Dell computer extended warranty is a ripoff Round Rock Texas

I bought a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop in September 2003. At that time, I bought the 4 year extended warranty (next day service), ust in case. Those with laptops know that they are not inexpensive (although they seem to have gotten cheaper in the last few years). Anyway, about a year and a half ago, my laptop slowed down to a near crawl. I'm a techie so I decided to troubleshoot... thought maybe it could be spy ware... ect.

I never found the problem so I called customer support (I did pay for the warranty). They tried to help by having me trouble shoot with them on the phone... the first call took over an hour and a half, then I had to get off the phone... think I had an appt to get to. I called back and went through over 2 hours of troubleshooting. I was so frustrated I gave up (this was June 2005) and utilized my work computer for my school work (pursuing MBA in Technology Management). In my current class, we decided to do a research project on Dell's customer support.

I thought it was the perfect opportunity to get my computer fixed.... guess what, I spent another hour on the phone, 30 minutes of which I spoke to the mechanical voice on the other end and about 15 of which I was on hold. I then tried their new chat system... another hour and a half wasted. Finally got them to agree to take the system back to troubleshoot themselves (although they wouldn't accept the harddrive although it is also covered in the warranty).

Just go it back and they say there's no problem with it... had to call again and requested a new hardrive and they wanted to trouble shoot with me again... I about lost it and requested to talk to a supervisor so after being on hold for 20 minutes (thank goodness for speaker phone) he gets on and tells me that he can send me a hardrive (wonderful) but unfortunately, it will be empty... says they don't have the old technology to load onto the system so I'll have to do it on my own... what a waste of money for that extended warranty... so far... it's only paid for the cost of shipping the system back to them just so they could send it back to me. Stay away from Dell! Waste of money... to bad for them, I'm in search of a new computer and they will definetly not be an option. Think my company figured out their issues too.... we're switching to HP.

Leigh
Santa Maria, California
U.S.A.