Dell messes up my replacement, AGAIN

My M1330 has another failing motherboard so I asked Dell for a replacement system. First a Studio XPS M1340 arrived. P9600, 8GB DDR3 ram, 256GB SSD, Win 7 Ultimate...sounds good huh? Sadly, it was white in color and there were darker purple dots at both bottom left and right corner. So I called Dell again. This time, a Studio XPS 16 arrives. i5, Win 7 Professional, 3GB DDR3 ram, 250GB NORMAL HDD, low cost LCD screen...I was like ?! So the Dell rep called me again and I addressed the issue to her. She kept saying I can't compare the first replacement system to the second one because they are different models. C'mon, what I like to have are now ALL GONE in the 1647...sigh...

 

Wow, 3GB of ram... That's cheap!

 

I hope you didn't get your hopes up high to get a top of the line 1647 becuase your making a huge jump from a M1330 -> XPS 1647 and also your M1330 doesn't have any high specs either.

 

they replaced your system with a comparable or better one, i honestly don't see the problem.

 

I think the actual annoying part would be getting a 16 inch size laptop in place of a 13 inch. They are used for entirely different purposes - neither is good at what the other one is.

 

I would have taken the 1st replacement sent. It had 8 GB ram, 256GB SSD, and a much stronger processor and tho the OP does not say I can only assume a better video card. So what if it was white with purple spots. LOL

 

Yeap. Why not ask for repairs on it?

 

The sad part is, I was told to ship the M1340 back in order to receive another replacement system, i.e. the SXPS 16 I'm having.

For those who didn't see a problem, I AM using a SSD and how the heck on earth I should accept a normal HDD replacement?

 

Btw, low cost LCD does not mean anything. My 15.6'' FHD 1080P was a "low cost" also.

 

They should really not call it "low cost" it makes people think they dropped down a lot of money for junk.

 

True. I think even my RGBLED was stated as low cost. Funny.

 

I just had a taste of HP's support for the first time last night and it really puts DELL's in perspective.

Granted, it was for my mother's G71 and not the equivalent of XPS Support but... wow. I was raging so hard-- the rep took literally five minutes to respond to my queries, and he typed like a fifth grader with a spell checker, inserting "......................" into his responses, making it seem as if he was impatient or whatever the . It was terrible.

On the other hand DELL reps were apologetic when I showed disappointment and treated me with some decency. And DELL has always been proactive in suggesting replacements and repairs.

HP just ran me around in circles for forty minutes before conceding repairs.

God. I know that mileage varies wildly but I'm gonna treat DELL a lot better after that experience...

 

if you paid for an SSD in your ORIGINAL configuration, then sure, you should probably be compensated with a comparable HDD.

but OVERALL, the laptop has much better specifications than the unit that was replaced. if having a normal hdd and low cost screen is such a huge burden on you, then ask Dell to replace the system again.

 

I guess the service varies from rep to rep, customer to customer, and country to country. Your HP experience sums up my Dell one. In total it took 6 weeks and over 10 hours on the phone to reps to replace my throttling 1640. I'm happy now, but it was a painful, rage-filled process that I wouldn't wish upon anyone.

 

Ditto, 8 months of owning a SXPS 1640 8 service calls and 3 replacements later. I received a full refund thanks to Dell- Bill, and now own my M17x r2 which just runs circles around the SXPS 1640 + it has pretty lights.

 

8 gigs to 3 gigs ssd to non-ssd. Yep he def got an equal replacement for what he paid.

 

SSD was FREE according to OP's sig, so I guess free upgrade, so it's a fair game if he gets a normal HD.

 

I second this. XPS16 is not a replacement for XPS M1330. I insisted on this and after dealing with Dell for over a month I got a M11x R2 with 8GB RAM.

Sean

 

Okay...so after days and days talking to the rep, she's ok to give me a 128GB SSD, a 1080p screen and 8GB ram back. So now my Studio XPS 16 spec will be:

i5 520M (nicer than T7500)
8GB DDR3 ram (This rocks)
128GB SSD (I missed the 256GB one on my first replacement...sigh)
1GB ATI HD4670 (Bye nVidia!)
Dell 370 bluetooth (should act almost the same as the current 355)
Dell 1520 WLAN (Oh not Intel brand :-()
1080p Full HD LCD (have no idea if RGBLED, WLED or what)
Win 7 Professional 64bit (Well, I am using Win7 Ultimate so I'll just apply the product key to upgrade it by myself, not a big problem)

Anyway, I know the purpose of a 13" is way different from the 16", I'm fine with this 1647, at least, it will be easier for my eyes when I am checking the DNA sequences in my job...

Also, it seems like that the ~500 I paid for my M1330 3 year extra warranty does worth the money...

 

Try to get the 375 bluetooth. The 370 was notorious for stability.

 

Be careful with that Windows. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the product key apply to each specific laptop (i.e. The Ultimate key you want to apply is for the old machine and the 1647 you are getting has Win 7 Pro). Why not just call dell and ask for Win 7 ultimate if that's what you had originally?

Also Dell no longer ships Windows installation dvd's so hold onto the ones you have.

This is exactly what I meant when I said check each line of the quote - it seems like they throw darts onto a board of parts when offering replacements - such a mixed bag of upgrades/downgrades in every spec I got.

 

No worries...I'm using Win 7 Ultimate RTM got from Microsoft for free when the company introduced Win 7...

 

Really? My current laptop has Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit and I'm getting a replacement with Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. How am I supposed to re-install Windows after a format? Will they ship a DVD if I request one?

 

You can *and should* burn off discs from Dell DataSafe 2, even if you wont use them personally since they have the same contents that the on drive recovery partition has. (ie...any bloatware the machine came with)

You can request a full copy of Windows 7 by getting in touch with Dell.

 

Thanks !!!