Brian H. Madsen - .Net Powered by Caffeine : XPS M1710

Dell to replace fans and graphics card on my XPS M1710 again today

Brian Madsen — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:40:00 GMT

I'm having Dell replace another set of fans and graphics card on my XPS M1710 today (well, it's scheduled and booked in for a replacement between 8am-12noon).

My 7950Gtx card was starting to overheat again (most likely due to the design flaws, coupled with the heat we've had here in australia lately) - 2 crashes later and suddenly having artefacts appear when playing games or objects simply just not rendering (big black blobs moving about on the screen) and Dell has sorted out getting a technician to come out and replace both the fans and the graphics card again.

This is the 3rd graphics card i've had in this laptop and the second set of fans/heatsinks - and it will most likely not be the last either considering we're again replacing 1 refurbished (and faulty card) with 1 other refurbished (and previously faulty card).

It'll be interesting to see how well (or not) this new card works and how long it'll last.

not keeping my hopes up that it'll actually be the last card that burns out - so, i'm just happy that Dell extended my warranty by another year. Historically speaking that should mean i'll have another 2-3 cards replaced during that time. It's only been 5 months since i had a total of 3 fixes - 1 set of fans/heatsinks, 1 motherboard and 1 graphics card + Dell managing to keep my laptop for nearly 9 days to check it out.

I asked Dell to provide me with the fault analysis from the last time it went away (it was in their lab for testing, which took forever, and eventually they replaced the motherboard) but so far they haven't come up with the goods. Reason for asking for this information is that i want to see what else could possibly be damaged in the laptop by these constant failures of hardware.

my XPS M1710 seems to have been fixed, thanks Dell

Brian Madsen — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:01:00 GMT

Well, after more than a months of working with Dell technicians - two seperate onsite calls and one workshop incident later and my laptop actually seems to have been fixed.

I haven't run any diagnostics...yet, but as a benchmark i installed Gears of War sunday evening and gave it a run. Seemed to run very smoothly - however, the fans are going crazy. that is to say, i actually think they are working this time as i can definitely hear them take off. Plus they're not shutting down.

So, thanks to Dell for finally fixing it and to "M" from Dell Customer Services (you know who you are) for assisting me with the outcome.

After having a look at the processes, by talking to "M" and by applying a bit of simple logic, it seems that most of the problems i had was simply communications problems between Dell and the company that does their service here in Perth.

It did take a total of 9 days (well, 8 if you dont count the day i exploded and told them to stuff the laptop etc) for the 3-4 day workshop to complete and for me to have my laptop again. It also took me driving out to the DHL depot where the laptop was stored after it was fixed to get it back, otherwise i wouldn't have gotten it till yesterday (got it Friday afternoon, last week).

Dell has graciously extended my laptop warranty with another full year - so that should really see me well and truely past it's "lifetime" so to speak.

I'm happy again, but the episode still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm sure that if the laptop doesn't crash on me in the near future that i'd be happy to get another Dell...well, maybe not - not entirely sure on that point yet (naturally). The hardest part will probably be to get over the fact that i'd received a terribly service for what is considered a high end product from Dell.

Lesson learned are:

1) do NOT trust Dell Technical Support - double check everything AND always call back to confirm appointments and discussions because they tend to "forget" to return phone calls they promise.
2) write down every piece of information you get, either from telephone conversations or emails, and ensure that you get the name of the technician you're talking to.
3) do NOT let the technician diagnose your problems over the phone without doing any tests (eg. if the technician states the problem is X without testing that, disregard it).
4) escalate each incident you raise with Dell Technical Support with the Customer Service department - simply call Customer Services and get hold of a service agent and state your problem - Technical Support at Dell knows absolutely nothing and will promise you the world IF it gets you off the phone quicker.
5) if they start to get snippy with you, remind them again and again who the customer is - it seems sometimes to be forgotten.

It's five simple processes to follow when dealing with Dell Technical Support and i'm going to be 100% sure that i follow them in the future. "P" from technical support was the only person that i spoke to that seemed to a) know what he was talking about and b) didn't BS you to get you off the phone. I'd spoken to 9-10 different engineers/technicians, even had one diagnosed the OS without any information other than "i get pixelation and crashes" or doing any tests.

I might be the customer from hell but it seems that it got the job done - my laptops appears to be fixed.

Another thing to take note of is this - do NOT use the Dell drivers for the 7 series GO NVidia cards - they seriously underperform and can cause more problems than what you already have. Get the latest driver from NVidia as they've just released a 32-bit forceware (still not a 64-bit version available) for the entire Dell XPS range.

Lastly, I'd been told that this was a single incident and not the norm from Dell - from what i've read on their own forums, other forums and the replies i've had here, then it does seem to be quite common.

Totally frustrated with Dell - XPS M1710 has gone AWOL

Brian Madsen — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:19:00 GMT

As you may know (or may not if you're new here) i've had a lot of dramas with Dell regarding my XPS M1710 laptop. Last october ('07) saw the M1710 as the laptop flagship from Dell and the early reviews put it miles ahead of any other laptop in terms of performance - so i bought one.

It all started here when my laptop started to overheat - luckily my laptop was still covered by warranty so things "should" have been sorted out quickly enough and i was impressed with what I was told by Dell Technical Support.

Support actioned a technician for me, 3 days later - which suddenly meant 4 days as they had to reschedule. Left me hanging for the entire day with technical support insisting/promising that the technician would definitely be turning up, just wait for the phone call for a more specific time. Yeps, he never turned up and later in the afternoon i was told he wouldn't be coming over at all. 3 calls to Dell on the same day to confirm he would definitely be there and was told that it was 100% certain he would be there. Those 100% collapsed fast into 0% after the last time i followed up on it.

Finally it was fixed - or was it? nopes, still had somewhat the same issues plus severe performance issues with the graphics card as well - so they dispatched another technician to my house to replace the graphics card (first time the motherboard, fans and heatsinks were replaced).

Fixed yet....nopes...massive problems again and i was getting tired of getting promises upon promises upon promises, till finally i had enough and called customer service instead to complain. This saw, after a very heated discussion with a technician on the line at the same time as the customer service representative was there. The technician insisted that the problems were my operating system and i said it wasn't.

Long story short, the laptop had to go in for a 3-4 day workshop - that was last week btw. We're now on day 8 after i was stood up yesterday, again after having been given 100% guarantees that it would be delivered - twice!!!

I had a call Tuesday, after i escalated the issue with the customer service representative that i'm now dealing with, to let me know that the laptop had been fixed (the motherboard had again been replaced) and that I would get it Wednesday (yesterday).

Yesterday morning (wednesday) i got a call around 9am or so to let me know they'd be dropping the laptop off between 12:30 and 14:30 - i told them it had to be delivered to our offices in perth because i simply couldn't keep taking time off to cater for them as they kept breaking their promises. Not a problem, new address given and confirmed. 2 hrs later i get another call from the same person at Dell Technical Support, who advised me that they "had a few problems at the depot where my laptop was" and that the time had to be extended to be between 12:30 and 16:30. Again, confirm the address and time and again i get a 100% guarantee that it would be delivered.

So guess what? 16:45, still no laptop..16:50, still no laptop..I was fuming...absolutely rediculous that they can keep screwing things up (note for the reader, this is when the language [may] turn ugly). How many things can they *** up? How much patience am I meant to have?

I also sent an email, straight after the second call, to the customer service representative to inform him of the development (i'd earlier sent him a massive email letting him know how dissapointed and dissatisfied i was with Dell at the moment) and asked him to look into the problem at the depot as i was getting nervous that they'd either 1) lost my laptop or 2) found out that it actually hadn't been fixed yet.

I get in to work this morning at 6:10am and place a call straight to the customer service representative - get his voice message (naturally, it's only 8:10am over east) and ask him to call me back..

Now all in all i've given Dell every damn opportunity to fix this and it's turning into a circus - i'm livid and angry now. no, that's not right..i'm absolutely fucking furious at the moment at these limp dicks fucking up again and again. How the hell do they manage to run an international corporation when they just keep fucking things up?

I wonder if i'm the only basket case that's using Dell at the moment or if i'm the dumbest person in the world (aha, no reason to comment on that one - i AM) - how much more patience and leeway should i give them?

The answer is simple - if my laptop isn't here by 10am today i'm going to go and take this to the ministry of fair trading - a resolution better bloody/fucking well be found!! Where...Is...My...Laptop???

Nuff said!!!