I have had it with Dell

[vdub12]

You guys are not going to believe what happened to me. I have an Inspiron desktop in the shop right now with a bad motherboard. Its a fairly new one just out of warranty and I don't see many sites that I trust selling them so I call Dell to see about a replacement. The first sales rep with Dell tells me no problem they have plenty of them and quotes me $134.99 and gives me a part number. So I call the customer and sell the job. No problem the customer wants it fixed so I call Dell back to order the board. I give the second sales rep the part number the first one gave me and he tells me that its for a video card. So he looks it up again and finds the correct part number and quotes me $134.99, same price. However, this time its not in stock. So I spend the next hour on hold waiting for another department that might be able to help find one. When someone finally answers the phone its the notebook replacement part call center. Even though I am calling about a desktop the guy looks it up again and quotes me $134.99 but its out of stock. I have no idea why they transfered me there but whatever. So I go back to the desktop department and the 4th sales rep gets on the phone. I give him the part number to the motherboard I am looking for and he quotes me "$350" and tells me I would be better off buying a new computer. I tell the guy flat out that I have already been quoted $134.99 by 3 different reps and he starts tripping over his words a bit. I ask to talk to a supervisor and your not going to believe what he old me.

The supervisor told me that its common practice at Dell to quote abnormally high prices so that people would be more likely to buy a new computer. So they lie about prices so that people will not fix there computers. Well long story short this Dell is getting an ASUS motherboard and I don't know if I will ever do business with Dell again.

 

[14049752]

....The second thread in a couple of days where someone's mad at Dell... That's fine, but it seems like you guys think that Dell is the only one to do this kind of thing.

For future reference, because you will likely not be able to stop working on dell, Dell labels their parts VERY WELL. The part number you need is on the board. For laptops, it's usually on the ram slots, for desktops it's usually between the ram and the processor or at the bottom of the board by the pci slots. It's typically starting with a Zero, then five digits. The zero doesn't matter.

It's not just Dell that quotes higher prices on parts. I mean no offense by this, but some of you guys that don't work with manufacturers or haven't worked as an authorized repair shop wouldn't know this...but it almost never makes sense to buy the part direct from the manufacturer. They all sell the parts for a ridiculously high dollar amount, for two reasons: One is because they keep these parts on hand initially for warranty repairs and they're priced high to prevent people from buying them outright. Second is, yeah...they'd rather have you buy a new computer. That's their business.

The price being super ultra high doesn't surprise me at all. Companies like Toshiba will sell laptop dvd drives or hard drives for $500 outright. If you're an authorized repair center, you return the bad part and get a core return of $440 or something, to make the price more reasonable.

So...basically...always try to find the part....and always exhaust your options for buying it from a third party. The manufacturer is only worth calling if it's in warranty.

Edit: Oh...and...I'm not at all making an excuse for how terrible it was to try to get the part or a price, or the number of people you had to talk to. That's ridiculous. Again, that's why I deal with third parties where you have your own sales rep with an extension you know. PM me if you want a recommendation on where to get the part.

Lastly, and of course you know this, right.... You're going to need to get a new copy of Windows if you don't use a Dell motherboard. You can't legally activate the included copy on an Asus board.

 

[vdub12]

Lastly, and of course you know this, right.... You're going to need to get a new copy of Windows if you don't use a Dell motherboard. You can't legally activate the included copy on an Asus board.

I called and talked to MS and they told me it would not be a problem because I am replacing a bad motherboard and the OEM board is unavailable it is within the license to replace it with as close to OEM as possible.

 

[usacvlr]

Yeah you'll have to call to activate as opposed to auto activate but since the hard drive serial number didn't change it will be fine.

 

[BDPCR]

Wow im sorry to hear that, i had a similar experience with emachines.. what a load of crap. They wanted to charge me for proving me a link where i can download a specific driver!

 

[Alan22]

Well long story short this Dell is getting an ASUS motherboard.....

So you're getting a new case too?

 

[vdub12]

So you're getting a new case too?

No its a standard micro motherboard. Most cases it will not work but in this situation the only thing I have to change is the heatsink. An ASUS board and heatsink where still $50 less then the Dell replacement board to.

 

[Kitten Kong]

So all the switches for power, reset, power led, and hd led are in the exact same place on the asus mobo?

That's almost unheard of.. unless you know something I dont.. Which after today, I would not be at all surprised over lol

 

[Galdorf]

Acer is not much better over a dozen times for total coverage warranty they refused to give me an rma i had to call a local acer rep and have him sort it out.
Every time they asked for a CC number funny thing is on the warranty shipping is covered both ways.
Other times they refused saying that this and that is not covered total warranty covers everything including accidents says so right on it.
Funny thing is these guys do dell support as well the supervisor has same name.
I also ordered a part from dell twice they sent wrong part and i gave up, I have seen on tv what these places are like they had a piece on W5 and showed why they got job these guys work for peanuts, all that is required is they speak english and can read.

 

[vdub12]

So all the switches for power, reset, power led, and hd led are in the exact same place on the asus mobo?

That's almost unheard of.. unless you know something I dont.. Which after today, I would not be at all surprised over lol

USB and audio will not be a problem, they are standard plugs. The front header can be easily modified to work. I have done it a number of times before.

Honestly most modern cookie cutters will take a standard motherboard without a problem. It just takes a little more work. Honestly once finished the systems are normally more reliable then they where before. This Dell I am working on now is based on a re-branded ECS motherboard. The ASUS has solid state caps and way better cooling of the north/south bridge. This ECS didn't even have a south bridge cooler. Just don't try to download drivers according to the service tag number, lol.

 

[Jonathan]

If it's out of warranty, OEM companies are a pain to deal with

 

[Appleby]

That's fine, but it seems like you guys think that Dell is the only one to do this kind of thing.

Totally agree. Let's see....Toshiba told me that a stuck left mouse button on a 3 month old laptop (in flawless condition owned by a single adult lady, ie no kids) would not be covered under warranty and they wanted the serial number because the whole warranty might be voided because of "customer damage". I called 3 times and got the same answer every time. A broken mouse button is not covered under Toshiba warranty. Huh??

HP quoted me $389 for a replacement LCD screen on a $429 laptop. I was having trouble finding the exact part number for sale and thought I'd give them a whirl. Ended up finding it for $100 on eBay brand new.

Emachine would not sell me replacement disks for a 3 year old desktop and they did not have the drivers listed on their website. I was told it was considered "end of life" and a new machine would need to be bought.

I can go on and on and on. Most all manufactures make good computers, but when you need warranty work or want to buy a hard to find part, you might as well get ready to kill some time on the phone talking to idiots.

 

[vdub12]

Just an update.

I got back from vacation last night and had the new ASUS motherboard waiting for me. I installed it and was surprised to find that everything work exactly like it was suppose to. Even the front header connector needed no modification.

Just an FYI this Dell's work with a Standard ASUS replacement perfectly. I didn't even need to reload Windows. And activation was just a mater of changing the product key to the key on the case.

Here are some photos. The heatsink was a tight fit but worked. So in the future if you have problems with Dell at least on this model imsperon just use an ASUS board. The system now has a more current board that is more upgradeable and the first dell I have seen in years with PS2 ports, lol.

 

[Deleted member 13571]

Hopefully you just had that cooler on hand. Why not use the standard intel cooler? You passing the cost onto the owner?

 

[vdub12]

Hopefully you just had that cooler on hand. Why not use the standard intel cooler? You passing the cost onto the owner?

I did not have an Intel cooler and this one was only $18 from newegg. Good deal in my opinion I really like the cooler it works very well. I quoted the price for the mobo and cooler together. Even with the cooler the parts where 50% off from what Dell wanted for the replacement board. So the customer paid for it, I knew ahead of time that the Dell cooler would not work unless I pried the metal support off the bottom of the old board and I did not want to do that. I figured it was worth the $18 to upgrade the cooling. Honestly the system will more then likely last way longer. My shop gets kind of hot and with this cooler the CPU (Core2 quad 2.3) never went over 35c and its completely silent running at 1700 RPM. However, it does not support the 4 prong CPU cooler plug.

I am a big advocate of after market cooling. My own systems use thermaltake and zalman coolers and from testing they prove to be much more affective at cooling CPU's down. I guess thats a side affect of me running a hardware review site for so many years.

 

[Alan22]

Glad it worked out. Thanks for the update

 

[Emergency PC Repairs]

I read this thread thinking you was replacing a laptop motherboard with a 'generic' one, I was astounded....until I saw the pictures of the desktop lol.

I should really pay more attention when reading lol.

Im glad it all worked out in the end

 

[154Tech]

I read this thread thinking you was replacing a laptop motherboard with a 'generic' one,

Life was much easier when Dell didn't use the same name across various product lines.