Originally Posted by JeffDM Many people have had both good and bad experiences from the big PC brands and the PC parts makers alike. Maybe the service advantage might go to the big PC brand as they can't point fingers to another company if it's a compatibility issue like a parts maker might, but it's not something that you can draw from anecdotes.
Oh, but my ASUS motherboard is only one example. Over the course of my time building computers and repairing them for others. It's the same deal with these parts vendors. You get an RMA number, send the part in on YOUR dime and they take their sweet time getting you a replacement.
I had a Seagate Hard Drive fail on me. I request the RMA and had to pay an extra $20 to have an advance swap done (Not a $20 hold, $20 out of my pocket). Seagate did get the new drive to me the next day, and you'd think for Paying $20 I shouldn't have to pay to send it back right? WRONG! Western Digital doesn't charge for a advance ship RMA, but they put an $80 hold on your credit card and then take a week shipping it to you via UPS ground....you guess it still have to foot the bill to get it back to them.
The Hiper 580W PSU I have in my main desktop died on me about a week before QuakeCon this year. I bought this PSU because every review I found on the 'net of this thing sang nothing but praises for it. Anyway, I e-mailed them requesting an RMA, waited 3 days and e-mailed them again, waited another 3 days and e-mailed them AGAIN. Finally got an answer back telling me where to ship the PSU. I send it DHL 2nd day signature required ($48) and went to QuakeCon using an extra lower wattage PSU I had. I get back, not a peep from the folks that handle Hiper's US RMAs. So I call the guy up that I sent the power supply to. He tells me "I didn't receive your RMA." Then I say, "Are you sure? I sent it DHL under waybill xxxxxxxx, DHL says it's delivered." And I give him the name of the person that signed for it. He goes and asks that person if she signed for a DHL package and then tells me that she doesn't remember accepting a DHL delivery.....now common sense would dictate that you'd go ahead and take care of the customer and worry about finding a missing RMA later, y'know since it can be proved the defective power supply was returned. Not in this case. Homeboy tells me he's got to talk to Hiper about it and he'll call me back. I wait a week and finally call HIM and he tells me that he can't issue me an RMA until he can find the unit I sent back. At this point I am a bit angry. So I fire off a stern yet professional e-mail to Hiper telling them (not asking) to replace my power Supply which I paid a perfectly good $130 for. FINALLY their guy calls me telling me he's shipping a new one....via UPS ground. Personally, I don't think it'd be unreasonable for them to send me a replacement next-day air considering the problems that have occurred, but that's just a slap in the face. I pay 4 times the cost of ground shipping to send their junk power supply back to them. Their chuckle-headed sub-contractor loses the thing and then acts like I paid $48 to send them a box of rocks in an attempt to score free product.
Sorry to write a book here, but my experience with my A8N-SLI is not simply an anecdote as to the standard level of slow service the parts makers provide. They are absolutely slow as christmas compared to Dell at the very least. Dell offers a 1 year on-site warranty standard with the XPS 700 (I checked) Yes, it's just one year, but if anything breaks you won't have to pay to send defective parts back and wait very long for replacements to arrive. I've been through Dell's warranty process on two of my three Laptops (only reason I keep buying Dell is because their laptops are cheap and they fix them quickly). Needless to say though I will continue to build my own desktops in spite of the parts makers' RMA procedures.
If you still don't beleive me, I have alot more stories from my own experiences to share with everyone. Oh, and don't say it's bad luck, there's no such thing.
Oh, and before anyone asks, I do not work for Dell, I am merely a technician certified by Dell to work on their stuff. I am also certified with IBM/Lenovo.
Afew years ago I bought a Dell workstation. After 6 months I hear crackling and popping from the speakers, so I call Dell tech support. They arrange to send me a new CD drive despite me telling them that it will not fix the problem. I change the drive and the problem still exists, so they arrange for an engineer to visit me with ANOTHER CD drive. When I explain the problem he flips his lid, and goes bezerk about how often this happens to him, but proceeds to fit new CD drive. Whilst he is doing this a courier arrives at my door asking me to sign for a replacement CD drive from Dell. Well the engineer almost burst a blood vessel whilst screaming down the phone to Dell tech support.
The engineer says that I need a NEW SOUNDCARD to Dell tech support, but they tell him that they must follow their standard protocol and send new speakers. The PC is booted, load a music CD, Game and what ever else and the problem is still present and played down the phone to tech support. They persist and to my surprise the speakers arrive but do not fix the problem, next up is the CPU which I replace. Then its a complete reformat....not fixed. Next up is the motherboard....still the same..... STILL CRACKLING AND POPPING like the biggest bowl of Rice Crispies. I change the RAM, get a new HD AND Windows 98 CD and would you believe it...STILL not working???? Finally after 3 months a recieve a new soundcard......
TA...DAAAAAAA NO CRACKLING AND POPPING!
In the time I had that PC I went through 3 soundcards and for my trouble I got an upgraded CPU from 600-800Mhz.
Regardless of what you say I can tell you that DELL SUCK!
The last post by socrates also highlights some alarming oversights by Dell!
I would have to agree with MrEvil. I don't own a Dell myself, but two friends have them; their machines have each had a hardware fault at some point. In both instances, a Dell engineer was dispatched quickly and identified the problem straight away, replacing the part within 2 days (one was a faulty PSU fan, another a fried processor & motherboard). The time from call to working computer was less than week.
Originally Posted by MrEvil If you still don't beleive me, I have alot more stories from my own experiences to share with everyone. Oh, and don't say it's bad luck, there's no such thing.
The problem is that the last time I've seen numbers on it, I think in Consumers Reports, the people that assembled from parts didn't report a significant difference in warranty support vs. the major brands. Personal experience can't compare with collected data.
Comments 51 to 55 of 55
ReplyOh, but my ASUS motherboard is only one example. Over the course of my time building computers and repairing them for others. It's the same deal with these parts vendors. You get an RMA number, send the part in on YOUR dime and they take their sweet time getting you a replacement.
I had a Seagate Hard Drive fail on me. I request the RMA and had to pay an extra $20 to have an advance swap done (Not a $20 hold, $20 out of my pocket). Seagate did get the new drive to me the next day, and you'd think for Paying $20 I shouldn't have to pay to send it back right? WRONG! Western Digital doesn't charge for a advance ship RMA, but they put an $80 hold on your credit card and then take a week shipping it to you via UPS ground....you guess it still have to foot the bill to get it back to them.
The Hiper 580W PSU I have in my main desktop died on me about a week before QuakeCon this year. I bought this PSU because every review I found on the 'net of this thing sang nothing but praises for it. Anyway, I e-mailed them requesting an RMA, waited 3 days and e-mailed them again, waited another 3 days and e-mailed them AGAIN. Finally got an answer back telling me where to ship the PSU. I send it DHL 2nd day signature required ($48) and went to QuakeCon using an extra lower wattage PSU I had. I get back, not a peep from the folks that handle Hiper's US RMAs. So I call the guy up that I sent the power supply to. He tells me "I didn't receive your RMA." Then I say, "Are you sure? I sent it DHL under waybill xxxxxxxx, DHL says it's delivered." And I give him the name of the person that signed for it. He goes and asks that person if she signed for a DHL package and then tells me that she doesn't remember accepting a DHL delivery.....now common sense would dictate that you'd go ahead and take care of the customer and worry about finding a missing RMA later, y'know since it can be proved the defective power supply was returned. Not in this case. Homeboy tells me he's got to talk to Hiper about it and he'll call me back. I wait a week and finally call HIM and he tells me that he can't issue me an RMA until he can find the unit I sent back. At this point I am a bit angry. So I fire off a stern yet professional e-mail to Hiper telling them (not asking) to replace my power Supply which I paid a perfectly good $130 for. FINALLY their guy calls me telling me he's shipping a new one....via UPS ground. Personally, I don't think it'd be unreasonable for them to send me a replacement next-day air considering the problems that have occurred, but that's just a slap in the face. I pay 4 times the cost of ground shipping to send their junk power supply back to them. Their chuckle-headed sub-contractor loses the thing and then acts like I paid $48 to send them a box of rocks in an attempt to score free product.
Sorry to write a book here, but my experience with my A8N-SLI is not simply an anecdote as to the standard level of slow service the parts makers provide. They are absolutely slow as christmas compared to Dell at the very least. Dell offers a 1 year on-site warranty standard with the XPS 700 (I checked) Yes, it's just one year, but if anything breaks you won't have to pay to send defective parts back and wait very long for replacements to arrive. I've been through Dell's warranty process on two of my three Laptops (only reason I keep buying Dell is because their laptops are cheap and they fix them quickly). Needless to say though I will continue to build my own desktops in spite of the parts makers' RMA procedures.
If you still don't beleive me, I have alot more stories from my own experiences to share with everyone. Oh, and don't say it's bad luck, there's no such thing.
Oh, and before anyone asks, I do not work for Dell, I am merely a technician certified by Dell to work on their stuff. I am also certified with IBM/Lenovo.
Pity the reviewer didn't pick up on important issues that XPS 700 owners are now finding Dell is unwilling to resolve:
1) No VT support, despite a Core2Duo processor, because Dell disabled this in the BIOS (this impacts Vista compatibility and makes VmWare/Virtual Server run slow). http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=xps_desk_genhdw&message.id=26668
2) No EMT64 support, despite a Core2Duo processor. This means you can't run 64-bit versions of Windows or Linux on this machine. http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=xps_desk_genhdw&message.id=27514
3) Problems (with the BIOS?) prevent the use of fast 800mhz memory. http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=xps_desk_genhdw&message.id=27512
Oh, and on the positive side, my SLI configuration does work, contrary to the reviewer's machine.
Dell.....pfff let me tell you a story about Dell.
Afew years ago I bought a Dell workstation. After 6 months I hear crackling and popping from the speakers, so I call Dell tech support. They arrange to send me a new CD drive despite me telling them that it will not fix the problem. I change the drive and the problem still exists, so they arrange for an engineer to visit me with ANOTHER CD drive. When I explain the problem he flips his lid, and goes bezerk about how often this happens to him, but proceeds to fit new CD drive. Whilst he is doing this a courier arrives at my door asking me to sign for a replacement CD drive from Dell. Well the engineer almost burst a blood vessel whilst screaming down the phone to Dell tech support.
The engineer says that I need a NEW SOUNDCARD to Dell tech support, but they tell him that they must follow their standard protocol and send new speakers. The PC is booted, load a music CD, Game and what ever else and the problem is still present and played down the phone to tech support. They persist and to my surprise the speakers arrive but do not fix the problem, next up is the CPU which I replace. Then its a complete reformat....not fixed. Next up is the motherboard....still the same..... STILL CRACKLING AND POPPING like the biggest bowl of Rice Crispies. I change the RAM, get a new HD AND Windows 98 CD and would you believe it...STILL not working???? Finally after 3 months a recieve a new soundcard......
TA...DAAAAAAA NO CRACKLING AND POPPING!
In the time I had that PC I went through 3 soundcards and for my trouble I got an upgraded CPU from 600-800Mhz.
Regardless of what you say I can tell you that DELL SUCK!
The last post by socrates also highlights some alarming oversights by Dell!
The problem is that the last time I've seen numbers on it, I think in Consumers Reports, the people that assembled from parts didn't report a significant difference in warranty support vs. the major brands. Personal experience can't compare with collected data.
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