Gee, I don’t know why a reader thought of me when he saw this about a Dell laptop that allegedly exploded into flames. (Thanks Damien)
I thought of you too, Jeff.
I covered your Dell hell in a series on our tech support blog. When the laptop went out for repair I asked the following question:
Will I have good luck or will it be Jeff Jarvis Redux?
Much to my shock the machine showed back up on Tuesday and seems to be working fine. I don’t know if is a new policy to not rile bloggers at Dell now or what?
No problem Jeff.
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Let me just add our experience with Dell’s customer service. I will admit, this was a while back so we were on the cutting-edge of no-customer-service with Dell.
Our hard-drive on our brand-new desktop crashed, for no reason. It took 2 weeks of back-and-forth with Dell’s customer svc reps (in Malaysia), who didn’t speak English and because we never got the same one twice, we had to repeat our problem EVERY DAY. Whew! whatta headache.
It turns out that the factory screwed-up our hard-drive and they needed to ship us another. Meanwhile, my husband was self-employed and risked losing his business because of the long delay in repair.
As a result, I am ever loyal to Dell by repeating my experience with EVERYONE that I know and meet to this day. Each business that I see that uses Dell, I devotedly warn against using the product and point out that I sincerely hope they don’t have any “problems” with their Dell!!
In closing, always use a computer from a company that offers LOCAL customer service. (yes, they’re out there) We’ve done this and been seriously impressed with their 5-minute response/fix time for a small issue. Anything longer than that and we would simply drive it down the street for a “loner computer” and repair service.
Just to let you know that Dell Hell consumer support (HAH!) has struck in the UK as well. Hard drive crashed but still under warranty (should I mention here that the motherboard went as soon as we got the computer?). Have, so far, spent approx 3 hours on the telephone to numerous people in India and Ireland. Spent today in waiting for technician who, surprise, surprise did not turn up and no phone call to explain. After more phone calls I am assured of a visit on Thursday pm. Any bets?
I was just passing through and thought I would mention that this isn’t the first time a Dell laptop has exploded in flames. Here is at least one other incident from a few years ago:
I worried about this with my wife’s laptop as it got hotter and hotter and finally ended up replacing the heat sink and fan assembly:
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