Maximum PC

If Dell pulls this out I just might be persuaded to give their higher end laptops a chance... but it would have to be a peace offering. I travel 8 times per month and need something uber portable so my needs have changed somewhat. With that being said, a laptop with the power to game at my "alternate home" wouldn't make me cry myself to sleep.

Get your money and buy a proper gaming laptop that's not from Dell or Alienware.

Like a Sager or Clevo!

Though the Dell Executive support guy didn't get the check in my hands "by the end of this week" he was able to get all of the authorizations needed to confirm that I was entitled the full amount (4200) the whole time. In fact, when the refund order went in (after the 3200 / restocking fee debacle), he was able to verify it was for the full amount. He said the cheque process is slow and will likely be between 10-15 business days before I have it. He forecast April 5... but said he'd do what he could to expedite. I'm fine with that- provided of course that come May 15th I'm not back in here celebrating the one year anniversary of this issue.

In my last email, after getting some particulars out of the way, I asked him "okay... what on EARTH went wrong to lead to all this?" He answered quite candidly...

What they're unclear of is why it got cut in half between that part of the process and being printed on the cheque. Somehow, I don't think we'll ever know and though it is a matter of some concern for people in the future I'm quite content to just speculate.

Another point he made was that Alienware support should have escalated the issue as soon as I reported the cheque was for the wrong amount. He said they're going to continue investigating and that the managers of those people involved with this case will be approached.

So to those of you having the issues similar to mine- and those of you with warranty on legacy computers should be winding to a halt- the only thing that worked for me was activating the BBB... I'm not saying this is done until that cheque, for the right amount, clears... But I have some confidence that the end is near.

I'm gonna say someone in the line just went with a "market value" of the old system. made up value.

Which electronics company has good customer service anyways? It's probably the secret to Apple's success.




Do these issues spill over to the pretty much just unbranded XPS line?

A younger friend of mine has a sweet 17in XPS laptop, i7, Geforce 555M, and just all around good quality. The battery is also insane and was only drained 40% from watching the Sherlock Holmes Movie from DVD.

Although it's probably because his mom works at Dell.

The hardware is great... When it works.

Verily. I have a gaming system from 7 years ago, and except for a BIOS problem, it has run just fine, and can play some of my older titles really well.

Don't be bringing apple into this conversation.

I've had bad CS with apple for simple stuff that took them weeks to figure out and I shouldn't need to make an appointment to bring a stupid computer to the store and say "fix it", then leave and then come back when its done. Shit, for the price on some mac's that I've worked on, they should come to me instead of me lugging a 60lb+ aluminum block around. Almost everyone I know who had macs fail on them had the annoying thing to deal with their stupid genius'.

And the annoying thing is that they drop support of older models as soon as they can, then when you bring it in to fix, they tell you to just upgrade and not fix the issue... What? You want me to just replace a 10k workstation that's only a few years old by dropping another 10k and look at me like its the best advice that you can give? They pulled that card on my old boss last year when his 30" apple cinema "died", brought it in and said they couldn't fix it so they sold him a brand new 27" display instead.

But he couldn't use it out of the box because its a mini display port, not the dvi that he needed. So he went back and they looked at him like he's stupid, then made the case that he should either upgrade his machine that had a display port (and they suggested a $1k quadro card) or just replace the entire computer (like they tried to pull on me before with a different system). He ended up going elsewhere and got an active display-port to hdmi adapter like I told him to... but when I saw him 3 months later, I fixed the 30" within 30 mins by opening the breakout controller box and made sure all the cables were secure.

I rate them below Dell honestly and I've had great success with dell... at least here in the states. If you want GOOD customer service, look at EVGA. Shit, they still cover an 8800gts. And they are a blast to work with. XFX is about the same. Honestly, there's a lot of other companies that have great CS.


Whats your point? I have gaming systems 2x older than you that still work to this day...

My point is this thing is beat up but has had few problems, and has lived past the expected lifespan of ~3 years that most new laptops have. In comparison, most of the HPs I've worked with died fairly quickly, around the 2 year mark.

Eh guys.

Well the Dell executive support guy who took on my claim was good to his word and yesterday I received the remainder ($2225) of my "full refund."

Just wanted to make sure I gave credit where it was due... Once Dell executive was involved things moved the way I would have expected them to happen from the beginning with Alienware. I've got a lot of bad things to say about the many people I dealt with directly but to be honest I've wasted enough time on talking to them and about them. I'm sure by now and the 3 pages of this thread you get the point.

Thanks for the support guys... you really did help me get through this.

sager has the best price perfomance ratio ive seen oh and dont buy alienware there over-priced pices of shit