Fun with Dell Tech Support

[blossomingfire.livejournal.com]

I've got a desktop with a bad memory chip. I tell tech support guy from country that shall rename nameless that I'm getting memory errors out the ying yang in the diagnostics (listing them in great gory detail), and I'm having problems with the cd and hard drive as a result. Dell tech decides I need a new CD and hard drive.

I email him back and say NO, replacing the MEMORY in the machine solves ALL the problems. It is NOT a hard drive or cd problem. I just need a new chip to replace the one in the 2nd slot that's bad. In the meantime, Dell Tech support calls to arrange the replacement of the CD and the hard drive.

*sigh* I can't win.

Comments

[omg-teh-funnay.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/techsupport/1077792.html#cutid1

I hates Dell support, too.

Well, mainly. There's a member or two of this comm that work for their support structure, and those are some cool d00dz

[bassgirl.livejournal.com]

Last week I had a fan stop in an Optiplex computer. The only thing those computers are actually good at is turning themselves off before they overheat. I turned it back on and got the usual "Computer shut down to a thermal event" warning, so I took it back to our tech services department and noticed the fan not running, grabbed a spare computer and swapped the fans just to make sure it was the fan that died. Sure enough. Good fan runs fine in both compys, bad doesn't turn at all.

The Dell rep - who I might add was Canadian, same as me - took 4 min to figure out that a thermal event meant it got too hot, and another 5 to figure out that a potential problem might be the fan, and another 4 after that to decide she would refuse to send me a new $5 fan without having me read back the entire event log from the last few days, because she needed to know if there were any other problems.

Egads. It's a friggen $5 fan in a dusty call center. They die. Often. Send me a new one NOW.

[blossomingfire.livejournal.com]

Let me make your next adventure simple:

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/premier/parts/index?c=us&cs=2684&l=en&s=pub

[jecook]

What it would appear to be is that you mentioned the words BAD, CD-ROM, and HARD DRIVE in the same paragraph. You should not have mentioned that.

I had an interesting time convincing Dell that I needed a new lower plastic case for my inspiron, and a new HDD at the same time. I'm currently dealing with getting the power adapter replaced, which should be an easy peasy thing.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

It's SOOO nice that some of our techs are "Dell approved" and we can just go online and order warranty parts.

... except for the putz who refuses to do anything that's not spelled out by a Dell Diagnostic code, even if it's out of warranty using parts we have laying about.

[bassgirl.livejournal.com]

It was under warranty, which is why I have to call.

I was actually supposed to get some sort of Dell techie designation so I could just do our warranty exchanges myself, but the way the higher ups of companies drag their heels sometimes... eep!

Still. I just hung up, called back, got a super laid back guy who understood the sitation, and had a new fan running in the computer the next day.

(actually, it's been fun making the new guy in the department who seems to think he's oh so smarter than the rest of us call Dell... they make him jump through the most hilarious hoops!)

[azurelunatic]

Boo, hiss.