It seems like one of the few ways for the little guy to fight back.
That was excellent service.
Not everyone has good dealings with them, but it's not all bad.
I faced a similar situation too (some years back) - I own a Sony Vaio and my display had some issues too. Basically, under the hood, the display is either an LG or a SAMSUNG if your laptop is by a good brand (LG/SAMSUNG makes the best displays, Apple, Sony, everyone else uses displays made by them), or it's made by some cheap Chinese company if your laptop's brand is not so reputed.
Also, the same laptop has multiple replacement parts for the same item. In my case, my display was originally a Samsung, but my replacement was an LG. But the appearance of the parts looked exactly the same, but underneath, my replacement display was 1080p, whereas originally it was 720p. Though, my maximum display settings still allow me to use only 720p.
Think about it, just a slight variation in part numbers could mean a LOT!
This is when I learnt that despite a laptop belonging to the same model number, it could have various part numbers for the same item. Hence, these technicians end up memorizing the part numbers instead of the technical specifications of the parts. I am not talking in support of the technician though - By all means, he IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW what technical features are inside, but given the appearance and complexity of the part numbers, this could be very difficult for one when dealing with thousands of components every month. Give the guy some benefit of doubt, but don't forgive Dell, ever.
Cheers!
Last year I purchased three XPS 17 laptops within 3 months of each other for a client. Each time I had to choose slightly different options as they didn't offer the exact same configuration each time.
Simpler: Don't buy Dell.
I thought this was common knowledge.
Most reviewers gave the 720p model very good ratings. It's very unfortunate that the 1080p model seems to be having issues (see my top level comment).
I was really impressed and convinced that Dell had stepped their game up for good, but it seems like they've let things slip again.
They had better internal cabling than the competition, and have been leveraging 1999 since then.
UPDATE 2013-04-09: I got another phone call from the Dell support center that confirmed the shipment but they said that may laptop have not been fixed. They are shipping it as it was a month ago! They are sending me a new laptop in about 2 weeks and in the meanwhile I can keep my old one. I asked if they were sending me some sort of gift or a refund for all the trouble but they said that, as they’re a support center, they can’t and if I want I can send a letter to their lawyers. Another terrible story from Dell support service.
I and others have recently had employees at the Apple store encourage us to utilize their no restocking fee policy to effectively get a "free" loaner laptop while ours were under repair.
Maybe Apple should encourage people to do this even when they're having computers from other manufacturers repaired. How often do people end up just keeping and paying for these "free" loaners... ?
Edit: loner -> loaner, Thanks ColinWright!
Having just come back from a conference where I was humbled by the other delegates' ability to speak English, I was hesitating to offer corrections. However, I was told in no uncertain terms that they wanted to improve, so provided it didn't interrupt flow, I offered corrections. I hope you feel the same. I'm also happy to delete this comment once I know you've seen it, thus helping flow.
Consuming language (reading, listening) does. Producing and getting corrected doesn't.
I can dig out some sources for that, if you are interested.
OP: if you can swing it, get yourself a Mac and see if you enjoy using it. If you don't, you can return it if when DELL fixes your notebook. Also, there are 12 Apple Stores in Italy. If you happen to live near one, service and support is a lot easier and more direct.
In comparison, the Dell one is €1400. €300 is a significant price difference IMO. Of course, they're not entirely the same. The Dell one still has a better CPU, the Apple one has a higher res display. The Apple one obviously comes with OS X, which could mean an extra €100 for a Windows license if he really needs it. Then again, his site [3] indicates that his previous computer was a Macbook which he ran Linux on, so I guess it's irrelevant.
[1]: http://www.apple.com/it/macbook-pro/specs-retina/ [2]: http://www.dell.com/it/p/xps-13-l321x-mlk/pd?oc=n0013z26&... [3]: http://volpino.github.io/#home
The first unit they sent had horrible backlight bleed in the upper right and lower left corners of the screen. Dell's first 'solution' was to offer to send out a tech to replace the screen. I requested a new laptop, since after all, it was only about a week old at that point.
I received the 2nd unit, and while there was no backlight bleed in the upper right or lower left, there was similar bleeding on the lower right and upper left this time.
I'm truly disappointed at what is otherwise a fantastic piece of hardware. It seems that Dell was more concerned with getting a 1080p model in their catalog than ensuring that they could actually build the things successfully.
I'm trying for a 3rd, after which I'll stop trying and go buy an MBA.
Actually is more about marketing. They want to have a lot of models, so they can have more laptops to fit better to the custom specs of each client.
This happens not only in dell, also in asus, hp... If you want to buy in any of this companies, ensure you buy the most common laptop.
