I'm a disabled veteran, confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down. My injury is not combat related but it did happen while I was on active duty so I do get a disability pension from the VA. I've been living in Snowflake, Arizona raising my four kids since 1994. Now my kids are grown, my wife works long hours, and I'm left to myself with not much to do. I ordered a laptop computer from Alienware so I'd have something to go on the Internet with, play online games, and work with my home videos and pictures.
I ordered the Aurora m7700 from the website at alienware.com with all the best hardware for an extreme gaming machine. Already active with Final Fantasy XI, Guild Wars, and World of Warcraft, I was really looking forward to my new extreme gaming laptop. No more trouble with something that keeps getting dusty inside, that's hard to manage the bulky case and all the cable connections, that is just plain too big. I would finally have the laptop of my dreams.
But two weeks after my order was paid for I get an email stating that they had no cases on hand for this laptop model. That seemed odd considering this was their new featured system. When it was finally sent 2 of the 3 boxes were missing; the laptop arrived but the software and peripherals did not. It turns out that what happened was, the Alienware shipping department did not hand over all three boxes to FedEX; FedEx never took possession of them. Can you imagine that? They somehow misplaced two of the three boxes when FedEx came to pick them up? And it took another week to get Alienware to admit this, they wanted to make me wait for the rest of my order so they could complete an investigation with FedEx, even though they had already conceded the fact that FedEx never took possession of the two packages.
Okay, well, I finally receive the rest of the order I get everything set up and connected and turn on my new laptop for the first time. The drivers for the internal hardware were not installed and the wireless card would not connect, even though the hotspot showed a very good signal on my WiFi Finder. Both of the installed CD/DVD drives would not open up -- the light will flash and I can hear something happening inside but the doors won't open on either one of them.
Now, I bought Alienware specifically because they bragged about being based in Florida and having all of their computers built on-site in Miami. Well, their tech support sure ain't in Florida. I could hardly understand what they were saying but we struggled through. The all gave themselves American names but they don't speak very good English. I never did get the wireless to work, that guy just passed me off onto some other department to deal with the drive bays problem. And this new guy wanted me to turn the laptop over and open it up, at which point I was supposed to remove the drive bays and do something to them. I didn't understand what he was expecting me to do, I couldn't even figure out which panel I was supposed to remove. And besides, I didn't have a screwdriver to fit those tiny little philips heads holding them on.
Like I said, I'm in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down, and I can only use one hand at a time because I need one in my lap to support myself so I can sit up straight. It was very hard to turn this laptop over, it weighs like a slab of lead. I told the tech on the phone, I'm going to need on-site service for this. I can't do this. And he told me, that's not possible. We have to determine what's wrong over the phone together and send back the defective parts. 'Both drive bays?', I ask. Either that, or there is a problem with the motherboard... He began to explain why we might need to replace the motherboard, but at that point I wasn't listening. Because I was asking myself, what happened to the on-site tech support I'm supposed to have?
Bottom line, I paid a fortune for this laptop and all that came with it. And I PAID for on-site technical support. It took forever to get it all here, and I still can't use it, because Alienware will not honor their aggrement. In fact, I've been told not to call them again unless I have someone here with me that knows how to work on this thing.
I am a disabled veteran on a disability pension. I have never been able to find a job I can do here. I never should have financed something so expensive just so I can have something to do. I know now that I could have bought two Dell XPS gaming laptops and got change back for what I commited to for this thing... this thing that I have yet to even use. I was very angry at first but now I'm just depressed. Very depressed. I don't know what to do. Don't make the mistake I did, don't buy from Alienware. You'll only be sorry you did.
Read Next Complaint >>
