Dell XPS Order Nightmare

[dsio]

On the 4th of July, three weeks ago, i ordered my dream laptop from Dell. An XPS M1330, with the specs in my sig. I ordered it because its the first truly brilliant laptop Dell has ever built.

At the time, Dell was offering a July 10th shipment date. July 10th comes and goes, and my order gets pushed back to July 18th. July 16th comes along, I arrange to have the day off work to set up my new laptop, and then they put the date back again, to July 23rd. Then a day later, July 25th.

Thats fine though, because I go back to university on July 24th (tomorrow), and one day late isn't the end of the world. Dell swore that this date was absolutely accurate. On Dell's company blog, they made an appology: http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archi.../20/21613.aspx

They explained that on the 20th of July, Dell had started shipping orders. This was BS. Its actually the second time Dell lied about it. They had previously stated on the same blog, July 10th that they had started shipping laptops back then.

So today I go to check my order status, and its pushed back again. Now August 7th.

So the laptop that I had been depending on, to complete programming assignments on, to write lab reports on, is now not going to arrive until a minimum of two weeks after I need it.

Dell's new laptops are designed to be completely different from all of their previous ones, as Dell is trying to distance itself from its old image as a low price beige box builder with poor support. The M1330 recieved brilliant reviews all over the internet, and the Apple fanboys are jealous as hell over it, so design wise, Dell pulled it off. But then, they take everyone's money, and don't deliver.

Some people have 8 week lead times on laptop configurations. Its that bad.

So thank you very much Dell, for taking my $3150, giving me nothing, and misleading me for so long that its now not even possible to order a Sony Vaio as a replacement. You people make me sick.

[Pitch]

Dayam. I seem to remember you locking horns with them over your 2407?

[Gizmo]

Front Page:

http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/content/view/2905/1/

[dsio]

Originally Posted by Pitch

Dayam. I seem to remember you locking horns with them over your 2407?

The 2407s were a nightmare as well. Im currently on my 3rd, and 5th 2407s. 3 bad ones were sent back before I got the two I am keeping.

Dell make some great products. The 2407s really are brilliant, and this laptop should be amazing when it arrives.

However their support is abysmal. Every time I call, I get some Malaysian woman with a made up name (Every time, its either Susan, or Mary, or Hannah... not very Malaysian names) that says sorry over and over, then tries to sell me some rubbish to go with my laptop, then tells me they can't do anything but they will call me back.

Then they never do.

I make an email support request. No response.

They promise to get an engineer to call me back about whats taking so long. Nothing ever happens.

Dell still treats its customers like complete crap.

[dsio]

Here is another sample, of Dell's customer care:

http://lordzero.org/dell/email.htm

[keithwalton]

Thats sucks, do you know where they are attempting to build your laptop ?

EU ones are made in Ireland which is err fun, as even though ireland is right next to the uk and orders from dell have a stupidly long (and expensive) delivery charge as they do a magical mystorey tour of europe!
I seem to remember they go via france, belgum, denmark and then finally england.

[dsio]

Originally Posted by keithwalton

Thats sucks, do you know where they are attempting to build your laptop ?

EU ones are made in Ireland which is err fun, as even though ireland is right next to the uk and orders from dell have a stupidly long (and expensive) delivery charge as they do a magical mystorey tour of europe!
I seem to remember they go via france, belgum, denmark and then finally england.

I have been told Malaysia for Asia Pacific machines.

The excuse floating around from Dell is that the white LED backlit LCD panels are currently impossible to source, as are the 2MP webcams that the non LED backlit screens use... In otherwords, neither screen type is available.

On July 16th when I called I was told that a part, that could not be named, is not in stock, but will arrive on July 23rd, meaning my laptop would be delivered July 25th.

Now on the 20th, Dell's online PR guy told everyone that laptops were indeed shipping, but now I've been told by customer care that the reason I'm waiting until August 7th is that a part (assuming the LED backlit panel) will not be available until that week.

Now... other customers have had their orders revised from August 7th (my date) to September 9th, and have been told by customer care that the supplier of a missing part will not be able to stock them until then.

BTW, this is one of the more recent excuses provided by Dell.

It's a brand-new model in the first stages of production, and in high demand. If you need a notebook now, it's the wrong model to choose.

A few years ago, Chrysler introduced the PT Cruiser, and demand outstripped supply. People were tripping over themselves to pay more than list price to get one. VW did the same thing when the New Beetle arrived. Fast forward a year or so and supply caught up with demand - now they're paying people to buy the cars.

The same thing will happen in a few months - production will smooth out, supply will increase and delivery times will shrink to normal.

http://www.dellcommunity.com/support...hread.id=10666

That has to be about the lamest excuse I have ever heard for a complete production ****-up.

[Seperah]

this is your punishment for ordering a machine from this company.....


that said; really sorry to hear about that, I'm of a service industry myself and usually I tend not to get upset with others of the same field if there is a minor delay. most of the time its not any 'single' individuals fault.

however with this situation I would be beyond pissed. i do hope everything works out bud.

[keithwalton]

Yuck the PT Cruiser was one heck of an ugly dog!

On the automotive front Jaguar event but actually handled it properly. With the launch of the new XK, demand significantly outstripped demand.

When your car was delivered all depended on when you ordered it, they were built to order (and still are with somthing like a 6 month waiting list) and no matter who you were you could not jump the list.

When the XKR came out a few months later, some of early adopters decided to upgrade to the newer engine.
When they put there XK on the market with a few thousand miles on the clock demand for them was still so high (over a year waiting list at this time) that the dealership auctioned off the cars to the highest bidder. There was 5 or so cars that were sold this way and all of them went for significantly more than list price for a new one!

On the note of dell's laptop, i wonder how many have been made / shipped. I know they like to have them 'built to order' but surely there is enough common configs that they could build up some inventory before actually announcing the product to be on sale so that at least they could fill initial orders

[dsio]

None have been built or shipped to anyone other than reviewers, and those were hand built engineering samples.

[keithwalton]

The uk site does now give a warning that there is at least a 5 week leed time on orders. Its not all that obvious though

[dsio]

To illustrate how lame this situation has gotten to me:

I'm using my baby sister's windows xp home Dell D400, Banias 1.7Ghz laptop, complete with hand cream lubricated touchpad, and "buffy" stickers. Walking into an engineering common room with this thing, would be akin to walking into a prison with a pink bowtie on my bottom.

When I get a moment, I'm going to make a photo collage of all the bits on my C400 that have broken off / snapped / fallen apart. Further tribute to the misery this company is causing me.

[Daniel ~]

I think we should have a Front Page count down until Dsio gets his lappy!
"This is day 27, does anyone know what Dell is doing today?

[keithwalton]

Originally Posted by dsio

To illustrate how lame this situation has gotten to me:

I'm using my baby sister's windows xp home Dell D400, Banias 1.7Ghz laptop, complete with hand cream lubricated touchpad, and "buffy" stickers. Walking into an engineering common room with this thing, would be akin to walking into a prison with a pink bowtie on my bottom.

When I get a moment, I'm going to make a photo collage of all the bits on my C400 that have broken off / snapped / fallen apart. Further tribute to the misery this company is causing me.

Haha i wouldnt want to be you!
That C400 sounds like my d600 though, both hinges on the screen siezed and destroyed there mountings, the battery gave up the ghost and so did its psu.
I've got it back running with a 3rd party psu as its better built alas the laptop will only boot in 'reduced functionality mode' ie 600 mhz out of 1600, just because it cant detect that its a geniune dell psu

However my old I8100 has taken way more abuse over the years and yet still runs fine all be it with the odd graphics quirk!

[dsio]

Dells techs seam to be singing a slightly different tune at the moment. Many people are now being told that there is no LED backlit LCD shortage at all, and that the problem is simply that there is an issue between this particular motherboard, and the standard bluetooth module for this computer. They claim that it had initially been thought that a BIOS fix could solve the problem, but it forced a slight motherboard hardware revision...

This is just what people are reporting to have been told by Dell customer support at this point. My customer support calls keep getting ended with a "You can check your order status on the Dell website... Your laptop is in production and should be shipped to you by the delivery date"

...

Yea well the delivery date was a week ago. And it ain't here. To date, not one single person has been delivered an XPS M1330, despite Dell telling us over and over that they are shipping already.

[Daniel ~]

This is just so "small time" of them! You expect to see this on occasion from small retailer who gets into a pinch and needs to stall...But Dell shouldn't be this desperate to sell this laptop at this time that they can't just say we can't deliver at least untill such and such a date... and let people decide how they are better off going... jerks...really Short sighted.

[Áedán]

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archi.../10/20645.aspx - " Those orders include components that have limited initial supply, like the WLED display, the white display back and the 2.0MP web camera. In a nutshell, these are popular options and demand is exceeding supply."