My Dell Customer Support Experience (Spoiler Alert: Not Good)

So a little while ago I Called up AW support and said that A. My battery was dying WAYYY to fast (battery read 20% design capacity) and B. I was having screen bleeding issues. The call took less than 20 mins total and there was a less than 2 min hold time. The service rep said that they would replace both the monitor on my AW17R4 and the battery under the warranty free of charge with on sight repair and honestly it was a very easy and pain less process (pain starts here -->). This was on 2/14/18. So waited for the mythical call that I was promised I would receive within 4 business days to schedule an appointment time for on-sight repair. 4 days passed and I got an email that said part order was delayed and would arrive shortly. So a "short" while later on 4/4/18 (see only 2 months later what wonderful speed!!!) I received said mythical call. And the tech said he would be there at about 3 pm, which he arrived on-time for. So hes sitting there working on it, I'm sitting 2 feet away watching this guy like a hawk. This goes on for about an hour. He was doing fine, didn't mess anything up, was working quite diligently really; replaced my screen and battery no problem and was starting to put everything back together again. Then I get up to use the restroom, come back ~40 seconds later and some of the blades from my heat sync are just missing. Not like bent, not broken on the floor, just missing. And I'm sitting here like, ummm I'm pretty sure its not supposed to look like that. him: oh no its supposed to look like that trust me. me: no.... its not. And then he puts the back grill back on and closes it up -.- then spent the next 10 mins or so trying to convince me that its "supposed" to look like that after which he basically ran out the door. And I checked, its not bent they're just like broken off and missing. So needless to say I'm not too pleased with dell right now. Make me wait 2 months then break my bloody heat sync... really? Called Dell support back a few seconds after (whom I ended up just switching to speaking in Spanish with because the poor guy couldn't do English but apparently spoke spanish) And they agreed to just replace the heat sync with an DIFFERENT technician this time. So time to wait another few months for them to break my things again Yay! Just thought I'd share my wonderful experience with the lot of you and if anyone has any advice feel free to share.

its "supposed" to look like this: I
'm pretty sure there is, A. not supposed to be a gap there, B. they're not supposed to be frayed/bent like that (I have pictures of it before and its not like that ^-^ which I so kindly shared with the technician who told me its "supposed to be like that")

There are intermittent missing/bent/broken ones on the left side as well


Update (4/11/18): So this time dell pretty much got back to me rather quickly, and they sent the actual heat sync, Fans, and a replacement interior frame. The repair tech was a bit spazzy (I had to remind him which screws went with what constantly) but he took his time and made sure he did everything correctly for which I am thankful. Anyways everything seems to be working FINALLY and its all in one piece. And honestly I have no idea what he did with the missing bit, like take it? How did he even manage this...?

 

This is one of the reasons I do all my own repairs when possible. I trust myself to do a good job as I can take my time, whereas these technicians probably have to visit 10 people a day for repairs so they are more likely to make mistakes. On an unrelated note my boiler was playing up a couple of years ago so a technician was called out to fix it. The first one fiddled around testing it but said he couldn't fix it and would send another technician to look; the next technician came and installed a completely unnecessary expansion tank to apparently "fix" the issue (which it didn't). Finally in another couple of weeks another technician came and replaced the control panel which sorted the problem. A lot of so called "experts" in my view are barely more knowledgeable than yourself. With a bit of reading and poking around in forums you will be able to do any job better than 80% of these people (and for a much lower cost usually).

 

The bigger question is. wtf did he do to ruin a heatsink like that.....

 

God only knows.

 

Good thing is the missing parts was more of a cosmetic than a really effective piece of heatsink:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/funny-thing-i-found-on-the-15r3-2016-heatsink.797784/

 

Well I have so far spent over a month trying to get a new cmos battery.

 

Yeah unfortunately on the left side, while not visible externally they were bent to hell on the inside.