three days ago". We setup an appointment for the following day.
The next day arrives, I show the repairman into a conference room, where he opens the boxes with the parts and learns what work he will be performing on the laptop. In about an hour he replaces the screen, motherboard, and wireless switch. I check the laptop out and everything appears to be in working order. About 30 minutes into a Windows install, the screen problem comes back. About 30 minutes later the whine comes back. The trip from the repairman however did yield one useful piece of information; after the second repair, I should have called Customer Service instead of Technical Support.
That's just what I did. They listened to my complaint, they offered to transfer for me to Technical Support, I asked for a new laptop, and 20 minutes later the agreed. Four days later a new laptop shows up.
Too bad the laptop only vaguely resembles our standard issue laptops. The CPU is faster (great), there is more ram (no problem), the hard drive is bigger (sure), it has the Intel wireless card instead of the Dell one (annoying as I like consistency), the Nvidia graphics card instead of the Intel one (seriously annoying for the automated installer we use), has a fingerprint reader (annoying in that it is a driver that I now need to deal with for just one laptop), has a dvd writer instead of a dvd/cd writer (sure, whatever), has the extended battery (eww, it makes the laptop bigger), it has a more expensive version of Office (not cool as it is yet another special case I have to track).
Sigh. I guess this will become my test/development machine.
