Dell Laptop Takes One Month to Repair

[TonCharr28]

Well, at least in the Philippines. Here's what a friend from there recently posted on a site:

I bought my Latitude D830 with a 4-year complete care Gold package - with accidental damage coverage, at that - in 2007. Since then, I have spent some 30,000 [about $626] in various service and diagnostics fees. No matter what sort of warranty you pay for with your initial purchase, transferring the Service Tag to the Philippines negates all that and reduces your coverage to the only one Dell Philippines’ ASP can cover - Parts Only. This means all local ASPs will only replace identified defective or damaged parts. They cannot and will not do direct unit replacements, no matter how many times the problems recur.

First hand, my motherboard, RAM, palm rest, TPM chip and processor have all been replaced at least 4 times each - the majority of the other parts having been replaced at least once. All in all, the only parts of my computer that are original off the assembly line are… the plastic and magnesium chassis.

Each time I had it serviced by either Micro-D or Accent Micro (the two major ASPs), I was charged either a diagnostic or a service fee that started at around 1,800 pesos and moved up to 6,000 at the most extreme end. Yes, EVERY SINGLE TIME I BROUGHT IT IN, EVEN FOR BACK JOBS. And even then, they don’t service all your needs completely. Last month, my system went dead on me, with the OS refusing to boot up at all. According to a diagnostic and a lengthy discussion with a Gold Support chat technician (through Dell US), it was determined I needed to replace the motherboard, the heatsink(s), the fan(s), the video card, the video memory, the main system RAM, the processor and the hard drive. On top of that, unrelated problems also lef the technician to authorize the replacement of my LCD and the optical drive.

So I printed the chat log out, as well as the official list of parts he recommended be replaced with their corresponding part numbers. When I took this to MDI, they only replaced the mobo, and the RAM. They said they are only authorized to replace a limited number of parts at any given time. Like Rico’s situation, if I wanted to replace other parts, I’d have to do it piecemeal, one step at a time. And all of this took close to a month.

They suck.

So, I DO NOT RECOMMEND buying Dell products for use in this country. Unless you don’t plan to cash in on any warranty services.

Does anyone here have a similar experience?

 

[MomoCC]

Well to be fair, Dell's support has become better in the US. At least in my experience. Dell offers home-service, multi-year warranties and all that, and more or less delivers. If your friend's post isn't an isolated experience, then I just don't know why Dell can't provide the same support for the rest of the world.

 

[dagul1202]

Hi, my name is Rod, I bought my Dell Studio laptop in Octagon Festival Mall in Muntintupa Metro Manila last January, and come April the Slot-in ODD was damaged (it wont read any disc). So I brought it to the dealer (OCTAGON) for repair, the technician (Bono) told me that repairs would take at least 2 weeks (well at least the minimum lead time was true). So I told him to advise the Dell Service Center regarding my broken laptop and decided not to leave it for repair (I thought I should give them time to prepare the replacement part to minimize repair time). Then I went back later in May and bring my laptop for repair, two weeks have past and still the ODD was not replaced. Three weeks and still no replacement. Bono told me that they (Dell service center) cannot find any replacement for the ODD. So after a month I decided to take back my laptop, unfortunately for me I dont have a backup PC at home, I even had to terminate my DSL subscription since I not able to use it. Now, its been more than two months and still they were not able to repair my damaged ODD, Octagon however lend me an external ODD for me to use temporarily while waiting for the replacement part, but who would want to use it? I bought the laptop for convinience, what convenience is that to carry an extenal ODD whenever I use the laptop.
I chose to buy Dell because i was impressed by its design and I thought it was of good quality, and I thought the service was excellent (maybe in the US) but now I think I regret having made that decision and disappointed by the outcome of this problematic service of Dell Philippines and Octagon.