really bad service follow up 89

   Reading your tale (and hearing overall of the decline in Dell's service quality) was a bit of a puzzler for me. I have a Labreastude C640 under CompleteCare (for another month or so, anyway), and the service calls I placed to get a flaky display and system board changed out were answered promptly, and handled efficiently by a highly competent tech who was more than willing to work with my schedule for the on-site service.

   I used to have a lot of respect for Dell. I still do, in terms of the hardware quality of their older (mostly Optiplex) equipment, and my C640 has certainly done very well.

   I guess what I'm wondering is how the level of service can be so violently variable from one customer to another. Perhaps the worst of Dell's decay along these lines has only recently reached a peak, after my issues were handled.

   One bit of interesting and recent news. It is my understanding that at least some of the customer support-discussion forums on the Dell site got shut down, by Dell, due to the fact that there have been so many complaints and that Dell was trying to silence those who have complained in a public forum.

   If this is accurate, Dell has made the worst possible mistake (outside of outsourcing their support centers) that they could have. Any online forum that has value to those who use it has a tendency to rise from the ashes, as it were, if it is shut down by its original owner.

   buttuming that happens with the Dell forums, I would wager that the comments are going to be even more scathing than ever before, and this time Dell will not have the ability to simply turn them off.

   I suppose they'll eventually discover that truly taking care of their customers is important -- after they file for Chapter 11 or 13 bankruptcy.

   If it's any comfort to you, Joel, there are plenty of inexpensive replacement hard drives Out There. You can typically find a 20 gig IBM TravelStar on Ebay for less than $50, and a 40 gig for about $100 or so. That may, given Dell's reluctance to honor their agreements, be the best and least expensive solution for you.

   I hope you at least get your problem solved. Good luck.

-- Dr. Anton T. Squeegee, Director, Dutch Surrealist Plumbing Insbreastute. (Known to some as Bruce Lane, ARS KC7GR, kyrrin (a-t) bluefeathertechd=o=tcalm -- www.bluefeathertech.com "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?"