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I heavily shortened this article… it just happened way too much between Dell and me to tell everything.

In Summer 2008 I bought myself a Dell XPS M1530. An actually pretty nice and very fast laptop. I mean… the first one I received was damaged, the touchpad wasn’t in place. But they managed to sent me a new one after a month or so and I was happy again.

Six months later I even wrote an almost totally positive article about the laptop, though they already had to change the fan once on-location.

Now, another 14 months later I have a totally different opinion about Dell. Since Summer 2008 I had 6 repairs. Not that that isn’t enough, but their pick-up service usually doesn’t show up in schedule and even if they do… all they tell you is “be there between 8am and 6pm”. Once they didn’t even show up, and another time they came two days earlier then scheduled so I haven’t had any chance to erase my data. Surprisingly exactly that time they changed the HDD, which actually worked fine. (More about that soon) Ah and did I mention that it takes two weeks until you get your laptop back?

But I’m not even at the worst point. The last two service requests were only needed because the technician damaged my laptop. The first time they bent the alu-cover, the second time the display cover and the HDD was damaged (Yes, they changed my HDD, kept my data and installed a damaged one!).

Now let’s come to the strangest point: Because I insisted on some kind of compensation for the damage on my laptop they generously offered me a one-time on-location repair which I should pay for!!!!!! Wait? I shall pay to get your mistakes fixed?I Errr… no! I then told them I contacted my lawyer and all of a sudden their so called “head of department” wrote me a mail that they would do a favor and do a one-time on-location repair for free to get things finally fixed.

I accepted… the technician showed up with about 12 boxes of spares. And changed everything except the screws and the DVD drive. Lol!

It now works well again, but decided to sell it. It’s caused too much stress.

Ah and here’s a short list of all the repairs they had to make in the past 20 months:
- Replace Fan (on-location)
- Replace Fan
- Replace Mainboard
- Replace HDD (came back with damaged Alu-cover)
- Replace Alu-cover (replaced Display, HDD and Alu-cover – now Display-Cover and HDD are damaged)
- Replaced Alu-Cover, Display-Covers, the entire case, Motherboard, Fan and HDD – on-location

Their eMail support is also pretty much a joke. You write with people somewhere in Bratislava, which don’t have any power to decide anything. All they do is clicking together platitudes. It took me 5 mails until they finally understood that I want them to forward my mails to their principal.

I now sold it. No more Dell.