Alienware - don't make my mistake this holiday!

GoFastHockey · 12-15-2006, 11:18 AM

In an attempt to save anyone considering an Alienware PC from suffering my pain, let me pass this on. Don't buy one!

After nearly a year of ownership; my Sentia notebook is still not functional. I have had over thirty conversations with customer service, I have twice sent the machine back to the Alienware “depot” for repair, and I am now fully out of warranty and 100% unsupported. This machine has NEVER worked. From day one I have attempted to work with Alienware to solve these problems. I was initially told not to worry about my 30 day 100% satisfaction guarantee, that things would be “made right”. Things have not been made right.

I am a small business owner and I will never purchase another DELL or Alienware product but that won't solve my current problem, a brick with blue LED's on my desk.

I feel better having said that in a public forum.

Merry Christmas!

REDLINE · 12-15-2006, 11:40 AM

My buddy came close to purchasing one last week. Needless to say, he picked something else up. More powerful and cheaper too.

sikocycles · 12-15-2006, 01:53 PM

Well at least they look cool. Maybe it will make a nice paper weight.

philipl · 12-15-2006, 02:21 PM

It's tough to beat Sony and Toshiba laptops. I'm typing on a $650 dual processor Toshiba laptop I bought from Office Depot. For desktop units it's best to build your own. i just did a very high end unit Intell dual core 6600, 2gigs ddr 800 memory, RAID 1 (3gb sata) etc for under $1,200. I did reuse my case, PS and dvd's.

**Aslan** · 12-15-2006, 02:27 PM

Didn't Dell buy Alienware?

GoFastHockey · 12-15-2006, 03:37 PM

Yes, Dell owns Alienware, but they still operate seperately, which is bad for those of us in need of customer service.

scollins · 12-15-2006, 06:28 PM

There is not enough bandwidth for me to begin to describe my experience will Alienware. I will make it short. The experience was awful and finally had to turn the situation over to the BBB. The BBB was able to help me and get my money back - completely. Needless to say, I will never deal with Alienware again.
Shannon

emachine · 12-15-2006, 08:36 PM

Many years ago I ran a site about something that is now a footnote in the history of PC gaming; the 3Dfx video chipset. I was a nobody but getting 1k hits per day (not bad back then), and Alienware was a nobody who needed exposure to gamers, so I let them put a banner add on my site. No click-thru rates, that was too fancy for either of us to setup. They sent me a Pentium 200MHz chip as compensation for the banner add.

As fate would have it, about 2 or 3 weeks later my site became too much work, I started getting corporate offers I didn't know how to respond to (I was 19 and didn't know what an "NDA" was), so in the end I closed my site down and disappeared off the face of the internet to persue a hobby less tied to money and shmoozing.

Anyway, don't worry about your multi-thousand dollar laptop woes because you see, THE JOKES ON ALIENWARE; they lost nearly... $200 dollars... like... eleven years ago.

Yes I know, sweet, sweet vengance. You don't have to thank me, it's ok. Just doing my part.

LAB 601 · 12-15-2006, 09:30 PM

Quote:

GoFastHockey previously said:

I will never purchase another DELL
Merry Christmas!

i as well will NEVER buy another dell, POOR cust service now and POOR fullfillment of my "next day onsite" plan. they are pricey "kit" computers. go with HP-they are rock solid and i've bought even refurbished workstations for an insane price from them.

Tony5150RN · 12-15-2006, 10:07 PM

I currently own 3 Dells and I'll be the first to tell anyone that Dell is not what it used to be. When I bought my first Laptop, eons ago, they were a very helpful, customer friendly organization with customer support techs that you could actually understand. So, a few years later when my Frankentein IBM Clone PC died, and I had moved from the city where a guy I was friends with built custom PC's, I again went with Dell and had a decent experience but not nearly as nice as when I bought my laptop. A years or so after that, Mrs. 5150 needed a PC and I went with Dell for the third, and final, time. The last computer that I specced with them was the most miserable buying experience I've ever gone through. The wait time on the phone, just to order, was more than an hour. The sales rep. didn't speak a lick of understandable English. They didn't offer any deals even though they advertise them regularly; And they kept trying to offer me the "Dell Preferred Account Line of Credit." Even after telling them several times that I wanted to pay with my Debit Card they wouldn't let up.

When Mrs. 5150's PC did not arrive exactly as I specced it, I called their so called "Customer Service" and spent 3 hours on the phone on hold, and being transferred from Haji to Ali Boobuh, none of whom would make good on the missing hardware. I finally got so irate that I could feel my blood pressure sky rocketing and hung up. At that point I vowed never to buy another Dell.

The only thing that sucks is that I live in such a bass-ackwards part of Florida and there are no real computer stores with people who actually know how to put together a decent PC. The only places are either run by young punks, who are probably using their computer store as a front, or gray hairs who know nothing about building a gaming PC. So when I need a new machine, I'm not going to know where to turn.