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Bollocks and buggeration
Nov. 25th, 2005 11:24 amIt takes a lot for me to think ill of people and companies. I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt as far as possible - too far, some would say. And I've always been very kindly disposed towards Alienware.
So when my just-delivered, brand-new system was dead out of the box, I put it down to bad luck; anyone can make a mistake. And if their support department can fix it, no harm done, right?
So I called tech support. I spent 38 minutes and £16 on mobile charges talking to a support bod. "The computer doesn't do anything," I said. I pointed out that I was at uni, with no work surface, no ESD kit, and no tools apart from my Leatherman Wave tool, but still he had me almost take the system apart and put it back together again. He wanted me to take the graphics cards out despite the fact that I couldn't safely reach the latch, but there I drew the line. So he set up a return-to-factory which was eventually collected (after DHL had tried to collect it once but failed because they hadn't read the instructions properly) and so my shiny new system was on its way back to Ireland before it had even started.
Now, a week later, they've fixed it. But do they ship it to the right address? Nooo... They ship it to my home address even when they've been told that it should come here, to the university. At the moment my system's sitting in DHL's Edinburgh depot after my parents (quite rightly) refused delivery yesterday, and it can't get to me before bloody Monday because Alienware can't be arsed to pull their collective thumbs out and pay the extra £25 for DHL's same-day delivery.
The original order-to-delivery time was estimated at 10 business days. As of today, it's been FIVE BLOODY WEEKS. All right, so it arrived after four, but it didn't work.
At the moment, Alienware (famed for their friendly and helpful tech support) are being useless. They won't even consider fixing their own delivery errors, and all our requests for reimbursement have been fobbed off.
But one thing's for sure.
When this is sorted I'll be sending them a demand to cover my costs; phone bills, extra delivery charges, and I reckon I ought to be able to get the original delivery cost refunded as well. And that's before we get started on the loss of earnings for all the hours Dad's lost trying to get through to the buggers.
I always used to like Alienware. I want to like Alienware. How the hell does a company manage to lose a devoted fan like that? Bloody idiots...
So when my just-delivered, brand-new system was dead out of the box, I put it down to bad luck; anyone can make a mistake. And if their support department can fix it, no harm done, right?
So I called tech support. I spent 38 minutes and £16 on mobile charges talking to a support bod. "The computer doesn't do anything," I said. I pointed out that I was at uni, with no work surface, no ESD kit, and no tools apart from my Leatherman Wave tool, but still he had me almost take the system apart and put it back together again. He wanted me to take the graphics cards out despite the fact that I couldn't safely reach the latch, but there I drew the line. So he set up a return-to-factory which was eventually collected (after DHL had tried to collect it once but failed because they hadn't read the instructions properly) and so my shiny new system was on its way back to Ireland before it had even started.
Now, a week later, they've fixed it. But do they ship it to the right address? Nooo... They ship it to my home address even when they've been told that it should come here, to the university. At the moment my system's sitting in DHL's Edinburgh depot after my parents (quite rightly) refused delivery yesterday, and it can't get to me before bloody Monday because Alienware can't be arsed to pull their collective thumbs out and pay the extra £25 for DHL's same-day delivery.
The original order-to-delivery time was estimated at 10 business days. As of today, it's been FIVE BLOODY WEEKS. All right, so it arrived after four, but it didn't work.
At the moment, Alienware (famed for their friendly and helpful tech support) are being useless. They won't even consider fixing their own delivery errors, and all our requests for reimbursement have been fobbed off.
But one thing's for sure.
When this is sorted I'll be sending them a demand to cover my costs; phone bills, extra delivery charges, and I reckon I ought to be able to get the original delivery cost refunded as well. And that's before we get started on the loss of earnings for all the hours Dad's lost trying to get through to the buggers.
I always used to like Alienware. I want to like Alienware. How the hell does a company manage to lose a devoted fan like that? Bloody idiots...
