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I’ve decided that the notebook PC that I use for work must have been built on a Friday afternoon (or a Monday morning). Over the last five months it has had a replacement motherboard (3 weeks, 4 engineer visits, 2 no-shows before the PC was fixed), a replacement hard disk, and last week the battery had to be replaced. Sure enough, Dell replaced all of these parts under warranty, but it doesn’t say much for the build quality of the equipment.
It looks like I’m not alone with my Dell computer issues as Thomas Lee has been having problems too.
Thankfully, I no longer have a Dell PC (largely because I now work for Fujitsu Services, and Fujitsu own half of Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, although don’t let that make you think I have any bias – I would still like a Toshiba Portégé M200 tablet PC and I make daily use of an assortment of Compaq and IBM computers).
Incidentally, my recent warranty calls on a couple of Compaq notebook PCs were dealt with professionally and courteously by HP and their warranty service provider (Teleplan). Once I had logged a call quoting the PC serial number, they were scheduled for collection by a DHL courier (who arrived with all necessary packaging), repaired off-site, and returned to me within a few days.
Dell seem to be falling into the classic trap of market leaders where they forget that it is customers who make their money for them. It seems to me that they really need to sort out their customer service!