Online Chat and Two real good Dell Tech Support Experiences last week...

[FlyingPenguin]

Those of you with Dells or who service them may be interested.

CLIENT #1 had a bad HDD and it was under warranty. Clear and simple diagnoses and usually I don't have much trouble with Dell tech support if it's the Business division (the Home division, on the other hand, treats you like crap so I don't allow any of my clients to buy from them). But I was not looking forward to 30+ minutes on the phone with half of it on hold and half trying to understand some Indian guy's broken English and listening to Muzak while on hold.

Instead I used Dell's online tech support text chat for the first time. Frankly, I don't think I'll EVER call them on the phone again after trying this out. He got right to me. I gave them the service tag and the clients name, typed a short paragraph describing the issue and how I diagnosed it and requested an RMA. The guy asked me a couple of basic questions, asked for the current shipping address and phone number and gave me the RMA.

Took maybe 15 minutes total, most of which I spent doing other things since I wasn't tethered to a phone. Plus I have a printed and emailed transcript of the whole conversation for my files, and I gave a copy to the client.


CLIENT #2 took a lightning strike and the PC wouldn't power up at all (lightning damage has been real bad last 3 weeks - you guys have no idea, Central Florida is the lightning capital of the country.

Anyway I do a free quick diagnoses and decide it's probably the mobo because the PSU powers up with a tester but not 100% sure (some bad PSUs will still power up with a tester and I've fried a few mobos that way). Also no way to know if anything else got spiked. I usually recommend just buying a new PC at this point, and since I don't sell PCs I can make that recommendation without any bias.

PC is 3 years old and out of warranty. As a rule I don't do mobo replacements for residential clients unless it's a warranty RMA. It's just not worth the time and aggravation for me, plus I can't afford to buy a mobo and then find out that the issue was something else. I can't stock parts for every model, I'm not a store. Too many pitfalls.

Anyway, I tell him it's probably going to cost a minimum of $350 parts & labor if he gets it done locally at one of the Mom & Pop shops even if they'll do it (most usually won't do OEM mobo replacements - they try to sell you a new PC and give you a credit on the old one) and that's half way to buying a new PC anyway, but he doesn't want to buy a new PC so I suggested he call Dell and see what they would charge to come out and fix it as I've heard some good things about the local Dell service rep. I asked him to let me know how it worked out.

Well Dell has a flat $197 labor fee per issue, no matter how many times they have to come back to finish the job. They came out and replaced the PSU first but that didn't fix it and the tech had the wrong mobo in the truck so he came out the next day and swapped out the mobo and that fixed it. They charged him $197 for the labor and $100 for the mobo which seems pretty reasonable.

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

Those of you with Dells or who service them may be interested.

CLIENT #1 had a bad HDD and it was under warranty. Clear and simple diagnoses and usually I don't have much trouble with Dell tech support if it's the Business division (the Home division, on the other hand, treats you like crap so I don't allow any of my clients to buy from them). But I was not looking forward to 30+ minutes on the phone with half of it on hold and half trying to understand some Indian guy's broken English and listening to Muzak while on hold.

Instead I used Dell's online tech support text chat for the first time. Frankly, I don't think I'll EVER call them on the phone again after trying this out. He got right to me. I gave them the service tag and the clients name, typed a short paragraph describing the issue and how I diagnosed it and requested an RMA. The guy asked me a couple of basic questions, asked for the current shipping address and phone number and gave me the RMA.

Took maybe 15 minutes total, most of which I spent doing other things since I wasn't tethered to a phone. Plus I have a printed and emailed transcript of the whole conversation for my files, and I gave a copy to the client.


CLIENT #2 took a lightning strike and the PC wouldn't power up at all (lightning damage has been real bad last 3 weeks - you guys have no idea, Central Florida is the lightning capital of the country.

Anyway I do a free quick diagnoses and decide it's probably the mobo because the PSU powers up with a tester but not 100% sure (some bad PSUs will still power up with a tester and I've fried a few mobos that way). Also no way to know if anything else got spiked. I usually recommend just buying a new PC at this point, and since I don't sell PCs I can make that recommendation without any bias.

PC is 3 years old and out of warranty. As a rule I don't do mobo replacements for residential clients unless it's a warranty RMA. It's just not worth the time and aggravation for me, plus I can't afford to buy a mobo and then find out that the issue was something else. I can't stock parts for every model, I'm not a store. Too many pitfalls.

Anyway, I tell him it's probably going to cost a minimum of $350 parts & labor if he gets it done locally at one of the Mom & Pop shops even if they'll do it (most usually won't do OEM mobo replacements - they try to sell you a new PC and give you a credit on the old one) and that's half way to buying a new PC anyway, but he doesn't want to buy a new PC so I suggested he call Dell and see what they would charge to come out and fix it as I've heard some good things about the local Dell service rep. I asked him to let me know how it worked out.

Well Dell has a flat $197 labor fee per issue, no matter how many times they have to come back to finish the job. They came out and replaced the PSU first but that didn't fix it and the tech had the wrong mobo in the truck so he came out the next day and swapped out the mobo and that fixed it. They charged him $197 for the labor and $100 for the mobo which seems pretty reasonable.

$100 for a DELL motherboard is quite reasonable. I do a lot of DELL mobo replacements and spend close to that every time. But I have had a few that cost me almost $140-$150 on a rare occasion and couldn't get the customer to buy a new PC. Because you know me. I'm not a big fan of Dell. Won't knock others for it, but I won't be a customer myself

eGo

[FlyingPenguin]

Just curious Ego, not knocking you about Dell because I'm sure you have valid reasons, but is there an OEM you do recommend or do you prefer custom built systems?

I've never had any bad experiences with Dell's business division (except for the unavoidable moronic Indian/South American helpdesk techs). The quality of the components for same same price is generally better than most other OEMs. Yeah they've had lemons - they also went through a period 5 years ago where they had a large number of defective hard drives (seemed like I was seeing a Dell crash a HDD every week for a while there).

I stick to Dell because I like their online ordering system, you can still order them easily with XP installed (a must for business clients right now). I particularly like the Optiplex line because they come with a 3 year on-site warranty by default and you can order them with no crapware installed at all.

I really don't like HP's (unless they're the high-end systems) or Compaqs. You open them up and the quality is just horrible, plus they are loaded with an obscene amount of crapware. The cheap sub-$600 Toshibas are not really made by Toshiba (little know ugly fact) but just rebranded by Toshiba and they're generally junk. The higher end Toshibas are good though.

I used to loath eMachines but they actually make decent PCs for the money nowadays and I tend to recommend them to people who don't want Dells or just don't want to mail order.

I used to love Gateway - they had great tech support, but they lost their edge when the company got bought out and frnakly they're totally off my radar now.

Sony's are fabulous machines but they are WAY overpriced.

I have liked the few Acers I've worked on though.

[beef]

I've found that the online tech support for various different companies seems better then their phone support. For example, was dealing with an issue with a pc and roadrunner, and found the online tech support much more helpful then the phone. You generally don't have to worry about disconnects and being put on hold anymore.

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

Just curious Ego, not knocking you about Dell because I'm sure you have valid reasons, but is there an OEM you do recommend or do you prefer custom built systems?

I've never had any bad experiences with Dell's business division (except for the unavoidable moronic Indian/South American helpdesk techs). The quality of the components for same same price is generally better than most other OEMs. Yeah they've had lemons - they also went through a period 5 years ago where they had a large number of defective hard drives (seemed like I was seeing a Dell crash a HDD every week for a while there).

I stick to Dell because I like their online ordering system, you can still order them easily with XP installed (a must for business clients right now). I particularly like the Optiplex line because they come with a 3 year on-site warranty by default and you can order them with no crapware installed at all.

I really don't like HP's (unless they're the high-end systems) or Compaqs. You open them up and the quality is just horrible, plus they are loaded with an obscene amount of crapware. The cheap sub-$600 Toshibas are not really made by Toshiba (little know ugly fact) but just rebranded by Toshiba and they're generally junk. The higher end Toshibas are good though.

I used to loath eMachines but they actually make decent PCs for the money nowadays and I tend to recommend them to people who don't want Dells or just don't want to mail order.

I used to love Gateway - they had great tech support, but they lost their edge when the company got bought out and frnakly they're totally off my radar now.

Sony's are fabulous machines but they are WAY overpriced.

I have liked the few Acers I've worked on though.

I still enjoy building them and can usually come pretty close to Dell on prices. We sell Acer notebooks when we sell one, have had great luck with them. I'll post more when I get to Baltimore, I'm in memphis right now posting from my phone haha.

eGo

[nexus_7]

business HP has been my favorite over the past few years...gave up on dell, but I am not in love with hp or anything. The info is good to know.

[ZYFER]

I have been no particular fan of any OEM, Dell's Pentium 4/Celeron series of computers were heaps of crap, but at least they got better. HP has been steadily improving system-wise, their support, not so much... Never been a big fan of Gateway, but never an issue with them at all. Emachines, they used to be POS computers and crap support, it is like someone took a dump and it became a company... Things sure changed when Gateway bought them up. Please note, for anyone who does not know, Acer owns Gateway now... No problems with any Acer computers either.

I agree about Sony, far overpriced, good stuff, but they don't offer anything special. If I am going to spend that much, mine as well buy a Mac...

One big advantage of sticking with Dell and Intel, is you end up with Intel motherboards. With HP and the others, no real knowing who is making the board for the system till you get it. Though Gateways tend to use MSI more often and HPs use Asus.

The one thing though, it cost about $300 to fix that old Dell. At that point, a new low-end computer might have very easily outperformed what was fixed and been the same price...

For many people, I make the strong suggestion of getting a new one. Many people, it just isn't worth throwing the money into something 3-5 years old, when they can get a $300 computer that is better and performs the same task.

Also to note, I have used Verizon's online chat as well. It is like you are actually communicating with intelligent people...

[FlyingPenguin]

I agree. 3 year old PC that's going to cost $300 to fix I usually recommend buying a new one since you're half way there BUT this guy was a retiree on a limited income and the way he saw it was $300 versus $600 for a new PC ($500 for a budget Dell plus $99 to have them install XP) PLUS he has to pay me a couple of hours of labor to transfer his files and set it up.

So while I think he paid a lot to fix an old machine, I do understand where he's coming from.

[ZYFER]

Look at Dell's site, can get a tower for around $300... Meets the needs of around 90% of people. Many getting an upgraded computer will even still have a monitor to use, no need for a new one of those. Any with Vista just need an extra 1GB of memory slapped in and are good to go.

[FlyingPenguin]

Well, but let's be honest. I would never recommend one of those $300 Dell systems. They're Slim cases so there's no standard parts, and for $300 you're getting a Celeron processor. My client was better off with his 3 year old P4.

I gotta disagree with you to some extent. GRANTED that most average users don't need much horsepower anymore, but have you noticed what a performance hog Flash and Java apps have become? And the Internet is everything now.

I setup charity systems all the time. Mostly older Celeron and 1st gen P4 systems nowadays and even with a stipped down install, draconian service tuning, and a lightweight AV app installed, you go browse a busy flash page like Comcast's homepage or some other portal site and it slows down to a crawl. Get on some social networking site with AJAX or just try playing a video on YouTube and it just can't hack it.

For $500 you can pickup a cheap Core 2 Duo system almost anywhere and that's the minimum I'd recommend now.