Last Wednesday I noticed X had locked up. I thought this might be a software problem so I tried a few things like changing video driver from the binary nVidia to the open source nv driver. I also did a full 24 hour memory test. The screen corruption still occurred however. I sent a message to Dell via their website late on Thursday night. By 12pm Friday I had no reply, in fact no confirmation email of my message so I called them up.
After calling 2 different support numbers (gleaned from the website) I was told there’s a special number to call dedicated for Dell XPS systems – of which mine is one. I got through to a human being pretty quickly who started asking me questions about the problem. I pointed the guy at my gallery so he could see the problem for himself.
He asked me if I could install a different windows video driver, or reinstall the video driver. I replied that I don’t use Windows but Linux, but in answer to his question, yes, I have changed the video driver. (in my opinion of course this is irrelevant because the problem manifests itself immediately after boot up, not after the OS loads, but I’m willing to go through their questions if it means they fix it).
Next I was asked if I could reinstall Windows. I flat refused this, telling him the problem occurred before the operating system loaded, and that I could physically remove the hard disk and the problem would still occur. He reluctantly accepted this argument.
Finally he asked if the problem only occurred on the laptop display panel, or if the problem occurred when plugged into an external display. Unfortunately I didn’t have the laptop with me at the time (my bad) so I said I’d test that over the weekend and call them on Monday.
Today I called them again because I tested it and sure enough the corruption occurred on an external display also. Unsurprisingly I got through to a different guy who was valiantly trying to find a “decision tree” that matched my problem. I also pointed him to my gallery so he could see for himself the problem. After about 10 minutes with a few on hold he eventually managed to find a decision tree that matched. It’s interesting that one of the questions he asked had absolutely no right answers for my problem, and that caused a little confusion.
Finally after further discussion he organised a service call. He asked if I’d like to replace the part myself. I decided I didn’t want to take my laptop to bits so he said he’d send an engineer. He should be here tomorrow.
I still like Dell kit, and I still think their support isn’t as bad as some people make out.
7 Comments
I agree that the support isn’t bad, once you manage to get through to someone.
The last time I tried to get my laptop repaired (dodgy power connector on the motherboard) I spent over an hour on the phone describing the problem. Again, I don’t think I fitted one of their decision trees!
No matter, within 48hrs of finally getting through to them that the battery wasn’t faulty, nor was the charger, they swapped out the motherboard. It only took 15 minutes!
I’m a great fan of Dell’s hardware, but I’ve never had much luck with their customer support. I have a dead Inspiron 8200 which no-one seems to want to deal with.
I wonder what support package you have with them? You seem to have had some success, even with the “tree monkeys” and their limited ability to think for themselves.
When I bought the machine I paid for 3 years next business day on site support. There’s a separate phone number for XPS systems – I don’t know why.
I had to phone them again yesterday after I’d booked the engineer because I had to go home sick. I’m at home today and not in the office so wanted to tell Dell that. When I called up however the guy said that they’d had the engineer down to visit my home anyway! Good job I called.
Personally I’m fedup at wasting my time on “support” – asking about drivers when it’s clear that it’s stuffed up at the BIOS and then putting you on hold for 10mins. It’s bad enough when it’s something like this, but I’ve had cases where I’ve found out that a support person had stalled a critical call for a customer because they didn’t listen to me. That really narked me off. Kick ass time.
I don’t mind having a numbskull as the first line of support, but they should escalate to senior people _rapidly_ when it’s out of their league. I mean in this case it’s stuff video card, maybe stuffed screen or connector. There surely can’t be alot else happening at that level.
Well. At least it didn’t catch fire!
I hate support lines, I really wish they’d cater for the type of person who knows what he’s talking about
– I’m frequently on the line to Sony and Dell, I generally go through the following:
1 – I tell $vendor what the problem is, and the likely cause;
2 – They hand hold me through their decission tree;
3 – They tell me what I told them to begin with (after ~15mins of me going through useless questions);
4 – They send out an engineer;
I really wish I could just jump the process from 1 to 4 each time
i sat on the phone for over 4 hours while the dell XPS support guy took control of my laptop from india and fiddled around…. eventually he agreed i was right my disc drive was broken and sent me a new one…… all later discussions i had with them about hard drive curruption and video card failure were even longer and less productive…..
the XPS 2 is terrible and the support is worse
(in my experience…..)
anyone wanna buy it? lol
my dell laptop screen broke aswell n i want to repair it or find someone but i dont have any money how much will it cost to buy the screen and to hire the guy to replace my broken screen from my dell laptop computer???
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[...] Follow up articles:- http://popey.com/blog/2006/07/10/My_broken_Dell_Laptop_part_2/, http://popey.com/blog/2006/07/20/Joined_up_Dell_support/ This entry was posted in Advocacy. [...]
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