Dell Laptop - How Many Fixes Before You Ask For A Refund?
Over at The Consumerist web site they have a story about a person who states he has been battling with a Dell laptop trying to get it repaired. The story includes a wide variety of fixes and repairs that the person alleges have been done during the past 3 years. Part of the tale of woe states:
I purchased a laptop through my company in 2005. The laptop I bought was the Dell XPS (Gen2). I had several issues with the DVD burner right off the bat. Within months Dell was replacing my 6800 Ultra laptop video board due to video artifacts. This happened again and more parts were replaced. In Late 2006 Dell swapped my Gen2 system for a M1710. In my book, both the customer service and the quality hit the fan. They sent me a laptop with less memory and poor video.
A replaced unit was sent but the alleged problems continue.
The current M1730 has major issues and already I have had the motherboard, power supply, and battery replaced. The Blu-Ray scratches the dvds and the first replacement they sent was DOA. I am trying to test the second Blu-ray, but my laptop has been crashing and locking up. I’ve worked with a Sr. Dell Executive Technician for 5 days. Here are my current unresolved issues:
The laptop power cord can be loosened by moving the power cord or the laptop. When this happens, the laptop switches to battery.
When the laptop is running on battery, it freezes and locks up. This happens every time, not just occasionally.
When I plug the laptop back in from running on Battery it bluescreens or freezes.
The story goes on and on. Putting aside the brand and putting aside some of the problems the user has experienced, one would suspect that this person should of asked for a refund when some of the original problems persisted. Letting things go on for 3 years seems ludicrous to me.
Maybe we need a lemon law for computers. Or was this incredible situation the fault of the person who is presenting this tale?
What do you think?
Comments welcome.
The Consumerist article is here.
Tags: dell, laptop, computer, repairs, replacement, support, refund,
I don’t believe it was necessarily the fault of the person as he probably did not want to go without a laptop for long. I feel his pain as I’ve had products just be lemons. I had an iPod that broke every 6 months on me for 3 years. I was able to replace it for a new unit via the Best Buy extended warranty I purchased but without that I’m not sure how far Apple would have gone to fix my issue.
I personally believe that in a case like this laptop owner wasn’t aware that he would have so many issues with his laptop and decided to rough it out, by the time he knew he should have just called it quits and asked for a refund it was probably too late. It happens to a lot of us and quality of products in general within the last 20 years has become worse. Dell should just offer him a discount to purchase a new system and replace his old system with a refurb of some sort again, since it seems like he only received 1 refurb unit thus far.