I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook that is about 4 years old now (bought in NZ). I used to swear by Dell; bought their products and recommended/spoke highly of them to everyone (this is until I became a Mac user, but that’s not Dell’s fault).

The graphics adapter died (fan stopped working and it overheated). I can’t get technical support. Every channel I try refuses me, saying my product is out of warranty (which is true). So I tried contacting plain old customer services. I’m not currently in NZ, so don’t want to call, so tried their online contact form. I got an automated response saying I’d attempted to contact them outside business hours (I’m 12 hours out here in Europe) but that someone would get back to me in 2-3 business days. A week later, I’d heard nothing. So I tried again; another automated message and another week later and still nothing.

Sucks sucks sucks!

Of course I can’t get any answers from Dell here in Europe, because my machine has an Asia-Pacific service tag, and I don’t want to go through the administrative hell that would be trying to transfer it, especially since I’ll be back in NZ in a few months.

I think I’ll just buy the parts from eBay and fit them myself. Will probably be easier than trying to deal with a company that doesn’t care about me.

Customer Service is nearly always the weakest link of large companies. You see it nearly everywhere.