Dell RMA Support Review

I've seen all sorts of fantastic reviews about the new Dell Inspirons, Vostros, and XPSs. I thought I'd throw a little twist into the wind and review Dell's support and RMA process as I have had the unfortunate need to use it.
On Monday the 20th I recieved my nice, new Inspiron 1520 configured just the way I wanted it. There've been plenty of reviews on it so I'll just say yes, the keyboard is that nice.
I spent the next day or so putting XP on it and loved the zippiness of the system until yesterday at about 2pm I hit the power button and, well, it didn't do much of anything. Okay, the power light came on for about 3 seconds then shut off. I tried a few things, long story short nothing worked so I decided to call Dell tech support.
I called at 4pm on Wed the 22nd, was greeted with an automated system that asked me my support code. I entered it and was pleased to find the voice recognition quite responsive. The automated voice then told me to hold on while a customer service representative was contacted and I hooked my phone under my ear and started doing other things, settling in for what I thought was going to be a nice long wait.
30 seconds later I was greeted by Damon, a man who I was happy to hear did not have a thick accent and appeared to be quite American. After he got my information I explained the problem. He then had me check three things: remove the battery and check its charge, try to turn on the machine with only the AC adapter plugged in, then try to turn on the machine with only the battery plugged in. Neither solution worked.
At this point Damon said, "Well, this is pretty cut and dry, it has to be the motherboard." He told me they were going to overnight a box to me, I was to pack the laptop in the box and use the provided label to have it overnighted back to Dell. Damon then assured me he was going to make sure I would get the box the next day and that it should take less than a week for me to get my machine back. I was skeptical as it was after 4pm at this point, but I thanked him and got his personal contact info and hung up.
True to his word, the box arrived the next day (Thur the 23rd) in the early afternoon. A note in the box instructed me to remove the harddrive and battery. I was glad for this as I had spent some effort installing WinXP pro as well as various programs I use for work. Now I'll hopefully be able to just pop the drive back in and go. I packed up the stripped down laptop, affixed the return label and called DHL to come pick up the box. It was gone by 6pm.
Now the machine is on its way back. So far I'm very surprised and impressed at the quality of service I'm getting. My previous laptop was from Best Buy and the two repairs to the backlight I had to have done took 3-4 weeks each. I'll update this thread whenever anything happens and we'll see if this service can continue.

 

So far so good with the service, hopefully they follow through and things work out for you. It's always refreshing to hear something positive about Dell these days

 

OK. for balance, let me share my story. I have a 2.5 year old 700m, which is still going strong. OK, after 2 years of heavy use, some things started to give out (and I was pretty careful with it, too). Palmrest cracked and one of the speakers which are mounted on the LCD started to lose connection. I send it in for repairs, they replace palmrest and dunno what else but when 700m comes back, that malfunctioning speaker is completely dead, AND the LCD backlights started to go off when I put the screen at a certain angle, around 90degrees or so. OK, I thought I could live with that rather than sending it back for more repairs and wasting more time w/o the laptop. A few months later, USB ports started to malfunction, failing to recognize anything I plug in. I couldn't live with that, so off to depot it goes. Remind you, there were two issues that I had AFTER I got it back from the repairs. Well, it comes back, speaker and LCD fixed, motherboard replaced but guess what? Screen brightness adjustment doesn't work properly, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. OK, I call them, they say, send it again, so it goes. I get it back a week or so later, now the directional keys are completely fubared, the up arrow doesn't make contact every now and then. What to do? Send it back again! So, the computer spend almost a month travelling back and forth from repairs, plus getting lost by the DHL somewhere in transit (they send it by ground instead of air as it was supposed to be). The best part, of course, is that the Dell repair center couldn't fix it the first time, and every time (except the last one) they'd break something else. It's a true story, make ur own conclusions.