I have a rental property that I occasionally need to type a new lease for. I bought a laptop from Dell mainly for this purpose. I spend the summers in a 5th wheel and a laptop seemed like the perfect solution. I have a desktop at home and only used the laptop a few times prior to July, 2008. In July I attempted to type a new lease. This is when I found out I had a problem. It took about 8 hours to type 3 pages. The cursor was jumping all over. I called Dell and explained the problem to them. Dell said it sounded like a software problem aqnd software wasn't covered under the warranty. Dell suggested that I uninstall and reinstall the Mircrosoft Works program. I told the Dell employee I was 500 miles from home and headed in the opposite direction, wouldn't be home until late fall. I asked what he could do for me. After several phone calls and many hours on our cell phone (prime time)I finally got to talk to a technician. He ran me through a couple of test, one in safe mode and another diagnostic test. He concluded that it was a soft ware problem because I did not have the same problem in safe mode. Again it was suggested that I reinstall Microsoft Works. When I explain my situation that I didn"t have the CD's with me and no way to download the program, he suggested the library or perhaps a neighbor who was willing to let me use their ISP service. Neither of these were an option.
As last resort he said he could send me the CD. I saw it as the last resort but obviously he didn't and never sent me the CD. After many more phone calls and much aggravtion I put the computer away. At this point I didn't want to give Dell a chance to say I did something to cause the problem.
After returning home, I took my desktop in to have a new hard drive installed in it and told Patty the problems I was having with my Dell laptop. She said to bring it in, she would check it out. She has worked in this field for 7 years before starting her own business. I took the only CD's I had for my laptop and that's when I found out I didn't have the one I needed. Patty Checked out my laptop and suspected a hardware problem. I didn't want to void my warranty by having someone else fix it so I called Dell back. After spending more than half an hour on the phone with Dell they agreed to send me a CD. Since then I have starting using e-mail and found out I have the same problem with that. After spending more than 3 hours on the phone, explaing my problems to several different people, being disconnected twice, having to go thru Dell's horrible automated service only to have to repeat the same information several times and then once again when I finally got a human being to talk to, Tech #2 said he understood how I felt but there would be a fee for his services. When I requested the CD I was given a phone no and was told someone would help me with the installation--FREE--NO CHARGE. I was told the same thing when I talked to Tech #1. Either no one knows what the other is doing or they deliberately lie to me figuring I will just give up. Dell employees have given me a real run around. The one year warranty expires Feb. 17, 2009 and I haven't been able to use my computer for the main purpose I bought it for. It has caused me a great deal of fustration and anger. I told Tech #2 I had the same problem when trying to send e-mail. He then said it was not a software problem and Tech #1 was wrong but offered no solution without paying a fee for his services. He did suggest that I could take everything off and start over from scratch. I bought a "good" computer, not a cheap one, directly from Dell. I expect it to work. I didn't buy it so I could work on it (fix it) as I know nothing about fixing computers. I also call Dell's CUSTOMER CARE, that's a real joke, more run around. The Microsoft CD I received from Dell reads: For distribution with a new PC only. For product support, contact the manufacturer of your PC. I referred this to Tech #2. His explanation was that I did not pay for the CD, that's why I did not get one with my new computer but Dell will send you one if you're having a problem and it may be cause by a bad CD. Knowing this why didn't Tech #1 send me the CD??????
Tech #2 also told me that I didn't pay to have this program installed, Dell does it as a "favor" for their customers. Customer Care did clarify this some. Their explanation was that this program was a promotional item and it came with the computer. I DID NOT PAY FOR IT. I'm beginning to wonder what I did pay for.
I am a retired senior citizen and live on a fixed income and can not afford to pay to have my laptop fixed. Every time I call Dell, they try to sell me an extended warranty. I tell them the same thing every time, "you haven 't honored my warranty, why would I want to spend more money on something you don't honor".
Please check out the complaints by going to: www.ask.com, then type in complaints about Dell computers. If I had been aware of this information before I bought a Dell, I never would have bought one.
To give you an idea of how bad the problem is, it took 2 hrs. and 45 min. to type this and another half an hour to correct the mistakes I didn't catch during typing this. Hopefully I caught them all.
I truly would appreciate any help you can give me.
Thank you.
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