My Experience with Dell's Namastechnical Support

TalkBack 24 of 78:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

My experience - not so great

About 5 months ago I purchased a brand new Dell Studio laptop running Vista 64 bit Home Premium edition. Out of the box I was seemingly randomly getting blue screens of death. Needing it for school it was critical that I get it working so that I wouldn't fall too far behind.

I called Dell technical support and got the Indian call center. The guy was friendly, asked if he could connect to my laptop and started messing with settings, disabling startup utilities and the like. I watched in amazement at how fast he was going and at the end said that the problem wouldn't happen anymore. Great! I thanked him and felt all warm and fuzzy at how efficient the support seemed to be.

Next day, I wake up to be greeted by another blue screen of death. "Wonderful" I think to myself. I run off to work and when I get home I contact Dell support again. This time a rep with a more difficult to understand accent, but mostly ok, tells me that I need to reseat my memory. I am skeptical since I've never had to do this, but I do what they tell me. I wake up the next morning and the laptop has no BSOD. I think great, that must have worked! They call in the afternoon and confirm that it worked.

I get home and there is a BSOD waiting for me. I call Dell technical support again. The next guy wants me to run an extended memory test overnight. I say OK. I let it run and there are no errors. Another day gone, but I guess we can eliminate memory as an issue. He logs on to the PC and does some more things.

The problem seems to go away for a couple of days and I think that the problem could be solved, when I get another BSOD. I try Dell Tech. Support once more. For the first time, the accent is so thick that I can barely understand the person. On the other end he gets a little rude as I have to constantly ask him to repeat himself, although I'm trying to be polite. This person GUARANTEES that what we try next will work. Each person before has also guaranteed that it will work. I am no longer so warm and fuzzy and wait for his diagnosis. His solution is to restore to the factory settings, which I've done already about 10 times to no avail. I refuse to do it and tell him this is not the problem.

The next day or the day after I get another BSOD. At this point I am done with Dell Technical support and don't bother following up with them. I finally decide to troubleshoot the problem on my own, after briefly pondering whether I should pay for the "premium" support that kept getting offered to me -- I refuse to do it because this was purchased new and I should not have to pay for this "premium" English speaking support. It took me about 2-3 weeks with BSODs happening when I try and install software for my class, when a Windows update runs, etc. I post forum messages, read about the error codes, etc. This is also my first experience with Windows Vista so I have no idea if the problem is the Vista nightmare I've heard so much about or something with this PC or what. Finally I manage to figure out how to open the .dmp file and see that it is a problem with a specific driver, and after googling for awhile learn that the driver that they ship for their laptop webcam is bad.

I updated the driver and never looked back, but I had fallen behind in my class (3 weeks in a 10 week quarter) to the point where I never did get caught up. So, my experience with Dell offshore technical support was pretty bad. Not only did they misdiagnose the problem on four seperate occassions, but on one occasion the accent was so heavy that it was impossible to understand the guy.

This whole experience will make me think hard about buying Dell again. I am a longtime customer of theirs, all the way back to when I purchased a Pentium 75 and then three more computers since.

Posted by: Grantarchy   Posted on: 06/26/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now
• Key Strategies for Federal Agencies - Safe and Cost Effective Migration for Legacy Hardware GovConnection The federal government has mandated that federal agencies reduce energy ... Download Now
• The Impact of Virtualization Software on Operating Environments VMware Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to ... Download Now