M11x Repair Horror Stories

From time to time, our M11x's needs to go to the menders (or rather the menders come to us thanks to onsite repair.)
With Dell's reputation, I won't be surprised if you guys have any horror stories to share just so readers may know what to expect.

So anyone want to share their horror stories?

I start with mine. Not exactly a horror story but go the repairer to come fix my broken fan. Got on the phone and was sent a technician the next day. A Brazilian guy, judging by his accent and his t-shirt which was yellow and had Brazil on it, arrived very punctually.
Fan was replaced and everything seemed fine. He even asked me to give him good feedback!
A few days later, noticed the system was a bit slow so checked Task Manager to find that the technician had only installed 2 out of the 4GB. A quick check in bios confirmed that only 1 socket was used.
Still deciding on whether to seat it back myself or call Dell and get them to send another guy. If they send the same guy, he will be in for a good lecture!

Edit: Didn't see that another user has posted their story: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/590233-absolutely-disgusted-alienware-service.html

 

My experience was with a Dell Vostro 1400. I got in touch with Dell because of a faulty GPU. The offered to replace the motherboard free of charge and send a technician the next day. This was on a Friday. The following Monday I received a call from Dell to inform me that they made an error and the repair was not free after all . The technician forget to remove the board containing the microphone and headphone jack from the old motherboard and connect it to the replacement one. He also forget to reconnect the wifi antenna an the touchpad cable.

It took almost two months to get the laptop to a working state and to make Dell understand that I'm not willing to for the repair since they said it was free.

 

You want horror? Well, I'll give you not one but two to chew on.
First time around, my M11x R1 hadn't been in use for a month when the right hinge started disintegrating...ok, "my luck" or so I thought... I called up Dell and was sent a seemingly octogenarian, father Christmas on diet looking old man who had never worked on an M11X!!! He proceeded to replace the hinges and what should have been a simple "take out and snap in" procedure turned into a complete fiasco with the old geezer not only messing up my hinges but also rendering my laptop inoperable. (side note: my m11x had to take a 2 week vacation at a Dell depot and have it's entire motherboard replaced!)

After that nightmare, Dell announced that they had come out with a "redesigned hinge" and so I decided to get my screen upgraded. They sent me a competent African-American technician (I was reassured to learn that he had worked on the m11xs before...and he was a brotha too!) He went about replacing the screen, got done and everything worked as it should...but did it? A couple of days after my screen replacement, I started noticing that my battery life, which was a healthy 6-7 hours with wifi ON, balanced power plan and 50% brightness had gone down to a miserly 2 HOURS! and DOWN!....My battery was discharging faster that the Road-Runner going downhill!....I called Dell, they replied by saying that since my warranty had expired recently they wouldn't extend a helping arm..how convenient for them!...so now, I remain holding an M11x with a battery capacity of approximately an HOUR with wifi OFF, power saver ON, Brightness ZERO and Alienware lights DEACTIVATED!
I had been royally @%$^ by dell and it's so called "technicians".
If that wasn't horrific...I don't know what is.
Peace.

 

I'm afraid of purchasing a new M11X R2 now.
For all we know, two or three years down the road they may not even support the M11X and refuse to repair the hinges which have been faulty since day one. How can I feel secure when my warranty expires, hinges break, and I'm left with a non-portable paper weight? I know Chris released a statement saying that they will repair hinges with or without a warranty but how long will they be doing this service before were left behind and forgotten. Even if this service is carried out, as above user posted, Dell On-site Technicians are known for their poor experience. So they replace my hinges with the updated ones, what if the technician breaks or scratches something else and I only notice this issue within two or three days?

 

In the UK Dell doesn't have it's own technicians. Dell uses contractors for the repair and it pays them by the job. According to the technician that swapped the motherboard in my ex-laptop (I sold it shortly after the repair) all they get from Dell is the replacement parts and some kind of training when a new laptop comes out.

Those are a few thing I notices while the motherboard was swapped:

1- This technician, although he was doing his fastest to finish the job, took over an hours to complete the job. Without any experience I completed the same job in 45 minutes. I'm explaining why I had to take the laptop apart next.
2- The technician broke a hinge cover, took with him the audio board, and forget to connect the wifi antenna and switch.
3- No new thermal past was applied to the CPU when swapped from the old motherboard to the replacement one.
4- The laptop had 6 or 7 missing screws after the repair.

Thus I had to re-open the laptop to install a new audio board (send to me later by Dell), connect all the cables that the technician forgot to connect, repair the hing cover, clean and apply a new thermal past to the CPU, add a shim to the nvidia GPU.

 

In my experience, techs don't really know what they are doing. Working on laptops and netbooks isn't the same thing as a desktop and many techs assume that since they built their own desktop, they can repair laptops. As an IT Director over appx 150 laptops, I've learned the horrors of personally repairing different brands. The laptop world is one where brand matters, and in my experience, Dell's business line of systems and their high end line (alienware) are incredible easy to work on. If a tech can't fix a dell system, they shouldn't be a tech at all.

Alienware and Dell's XPS line, along with partners and large business dell members, are allowed to work on their own systems without voiding overall warranty. And when I worked for Dell XPS 4 years ago, you could deny having an onsite tech come replace the part for you if you felt competent. Things may have changed since then.

IMHO, if its a simple thing like memory, hard drives, expansion boards, etc, just opt to do the work yourself. Even the CPU and GPU are easy to access on the m11x.