Dell XPS M1330: failed motherboard, power adapter & customer service

UPDATE SUNDAY:
After it took forty minutes and five emails between me & Friday's extra special Dell helper, I have called the external contractor three times and they still have no record of my existence. I am currently on the phone to Dell. I have now spoken to SIX people over the course of the last 32 minutes. SWEET MOTHER OF GOD they've just put me through to Latitude support not XPS support. Okay being put through to the SEVENTH person...

Right the seventh person was a beacon of sanity & helpfulness. And would you believe it? Mr Condescension from Friday HAD GIVE ME THE WRONG NUMBER after all. So it's no wonder the external contractor had no record of me - because it was the wrong contractor. F**KWIT.

I have just spent 52 minutes on the phone.

I have just called the external contractor who have told me I cannot arrange a time for the technician. They will page him & see when he is available. When I said when shall I call back?, she replied, "Please call us back after some time." Riiiiggghht. Helpful, that.

Oh & did I mention that somehow Dell have arbitrarily decided to swap my warranty to the UK which is just adding another layer of horror/confusion to the whole ghastly affair? I bought my laptop through Dell America online, had it delivered to New York, have had it fixed three times in NY & have never requested a warranty change.

I really want to cry right now. What upsets me more than anything else is that the problems are all of Dell's making. I am paying in time and in money for their substandard hardware and incompetent technical & customer support. The only ray of light in the darkness is their Social Media department who are like manna from heaven, as they return emails (the guy quoted above never returned my Tuesday email, resulting in my Friday phone call), facilitate repairs, and cut through the nightmares.

Oh and regarding that warranty: it might read Complete Care comprehensive warranty & service contract including Next Day/Weekend/Night On Site Technical support, but it's a Complete Crock . They don't keep parts in stock so they can never come next day as the parts have to be ordered. (Because all that ever goes wrong with an XPSM1330 is that Dell use crappy parts - hello NVIDIA - which breakdown & have to be continually replaced - hello second motherboard & power adapter in three months). And the parts despatching people aren't open over the weekend, so forget about the weekend onsite support.

PS if you've come here through Google, this site is a catalogue of errors with the XPS M1330. It seems I am not alone in having had two failed power adapters, a replacement screen & two replacement motherboards - within a period of four months.

UPDATE (Tuesday):
The Dell tech cldn't come on Monday as the parts didn't arrive in time - quelle surprise, but a very charming man from Unisys arrived an hour early (hurrah!) today, and dismantled my laptop, replacing the motherboard. Unfortunately, Dell hadn't ordered me a new adapter, so he said, so I am STILL awaiting the delivery. They promise via FEDEX tomorrow. We shall see. I fly to London on Thursday and there will be ill humour if it has not arrived by then.

Dell XPS M1330: the faulty laptop saga continues

I have had a long, hard week at the coalface of Dell Customer Un-Resolutions. Finally, at around 4pm on Friday, after a 35 min phone call of horror, I got the offer of a home technical visit, and the Un-Resolutions guy said he would email the tech contractor's call centre details for me to make an appointment:

Dear Ms.LLG
This is a follow up to our conversation today. As discussed please make a note of the dispatch # XXXXXXX. You can contact your service delivery partner on 1-800-247-4618 and quote the dispatch number and schedule a time and date for the technician to visit.

Please do revert in case of any clarifications.
Thanks, KXXXX
____________________________________
Hurrah, thought I, as I rushed to call the number. Hmm. This isn't an external tech contractor, it's Dell on the end of the line. I email back:
_______________________________

I tried that number and it is the extended service line for upgrades & renewals

_________________________________
Reply: Dear Ms.LLG
This is a follow up to our conversation today. As discussed please make a note of the dispatch # XXXXXXX You can contact your service delivery partner on 1-800-247-4618 and choose option 3 and then option 1 and quote the 9 digit dispatch number and schedule a time and date for the technician to visit.
Thanks, KXXXX
_________________________________________
Okay, maybe I am as thick as he is implying. Maybe I didn't listen to the options carefully enough. I'll dial again and follow his instructions. (Thinks to self: why didn't he put the number prompts in first email if he had them all along? And a bit rude just to send the email again. But okay.) So I dial again, follow the prompts and realise that this is indeed NOT the right number.
____________________________________
My reply:
This is an automated order status line. Where are the people to TALK to?
_____________________________________
Dear Ms.LLG
This is a follow up to our conversation today. As discussed please make a note of the dispatch # XXXXX You can contact your service delivery partner on 1-800-970-5206 and choose option 3 and then option 1 and quote the 9 digit dispatch number and schedule a time and date for the technician to visit.
____________________________________

I am finding it hard to comprehend the level of condescension in this series of emails. First the implication that I am stupid by just sending an identical email with the extensions spelled out. Then when he realises he has indeed given me the wrong number for the external contractor, he sends out the exact same email again but with the correct number inserted. No apology - not even drawing my attention to the fact that his almost identical email now contains a different number.

And people wonder why I rant about Dell Customer Un-Resolution.

(oh and the number prompts he gave me do not work)

Divorce

My parents' divorce gets nastier by the second, and this extract from a letter Phil Spector once sent his friend, celebrity lawyer Marvin Mitchelson, listing his romantic version of how a pre-nup should read, resonated rather strongly. Those of you who know me can guess to which parent I am referring.

1. If I like it, it's mine.
2. If it's in my hands, it's mine.
3. If I can take it from you, it's mine.
4. If I had it a week ago, it's mine.
5. If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
6. If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
7. If it looks just like mine, it's mine.
8. If I think it's fine, it's mine.
9. If it is near me, it's mine.
10. If it's broccoli, it's yours.

Page Six via Gawker

Single women & the plague of married men

Why is it that I frequently seem to act like catnip on other women's partners and husbands? It certainly isn’t because I dress provocatively, (my cleavage never comes out to play), and it isn’t because I am a flirty kind of person. Frankly, if I was good at unconscious flirting, I wouldn't be single.

Perhaps I present some kind of challenge? Whatever, it upsets me that I am somehow filed in the 'try it on' category by men already in committed relationships. For the record, my father is a notorious philanderer & I have seen the effect that his actions have had on not just my mother but on his string of long term mistresses. I will never be one of those women.

So how is it that yet another man - married, oh quelle effing surprise, - told me recently that I was trouble. I am NOT flippin’ trouble. Don't try to make me responsible for your lack of self control: I'm not the married one making a pass at a single girl who has not even vaguely intimated any sexual interest in you. I have never, ever chased, come on to, or got involved with a married man knowing that he was married. If a man in a relationship thinks I am initiating something then their ego is on fire.

My sister has a theory: that she & I are self conscious & uptight when we are around men we find attractive, but when we are with men who are off limits we relax and consequently are much better company. The kicker is that the stupid vain fuckers mistake our platonic enjoyment of their company for attraction. That in itself wouldn't be a problem if they were able to control themselves. But they can't.

I also think that some men in relationships like to feel that they are still players by flirting with other women. There are also the men who married early, who have become more attractive, confident & successful with age and finally realise that intelligent, challenging women can actually be a good thing but by then it's too late.

Who knows? One could theorise for ever. Whatever the case I am just thoroughly, thoroughly fed up with the inane behaviour of so many married men. I have lost count of the amount of men who have spent an evening flirting with me, buying me drinks, and then revealing their sad punchline at the end of the evening: "I've got a girlfriend/wife". (That's the bit where I then disappear in a puff of smoke.)

Guest post: Jan Moir, The Daily Mail & Stephen Gately

There was, rightly, much indignation yesterday over columnist Jan Moir's piece in The Daily Mail, about the death from natural causes of the young pop singer, Stephen Gately of platinum selling Irish group Boyzone which, amongst other spurious statements, seemed to infer that that his being gay was a direct cause of his demise.

It wasn't just her controversial views that got my goat, it was her shoddy journalism & flawed reasoning too (B follows A, so therefore A caused B). A writer friend here in the US, Mr Avocado of The Avocado Papers made some excellent points, so I asked him to be my guest blogger today:

"Certainly Jan Moir has every right to say whatever stupid shit she wants. But her free speech rights don't extend to automatically having The Daily Mail as a platform for her free speech. That's a privilege, not a right, a privilege which just a handful of people have, and a privilege The Daily Mail has every right to revoke.

But it is one that I imagine The Daily Mail would revoke only if people stopped reading her, not just because she said something inflammatory. (She didn't make shit up, after all, like Jayson Blair; she just drew some extraordinary conclusions from a very small number of facts and revealed, at the very least, that she's a terrible journalist.)

As it is, I'm all for idiots like this woman having platforms from which to speak their ill-informed free speech. I think laws such as those in Germany that ban Holocaust-denial speech are appalling and dangerous. Let the yahoo-bigot-troglodytes espouse their hate-speech in the open so they can be publicly mocked and discredited."

Roman Polanski: does talent trump the law?

Roman Polanski's detention on a long-standing extradition warrant has dominated on-line chatter this week and much of it has left me perplexed.

How does Roman Polanski's tragic personal history or his being a famous film director excuse his behaviour? Is there a different rule of law for the talented?

Whilst I understand that the victim would like to see the case dropped, that thirty-two years may have passed, & that the original judge may have committed a miscarriage of justice in his proposed sentencing, the fact remains that Polanski blatantly broke the law and, most importantly of all, pleaded guilty.

I am at a loss, a total loss to understand the apologists for his actions. Lest anyone be laboring under the misbelief that he had consensual sexual relations with a thirteen year old girl, that there was some kind of Lolita-esque action that led poor Mr Polanski astray, let me set you straight.

Her sworn Grand Jury testimony recounts that he drugged, raped & sodomised her. Polanski pleaded guilty to this chain of behaviour.

Time does not diminish his crime. Surely the fact that he has remained in exile for so long points to the fact that he understands that, even if there were judicial errors and the sentencing is challenged, he still remains culpable, that his crime demands punishment?

Now do you think he deserves a get out of jail free card?

And here is A C Grayling's reasoned look at the morality of the story in The Times. And Kate Harding in Salon who is just as angry as I am now.

Universal grief & the Michael Jackson memorial

When an icon dies there’s often a wrenching twist to the heart & stomach, with a realisation of our own mortality, and the passing of our youth. The icon becomes a totem for each loss one has suffered, plastered across the world’s media.

It happened with unprecedented intensity after the Princess of Wales was killed and, again, this past week after the sudden unexplained death of Michael Jackson, this seeming desperate sadness, and a recognition of universal grief. Yet.

Yet. It’s not really grief for the icon, is it? And watching the news packages of the memorial service for this complicated man last night it seemed that the audiences worldwide were luxuriating in a tempest of grief that seemed wholly shallow. The people interviewed in the street, distraught, literally renting their clothes, puffy eyed and snotty nosed. They weren’t crying for Michael. They were crying for themselves. And I’d bet good money that many of these emotional wrecks with their disproportionate reactions were exactly the same people who bayed for Jackson’s blood back at the time of the child abuse accusations.

Jackson’s music was extraordinary. For many it did change the world around them, gave them, at the beginning at least, an African American role model in a disprportionately white arts & media world. He provided a soundtrack for the lives of millions, including myself. But I don’t make the mistake of allowing my passion for his glorious music to override the fact that this was a tormented, unhappy man.

A man who spent the last years of his life shunned by the very people who have lined up to give sound bites about how much they loved him. I can’t remember who it was last night who said that Jackson gave up his childhood for me, for all of us, and I thought, no he didn’t, he gave it up for money and for fame, whether or not he was too young to make that decision.

The memorial service was in such bad taste that I could barely stand to watch. Memorial services should be hyperbolic: they are there to celebrate not to judge, but this seemed less of a celebration and more of a showcase for many of the stars who flocked to get on the Jackson bandwagon.

Stars like Usher who seemed to think it was all about them, the Rev Al Sharpton who seems to believe that Michael Jackson is a candidate for sainthood for the cause, regardless of the fact that Jackson hated his African American heritage so vehemently that he endured constant plastic surgeries and raised three children who looked nothing like him. Brooke Shields was the only person to speak of him as a real person that she knew well & loved.

But most shameful of all was that Jackson, who went to such complicated ends to ensure the privacy of his children, must surely have been turning in his grave to see his attention hungry family parading his confused, and sometimes terrified looking children in front of a global audience. It was a travesty.

The weird beauty of the Dell phone & online Tech Chat service

“Yes for sure a technician will be calling you this afternoon or Sunday morning.”
(Premium XPS Tech support Saturday 1pm approx)

Nope, he didn't.

“The parts are out of stock. It may be taking 2-3 days for the technician to receive them.”
(Premium XPS Tech support Monday 930am approx)

“I will be calling you absolutely for certain this afternoon to let you know the status”
Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 10am approx)

He never rang so I girded my loins for round three

(interim Monday 4-430pm – three failed calls to tech support as for some unexplained reason Premium (AS IN PAID FOR) tech support is being directed to customer help who redirect my call to 1) warranties 2) general tech support 3) cut me off)

"Well, as 4th July being a public holiday we were unable to send the parts to the service tech.”
(Premium XPS Tech support Monday 430pm approx)

“The parts are in stock. As we had a weekend, the parts are delayed at the warehouse”
(Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 500pm approx)

"The parts will be reach the technician today. He might call you tomorrow”
(Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 500pm approx)

"Unfortunately, the parts are not yet arrived at their location. If the parts come to their location by tomorrow morning 10: 30 AM, they will call you by 12:00 PM Noon."
(Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 530pm approx)

"If the parts are there, they would definitely call you tomorrow."
(Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 545pm approx)

Nope I’ve no idea what’s going on either

Rant du jour: Dell (lack of) Customer Service

I've been stuck in the hell of Dell's Technical Support call centre for the past hour. I have a very nice man in India dealing with my increasingly irate state of mind. The only problem is that he has no authority to make any decisions off the call centre's prompt sheet.

I paid Dell large amounts of money for a three year Complete Care comprehensive warranty & service contract that included Next Day/Weekend/Night On Site Technical support.

However they seem unable to tell me why I have been waiting since Saturday afternoon for a technician to ring me to make an appointment. I've had various excuses including Independence Day and 'the parts aren't in stock', but no real answers that will lower my increasing blood pressure. The problem is more acute for me now as, in the interim, the A/C adapter which was working but not charging the battery has now died completely. I have just 1hr of power left.

It wldn't be such an enormous problem if I wasn't supposed to be going into Manhattan this morning for two days/nights. No laptop = no work. I can hardly write & file features copy on my Blackberry.

My blood pressure really started to boil when the nice man told me that it would be another 2-3 days before the parts were in stock again at the warehouse near me. This is the point where I gently explained to him that Dell sell many, many laptops each day in America, each with an A/C adapter.

An A/C adapter that is in fact on sale from Dell RIGHT NOW (For $69.99 that I cannot afford & shouldn't have to pay.) However Dell's EXPRESS retail service couldn't deliver an adapter before July 13th. YUP that's EXPRESS & JULY 13th in the same sentence.

It surely couldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility to locate a new A/C adapter somewhere in this VAST country and use the services of those extremely helpful courier companies to get an adapter to me tomorrow, thereby fulfilling the contract made when I PAID them for a Three Year Complete Care comprehensive warranty & service contract that included Next Day/Weekend/Night On Site Technical support.

I'd love someone to explain to me how if I broke a binding financial contract, I would experience unpleasant consequences, but that all that happens to Dell is FUCK ALL?

I've already missed my first train this morning with this stupid rigmarole, and am about to miss the second. GOD I AM SO ANGRY

Addendum: I just found this genius excerpt over at the Dell blogsite:

"Here's any number of studies that show that consumers trust product opinions from friends, family members and other customers more than they trust what a company says about its own products" So, please, read what I wrote above and take it into account when thinking about buying a Dell product. No electronic product is infallible and if the customer support (especially the PAID FOR customer support) isn't up to scratch, then you are better off looking elsewhere.