Laptop Blues

I can certainly relate to the Dell issues. I had a problem with Dell...well, a couple of them....but one stands out above the rest. I bought a camera from them a couple of years ago---it was on sale, a Canon. The online status showed the camera as being shipped along with the case that I had also purchased. When the package arrived, only the case was in the package but the invoice showed the entire order (camera and case) were supposed to be in the shipping box---the invoice indicated that Dell filled the order as one complete shipment. The camera wasn't part of the shipment, yet Dell billed my credit card for the entire purchase. When I called, I was told that the camera was on backorder and they weren't even sure if they would get anymore stock of the camera because they were not going to carry the model any longer. Dell was supposed to give me a credit to my MasterCard but never did.

I called Dell again. And again. And again. Four times later, and after having to explain it over & over in the most simplest way I could think of, I finally got someone on the phone who I thought would be able to take care of it. Instead, my credit card was billed for another camera, and not the credit they were supposed to issue to my card. I had two cameras charged to my credit card and had one camera case out of the deal.

It takes a lot to rattle my cages but by the time I called my credit card company to reverse the charges, I was in tears over the double charge and no one at Dell being competent to resolve the problem. My credit card company listened to my story and was more than happy to remove the charges from my card.

Three months later, after I had long filed this Dell incident in the back of my mind, FedEx shows up at the door with a flippin' Canon camera from Dell. LOL Naturally being the kind of person who never believes in getting something for nothing, I called Dell and told the Rep what had happened. The whole story. He told me to just keep the camera and they wouldn't bill my card. Yes, I did get the camera for free but, oh my goodness, what a process!!

I have a Dell laptop Inspiron 1200 which has been pretty good to me - knock on wood. The service sometimes isn't on point, but I'm glad you got yours okay. I'm still using Windows XP because Vista doesn't play all programs and I can't afford that.

You can adjust your screen time by going into your control panel and opening your Power Options section. Once you open it, you'll see that you have it timed to go off after an hour. You can change it to a longer period or Never. Hope that helps.

My mother had a dell and something went wrong, and I ended up on the phone for eight hours a day for four days. I got sent to every department five times over, and in some cases talked to the same person more than three times.

I will never, ever use dell!

My PC is self built so I know exactly what is going on, my laptop I got from mesh. It's very reliable and I've never had an issue with it. It's great.

Hope you're doing well.

I've used Dell a lot over the years, mostly for customers rather than for myself. They tend to be well built and good value - they can sell decent basic PCs cheaper than I can make them. The thing you don't get is support - but then that's what I do, so I can provide that for non-hardware issues. And Dell support is good if, and only if, you can persuade them it is a hardware fault. The hassle comes when it is a hardware problem that their diagnostics can't spot, but on normal Dell PCs that is rare.

Dell Outlet sells returns of various sorts - "including cancellations and specification changes", as their website says. But also including those returned because of problems which are supposed to be fully redone to Dell factory standards. Many years ago I used to use Outlet a fair amount for customers who wanted a slightly better spec without too much increase in price, and for my own laptops. For a while this worked well, but then they started sending out stuff that had been returned as faulty, without actually fixing it; so I have stuck to their normal product since.

The thing about Outlet, though, is that the product is already made, so delivery can be quicker. I've not used them for quite a while, and I wanted a replacement laptop in a hurry, so I reckoned they were worth a go. If there are problems, as has happened, at least it's me getting the hassle and not a customer. This one looks like another return that they've not investigated properly, though, so I don't reckon I'll be recommending them to any customers.

Capt, thanks for the suggestion. I had actually tried it, and it didn't make any difference. Curiously, what does make a difference is changing the response to closing the lid - if it is set to hibernate on lid closure then it hibernates when it starts to go wrong, if it is set to sleep on closure then it sleeps. If it is set to do nothing then it lasts longer, with just the occasional screen loss, until the display finally gives up and turns off. I can't see how the laptop detects a closed lid on this system - my old laptop used to have a little pin that was pushed in by the lid when it closed - presumably this one does something clever, which has gone wrong. The interesting question is how long it will take Dell support to decide this too and send an engineer out to fix it.

I'm a Mac guy, but we have Dells at my office. The city bought several hundred of them. The nicest thing I can say is that I've wanted to put my fist through them less often than I did with the Compaqs we had before.

PC's just frustrate me.

Macs are no good - they don't fail often enough to keep support engineers in work :-)

Allegedly!

Dell support couldn't fix the problem, so they sent me a nice shiny new laptop, with the same spec. So far it's working very well - touch wood - although I am running it on a laptop cooler, which I think helps a lot.

Fair do's to Dell, I think they have provided decent support over this.

I think so, too!