Alienware 18 and my horrible experience

So I'm really just posting this in to vent and hopefully it'll help some of you if you happened to encounter the same problem or might be considering purchasing from Dellware.

To start off with it took more than two months to get a successful order placed through Dell, which included multiple conversations and hours of time spent with their reps. My first order that I originally placed was on an Alienware 17 back at the end of November 2014 with an expected delivery date after the new year. I waited a month before my order was mysteriously cancelled without so much as a courtesy e-mail sent to me. Of course, I was floored by this and immediately contacted Dell Customer Care Department where I was instructed that orders shouldn't be placed through the site, but through a sales rep in order to make sure no cancellations happen. Prior to this I had already contacted them as the computer read as unavailable on their site a few days after placing it. i was told by one rep that the laptop was discontinued due to GPU issues that couldn't be resolved (this was the AMD variant). The second one I spoke with said they ran out of stock, but that my order was still intact and would be fulfilled. Of course, both reps were wrong in this. So throughout this process I was lied to by Dell.

Anyways, I decide to tempt fate and try again, but this time with a sales rep and an upgrade to the Alienware 18. This went as it should and they even tossed in extended warranty/enhanced support/accidental damage at not additional charge, because of my prior issues with placing an order. Wonderful! The computer arrived by it's estimated delivery date. At this point I had noticed that I was one of the last people to order an 18 as they were also discontinued within a week of my purchase. Funny, right? How did I manage to try to buy not one but two discontinued products from Dell, which honestly I feel they should've mentioned before allowing me to buy. That's besides the point though. The real issue here is the terrible quality of the laptop I received as detailed below.

Well, within the first week of owning the computer I had to contact support, because my video card driver keeps crashing. First, 2 hour conversation with them, multiple driver trials later, and it seems to be fixed. Grand. Everything should run wonderfully now. Nope. In fact, a few days later I notice that the laptop seems a bit warm to the touch after cranking up games on it. I expected it to be warm, so initially didn't think anything of it.

My first real issue popped up when I started using adobe photoshop on it, which I am about to enroll in a program that requires quite a bit of use in it. I've got the perfect machine for this! haha, but then again I don't. When I used Adobe for more than an hour it would have random lock ups. There was no BSOD, but the computer would freeze and stutter, adobe would crash, and my computer would make some rather unpleasant noises before the fans would turn on full-blast. I chose to ignore this as my computer never actually crashed.

Fast forward a month and I've been playing WoW for quite a few hours. This is the first time I noticed the area by the power button getting so hot that it was painful to leave my hand on it. I immediately call Alienware Tech Support and the guy starts downloading heating tools to check temperatures, which I probably should've ran the moment I got the computer. Anyways, he notices that it is overheating into the upper 80s under the stress test for the CPU. The GPUs at no point were overheating. He writes up his reports and orders an on-site tech to come out and fix it. This is where it gets terrible.

The tech they send out seemed clueless of the machine to the point that taking it apart made him nervous. He was sent with a heat sink/CPU fan and very poorly went about taking the laptop apart to get to it. He used a credit card to try to pull off the keyboard deck. I'm no techy, but this method seemed poor to me. This takes him four attempts before he realizes he's missed a few scres under the hard drive. When he finally does manage to dismantle it, he shoves the new part into the space, haphazardly goes about putting it back together, and closes the case. Fine, whatever, it should be fixed. But it takes him three attempts of taking it apart before he can get the lights, and buttons working on it, which means he clearly had no idea what he was doing in the first place. Yet, it seems functional and the tech leaves.

I decide to see what damage or success was accomplished. First thing I note - the power button LED strip is no longer working. Of course, I call Dell and they put in an order to send out another guy. Mind you this is all within a 2 week time frame and I do work for a living. before this he runs stress tests on the GPU, which were never an issues, and they pass with flying colors. The CPU is not tested, but assumed to be fine.

This second tech guy comes out and spend an hour working on the wiring and failing more than once. At this point I am beyond furious. But he manages to get everything working or at least looking like it should. He leaves me with one comment though and that is to run my hardest programs on the laptop. I don't know if it was just a hunch on his end, but I didn't actually try any graphics or CPU intense games until a week later.

I fire up Dragon Age: Inquisition and the laptop goes insane within five seconds of opening it. The fans are running crazy and kept turning on and off, so i quickly shut down the game as it has never done that before. I call up Tech Support, yet again, and the guy goes to run a simple CPU stress test. The processor literally went from 56 to 110 within 5 seconds causing the laptop to shut off almost immediately.

At this point I am pretty about ready to ship the damn thing back with a sticky note saying "Thanks, but no thanks.". The tech quickly tells me something is majorly wrong in the system and I detail the tech visits to him. He doesn't offer more than an apology and claims that the computer is still easily fixable. To fix it this time I'd need to ship it to the Depot. So, I go along with this, which involved a few more calls to Tech Support to see if there was anything I could do to fix it. I had done some background digging and found quite a few people who used different thermal paste and took control of the fan settings. I ask the tech if this is perhaps the fix, but he refuses to answer and only offers to run a stress test, which we know how that'll go. At this point I realized there was no way around sending it to the depot, so I ship the computer to the Depot.

Within a few days of receiving it they place the repair in an 'on-hold- status claiming that all parts needed are not available. Previously, the Tech Support agent told me that the reason laptops are sent to the Depot is so all parts that may be needed to repair the machine are available. First lie. Also I would receive the laptop back within 5-8 business days. Second lie. At this point I call up Tech Support and spend 2 hours trying to get the facts straight. I'm rerouted to a supervisor who claims to have more information on the laptop component needed. Finally, I'm told the part needed was the heat sink and that it would come in by the following monday or tuesday. I'm a bit stumped by this as that part had literally been replaced two weeks prior. This supervisor claims it's the tech's fault for not applying grease when putting in the new heat sink. I don't buy into this and ask if I may request a refund at this point. I am told he didn't think it was eligible for a full refund, because it was over 30 days old, so I am forced to continue "waiting" while they supposedly "fix" it.

By the following Tuesday no update has been made to the status of my laptop and I contact Tech Support again. This time I spend an hour and half on the line with them having to jump through hoops to get any semblance of answer on the laptop status. Finally, a supervisor tells me that another part is needed and it's 2 fans. Yes, they already replaced fans. I question into this and the agent claims it must've been damaged by the heat sink. Due to the delay he promises me a free game in exchange for the time and poor quality of the laptop I've had to deal with for the past 3 months. He also says the laptop would be fixed by the end of the week and that I'd have it back no later than the following week.

Today, I was contacted by that same supervisor and informed that they suddenly can't fix the laptop and that the part they now need was not in stock and was on a wait list that would take a very long time to fill. So I'm offered an exchange, which we all know there is none since 18s are no longer on the market. So my first question is f I can receive the top end 17 to which I am told that they can't guarantee that. I laughed at this. After all my time and investment spent on this horrible product I'm expected to accept some very sub par replacement. I promptly ask for a refund if an exchange to my liking can't be made. Somehow the refund wasn't as argument.

The computer survived a total of 75 days and had a chronic overheating processor throughout that time frame. I want to put on a tinfoil hat here and claim that they just didn't want to deal with 18s anymore, so my laptop and it's problems were doomed from the start. I will never purchase from Dell again and kindly frown upon Alienware with the many friends who initially warned me to stay away from Alienware. They were completely right.I am a fool for wasting five months and quite a bit of money on this. Consider it lesson learned.

 

1) Alienware come with very bad thermal paste from the factory and your system might have been lting somewhere for a long time causing the already crappy thermal paste to dry so you were getting the overheating due to no thermal paste as I assume.

If you seeks support on the forums we would've told you to buy some Liquid Ultra or GELID Extreme Thermal Compound and have this issue fixed in a few minutes

2) Dell does not have any technicians to send to you, they send you sub contracted companies and depends on the company and guy, you may get a good guy or get a mupprt that will destroy your system so it's a roll of a dice, I had your same experience the first tech came to me then when he broke one of the hinges I demnlanded a replacement and got a new laptop and now I know which company and even the name of the tech that I order if I ever need help

3) whenever a tech visits you, no need to let him leave and wait hoping that he system may work properly, while he is at your place, download a program called wPRIME then run it, choose settings then change the cores from 1 to 8 then save the settings, now click on the stability test and let it run, if it completes the test successfully it means your laptop can handle anything without overheating, I also suggest you download HE MONITOR to see the temp as the wPRIME is running.

4) don't buy from Dell in the future, only CLEVO/SAGER

 

I am taking my business elsewhere and looking at staying with a desktop. After this experience and given what I've read about other companies (ASUS & MSI) it just doesn't seem like laptops are in a good spot at the moment. I would've like the portability of one, but I'm not willing to wager another $2K+ to find out.

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, even if I had come here during the process of it overheating, I would've been entirely clueless in regards to stripping it down much less applying new thermal paste. As I said the heat sink that was replaced was not re-pasted just slipped into place by the tech and perhaps that is what caused it to completely overheat. I honestly wouldn't know >.<

 

I own my alienware for many months and still and not comfortable disassembling it, what u do is order the parts then keep then aside, then i call dell and ask for a technician bit when the tech arrives I tell him I wanna use my own paste not the dell one. Same thing I did when replacing my CPU and WLAN card I let their tech do it although in ur case that wouldnt help since they don't seem to deal with good tech companies

 

Sorry about your horrible experience with Dell dude. I really feel for you. This got to be the worst story I have read about. Jebus. :/

There are countless stories about Dell technicians not knowing what to do or being extremely inadept when doing service on a machine. They wreck more stuff than they fix, which is part of the reason why Dell discontinued AW18 I think. Its a pretty complicated machine to get to the inside of, and you got to remember to remove all the cables, screws and components, and be very careful when you remove the palmrest assembly. Any other machine on the market is 10x easier to work with, including the new 2015 models from Dell. So thats the reason why Dell stick with those I think. You`d think it would make sense to train their service monkeys to work on the 18" and still offer the best gaming notebook on the market, but apparantly not. Beats me.
Once you taken apart the AW18 one time, you learn and understand how easy it really is and how well made the system is. I encourage everyone to repaste their machines the day you recieve the AW18, not just to get a better paste, but also to learn how it is put together. That way you can demand to have the technician sit down and drink coffee and watch you while you take your machine apart yourself. If something happens in the future. No way any technician is ever coming near mine after reading all the horror stories.

What specs did you have on your machine btw? I wouldnt settle with 17" most likely anyway, but ask for a refund like you did. That said, you should be glad they can no longer try to fix your old machine. Its probably worn and broken after so many fixing attempts, that it would be unacceptable to me.

Good luck with Dell man. Hope you get what you want. They can be both easy and hard to communicate with. It depends a bit about where you live as well

 

Dell has taken the best brand (Alienware), put all their Dell poo on it, and left us with crappy super expensive laptops to choose from. My next machine is definitely a Sager FTW

 

I'm truly sorry about your experience with support these last months. If you send me your Service Tag on a PM I might be able to get you a good replacement for that machine you had. I'll try to make sure that you get a machine that matches the performance of what you had on your previous one. If that's not possible, I'll try to get that request you made on the table.

 

I am already waiting for the refund to finish processing. It's gone from the depot to the warehouse, so hopefully it'll be smooth sailing from here on out. I just have to wait a few weeks for everything to go through and my money to be returned. Also there was no guarantee exchange that could be made and i wasnt going to risk my money or time on it again. And hearing complaints coming from the new 17s I'd say I chose the best route for my situation.

Thankfully, getting a refund wasn't an argument and the agent easily got me one. So here I am waiting. Going on a month without a computer and counting.
At this point I'll be excited if I have my funds back in time to replace it within a month.

Also my model was the base of the 18s right before they were discontinued. I'll admit I'm too lazy to go grab the details of it >.<

 

If I was ordering an expensive Porsche (or computer in our case) I'd have the specs I ordered engraved in my head....... especially after going through so much drama......

 

I'm glad everything is going on a good route as of now. If you need any help, don't hesitate to contact me through PM directly.