So, Dell Screwed up? (Patreon)

I really don’t know what to make of this. After all the phone calls ending with Dell telling me I was screwed, and they were returning my laptop unrepaired, all I was hoping for was that since the problem was just the battery not charging, they hadn’t broken it in other ways so I could still use it, with a UPC (uninterruptible Power Supply) power supply to make up for the lack of a working battery.

On Monday the laptop was delivered, and instead of a laptop with a charging problem what I got was …

A fully repaired laptop.

Weird, right?

I mean, when I opened the box and saw the repair report indicating everything they replaced on it (it’s all parts code so it was meaningless to me other than there were a lot of parts replaced), I figured they were trying to make themselves look good by replacing everything that didn’t have a problem (or just claiming they had, this is Dell after all).

When I plugged it in, I fully expected nothing to happen, but I was surprised to find it powered up. It had to go through the windows initiation sequence since as part of repairing it they reinstalled Windows, so I waited until that was done to poke around the system and see the state of the battery. I was already happy the system powered up, so I wasn’t expecting anything.

Definitely not to see a battery fully charged. I even unplugged it to see if the battery would immediately drop to 0, since that was something that it had done before, but no, it dropped to 99%, and when I plugged it in, it went back to 100. I haven’t done an extensive test yet because I want to set it up completely first and I don’t have the right monitor cables for it (they have been ordered) but as far as I’m concerned, I have a fully functioning laptop.

I should be happy.

What I am is confused.

Did they do that in the day and a half between me posting my Facebook post? (I did post a copy on Dell’s Facebook page) if so, 1) that’s damned impressive and 2) why didn’t anyone from Dell contact me to say they’d seen my concerns and would ensure I had a working laptop? Or was my laptop always ready for repairs and the customer service department just didn’t know about it? Or worse yet, were actively trying to con me out of money. Were they calling me about the wrong laptop entirely?

As I said, I should be happy I have a working laptop, and really, I am. I’m just not able to be happy at Dell because I can’t tell if they intended for me to get a working laptop, or if they are so screwed up in how they work that they were planning on screwing me over completely and screwed that up too.

So, no, I can’t find it in myself to be happy at Dell.

But who I am happy for are the Ladies of the Fates. I once again bow to you Ladies for taking a situation I was willing to live with and making it so much better.

(amusingly, as I am finishing writing this, I started my stream and got an advertising for Alienware, which Dell owns)

This Friday, so a few days after I wrote this, I got a call from Dell asking if I was satisfied with my repair.

Now. I’ll be honest here and say that really felt like adding insult to injury. Yes, my laptop WAS repaired, but I wasn’t told that, I was told I was getting an unrepaired system back. fortunately for me, I wasn’t home when I got the call so I was able to make the rep’s life a little difficult by asking her why she was asking me about a repaired computer when Dell told me they were returning an unrepaired computer to me.

She had to put me on hold to go ask what that ways about, and returned to say they’d found the right piece to repair it, so did the repair before sending it. I then asked how come no one contacted me to inform me and she said that they were, that she was contacting me (this was one week after the ‘repair was done’ AND she’s started the call asking if I was satisfied, not that I’d be receiving a repaired computer).

When she asked me to turn the computer on so I could check if it was repaired satisfactorily, I said I wasn’t home so I couldn’t turn it on (I will point out that was entirely true) That threw or off and she went on to explain what had been repaired, basically the mother board that was out of stock and out of life that Dell couldn’t find and therefor the reason they were returning it to me not repaired. And she asked when she could call back.

I said Saturday and she hesitated before saying she didn’t work on that day. She asked to call Monday and I agreed.

I definitely hope she isn’t expecting me to say good thing after all this, even if Dell did return to me a repaired computer, because, no, I still am not happy with Dell and I will not be doing business with them again.

And that’s it for now, so I’ll see you on the next one.