Dell Support Problems

I recently received my order of 2 Inspiron 9300's. (I posted on this forum earlier about my experience ordering them.) I'm having an amazingly difficult time getting support from Dell, even though I paid for 2 years of complete coverage, and I know for sure I'll get better support on this forum.

They didn't ship with a drivers CD, or the copy of XP Home they forced me to purchase that I didn't even need. (I already own licenses of XP Pro.)

I opened one package, booted up and there's so much garbage installed on it. There's also some special Dell utilities and drivers. I wanted to know from Dell support what special drivers and utilities I should be aware of in order to re-install them after I wipe and install XP Pro.

I tried using Chat, but it kept booting me out telling me "Our records indicate that you are not a Dell customer." I tried calling, but I get transferred from Customer Care to Tech Support, to Software Upgrades, back to Customer Care, back to Tech support, back to Customer Care, then someone makes a mistake and hangs up on me before picking up the phone. After literally 3 hours on the phone. Meanwhile, I'm emailing, I get a receipt, and no one responds. Ever.

I log in to my account to see if I'm still a customer, and then try Chat again from there where all my customer information is already filled out on the form. I keep getting a guy named Shane S. – he tells me he won't help me because I don't have a "Gold Contract." I guess that's for business accounts, but I wasn't given that option when I purchased; I only purchased what was available to me, "Complete Care." I'm supposed to have access to Chat whenever I want. Shane S. boots me off after a stock response every time. I did get one conversation in with him though, and he's extremely rude. He gives me an invalid link and insists that I'm at fault for not using it.

Eventually, I get a Tech Support rep on the phone line, from India. He actually seemed very helpful. He listened to my issue, and told me he didn't want me to go without the System Recovery feature, so he would send out 2 hard drives with XP Pro pre-installed on them for me, along with the OS CD's and Drivers CD's. I thought I might just wait the 2 days for that – he assured me it would arrive in only 2 days. All I would have to do is swap out the drives and return the originals. 2 days. Finally, someone helpful.

I also learned something a little disturbing about the way Dell ships their systems. They actually partition the drive and put a Ghost image on the partition, and it takes about 5-7GB of your hard drive. What a waste! The way I see it, if you have to use that image, you’re screwed anyway, right?

So 2 days come and go, and no package. I call, and no one knows anything about anything. After the transfer game, someone finally learns that the order had been internally canceled. Why? Nobody knows anything about anything. Fine, then give me a list of all the special drivers and utilities and what they do, and send me a CD with that on it. They tell me I have a DVD burner and I should be able to copy the hard drive onto a CD if I want a driver CD. No kidding! Am I allowed to use the word "stupid" on this forum?

I know I should be able to get started with the clean install of XP Pro and they should have what I need on their web site. I just want to have the info, and I'd like to have a Drivers CD. I don't think that's too much to ask, but I do think that if they say they're going to do something, they should do it.

So after all this, I open the other box with the 2nd system, and discover one of the screws is damaged on the bottom of the system, on the Memory plate. Extremely damaged. It's completely stripped and loose, and the paint had been rubbed off around it.

I called in and was told there is no phone support available. I logged in to my account on Dell's web site and used Chat. Shane S. again, so that’s the same as "no help available." He was first booting me off before saying anything, then eventually when he actually responded, with the stock response of course, I knew I wouldn't get any help. I emailed, but I doubt they will respond with anything meaningful.

No wonder Apple won't even have anything to do with Dell, because they suck! (Of course I'm hoping their systems don't, but their support certainly does.)

 

wow, that sucks....their chat system can be screwy sometimes. I had the exact same problems with their chat system too. There is one that requires you to enter your customer number in that always gave me problems, but the one that just asks for service tag, I never had problems with.

They stopped sending the OS/Driver cds back in February. As for the driver/software problem, you can download the drivers from here http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/index.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Besides the drivers on the cd are outdated, so I think it is just better to go to their site (most of them are current releases from the manufacturer). You should have majority of the junk software including dell's stuff on the 3cds that came with your system. The only Dell software that you really need is Dell Notebook System Software which you can get from the driver site. It repairs any incompatability issues with your hardware.

Also, Dell Media and Dell support can also be downloaded from the driver site. The only software that you won't be able to get is Dell Burn Recovery Disk, but you can only use it once anyways to burn a XP CD (its listed under start menu-->programs in one of the dell folders). You are correct...the spare partition is a waste, and so far I haven't seen it actually work. Besides, it just reformats your pc back to the orginial factor settings, including all the junk.

Sorry that you had a bad experience

~SG~
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Inspiron 9300 || 1.73GHz || 60GB 7200rpm ||1gb DDR2||ATI Radeon X300 64MB || CD/DVD RW || XP Pro

 

the only important programs you need when reformating are the ones off the internet... so like go find your computer and then like download/burn the files to a cd or dvd...

Technically they probably don't want to help you since you are planning to reformat and remove all their nice little programs/junk. I think also supposively they only accept problems if the computer has the same os/dell version installed... My guess is if you reformat and later have a problem dell people will say you must have done something to cause the failure in the computer becuase you upgraded to a different os/ reformated and removed the dell diagnostic/recovery partition...

Yah I know this makes no sense unless you are runnign programs that are overclocking the **** out of the computer or something.

Dell I6000d
1.86 ghz
1 gig 400mhz ram
80 gig HD
Intel Pro 2915 a/b/g Wireless
15.4 " WXGA
Ati X300 128 mb
Nec Dvd +- RW 6500A