Dell Perfomance & Customer Care Problems

Posted Fri November 14, 2008 12:52 pm, by Nathan W.

Hello,

Let me start by saying I have been a long time Dell Customer. I just recently purchased my 3rd Dell in the past 8 years. I currently own a Dell Dimension Desktop, Dell Latitude Laptop, and most recently a Dell XPS M1730 Gaming Laptop. My previous experiences with this company have been nothing short of amazing and that's why I have continued to buy from Dell and recommend my friends and family to Dell. Unfortunately this experience would eventually lead to my downfall and I'll explain why...

To begin I bought my XPS M1730 laptop for $3,600 in May 2008. This is the best true gaming laptop Dell has to offer. I even took it a step further upgrading a number of the components offered. As you can imagine I was pretty stoked when it arrived.

Now upon receiving my Dell Gaming Laptop, the first game I decided to play on my laptop was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This game was awarded Game of the Year honors and has about 10 million users playing it. Now keep in mind this game came out in November 2007. Notice that is 6 months before I purchased my Dell Gaming Laptop. After firing up the game for the first time I was immediately very disappointed in the performance of the laptop. I was forced to turn down many settings just to get the game to play remotely smooth. Even after setting my resolution and graphics down considerably I still get an occasional choppiness which is very annoying, especially when I am playing competitively online.

Now here is where my previous experience with Dell will come back to bite me. I should have returned this laptop right then while I was within my 21 day return window but I didn't. Instead I insisted this had to be a problem with the software or drivers. I thought to myself, there is no way this $3,600 Dell Gaming laptop can't play a game that came out 6 months ago. My 2 other computers work great and it never crossed my mind that my most expensive computer would have issues.

Instead of returning I began doing research to find a solution to my problems. I have read countless forums, articles, blogs, all in an effort to find a fix for my computer. I have literally tried dozens of things to improve the performance with no luck. Finally I came to the conclusion that my computer is fine but it must be the game that is the problem. I thought maybe this game doesn't correctly handle my Dual Core Processor, or my SLI video cards. I just couldn't bring myself to believe this Dell Gaming Laptop could be performing like this. So for a month or two I tolerated my crappy performance assuming it was the game's fault.

As you can probably guess I eventually bought a new game. The next game I purchased was World In Conflict. To my amazement and disappointment I experienced identical problems with this game as I had previously with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Now I was beginning to get a sick feeling, maybe I bought a $3,600 dollar lemon. To be sure though I purchased a third game to rule out any other software related problems. My third video game purchase was Frontlines: Fuel of War. Different game same crappy performance. So now I figured it was time to engage Dell Tech Support.

At this point I was thankful I got the one year warranty because I figured maybe something has to be faulty. I made the call to Dell Tech Support and began the process of troubleshooting my laptop. Now I spent a good week with Tech support running all sorts of tests and trying all sorts of configuration changes to improve performance. At the end though Dell Tech Support could not fix me problems. Finally they essentially came to this conclusion: my computer was perfectly fine and performing as it should. So basically they are telling me my laptop is working as intended and the poor gaming performance is what I paid for.

Now as you can imagine this was not what I wanted to hear. I began to ask myself, Is it really too much to ask to expect my $3,600 Dell Gaming Laptop to be able to play games with a certain level of performance when they were released months before I purchased my laptop? Of course the answer to this is No. It's not like I am asking to play games that came out a year or two after my laptop purchase. All I want is smooth game play on a medium graphics configuration.

Well I still had some faith in my once trusted Dell Corporation. My last hope was that the Dell Corporation, would make things right.

So now I decided it was time to plead my case with Dell Customer Care. When I finally got to a Dell Customer Care Representative I took the time to explain my situation. After explaining my situation she essentially told me that there was nothing she could do for me. I mentioned to her that I would have to escalate this up the chain to which she replied something to this effect: "Sir, I understand that your frustrated and you would like to talk to my supervisor but he will give you the same response".

It's at this point I knew I was up against some policy and she was just reading her answers from a company policy document. Instead of wasting more of her time and mine I decided to end the conversation and find other avenues to plead my case.

I still have faith in Dell to make it right, I won't give up until they do. $3,600 is a lot of money and it will be a year or two before I have that kind of money to invest in a replacement for this laptop. Until then I will keep pressing. After all I can't enjoy the games I want to play on this laptop anyways so I have plenty of free time to keep pressing.

Now if your asking yourself what I want here it is. My research of other XPS M1730 Owners shows that when they upgraded their video cards to the 8800 GTX video cards their performance issues went away. I don't think I should have to spend another $900+ on a video card upgrade when my computer should be able to play these games fine as is. I think Dell should take my 8700 GT cards and sell them as refurbished and give me the upgrade of 8800 GTX cards at no charge. I will even put them in myself.

Since they didn't deliver on performance I think they should be held responsible for upgrading my computer, not me. If I was asking a year from now to play the next generation of games it would be different but I am not. I am asking to play games that came out months before my computer.

I don't think I am being unreasonable and I think this is a fair conclusion to this issue. If Dell makes it right this time I will continue to be the loyal customer that I am. Dell stands to retain a great customer and gain many more. I am a big fan of Dell computers and I would like it to stay that way.

Sincerely,

Nathan

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Re: Dell Perfomance & Customer Care Problems by NateTheGreat Posted Fri November 21, 2008 @ 2:10 PM All I can say is WOW! I just got off the phone with Dell and they went above and beyond my expectations and resolved my issues. Dell continues to impress me and I will remain a very loyal and happy customer. I will continue to recommend my friends and family to this great company. Thanks very much Dell! Reply Re: Dell Perfomance & Customer Care Problems by PlanetFeedback's Mr. Helpful Posted Fri November 14, 2008 @ 7:30 PM Great letter. I agree with your sentiments about this situation 1000%. You didn't buy a random laptop that one might hope will handle some of the games that are out there. You didnt even buy a laptop aimed at a casual gamer like me since there really isn't one available anyways. You bought a laptop that was specifically built for and marketed to hard core gamers. And it was priced accordingly. Even a CNET review makes the point that it's the top of the line laptop for gamers. Your expectation that it would be able to easily handle a game like Call Of Duty 4 (which, after all, is hardly a resource hog like Crysis) is completely reasonable and you should hold Dell accountable for this. Having said all of that, I doubt they will give you a free 8800 GTX card. You're likely stuck with the system you have and your only recourse is to flood the gamer forums with negative feedback on your machine. I can't believe they only put 2gb of RAM on this machine. It's commonly known that Vista works on just 1gb but really the minimum is 2gb...you're likely behind the eight ball right there. You might think about adding another gig of RAM (dont add two unless it's dual channel and you have to - the 32 bit machine wont recognize more than 3gb). In addition, have you turned off all the Vista "extras" such as Aero and kicked the graphics scheme back to XP classic? Even though you have the dual 256 ram dedicated video cards, anything you can do to add to ram, even system ram, will likely help your cause. And turning off all the Vista extras will definitely lighten the load on the processor. Good luck! Reply "Since they didn't deliver on performance " by Donno Posted Fri November 14, 2008 @ 1:06 PM You know, this may be hard to prove. The computer works. It isn't as though the operating system won't work or there is a hardware failure. What measurement metric can you point to that the laptop fails to meet? You can explain qualitatively what the problem is, but can you quantify it? I'll admit you are operating at a much higher level that I - I bought a lower end Dell. I can understand why you have high expectations. However, I don't frankly see Dell doing what you wish in this case. As a power user, you will probably have to dress up the machine on your own dollar. Reply I did prove it by NateTheGreat Fri November 14, 2008 @ 1:15 PM Yes by Donno Fri November 14, 2008 @ 5:02 PM Agree to Disagree by NateTheGreat Fri November 14, 2008 @ 6:57 PM