4/8/2005
Delivery Speed was poor (took a month to deliver), Customer Service Was Horrible (Everyone I Talked To Sounded like They Were From India using names like Carlos and Frank), Overall Satisfaction, Not Good! I bought an Alienware Area-51m 7700 with 2 Gigs of memory and the whole works, I packed this baby with everything I can put in to it, the entire system ran me over $4,000.00. Not less then a month, that's 30 days of owning this machine, things started acting weird. For one, the LCD display stopped working. I called tech support; the tech that barley spoke English made me open the system myself even though I have a 1 year on-site warrantee to find out that the 17Inch LCD blew! Yeah Blew! They told me that it's going to take 3 weeks to fix it, even though I use this for my business and there is a major project underway and that's why I bought this. but no comments were given, They said they were going to reformat my entire system which means all my work will be gone. I hit the roof at this point! All this for an LCD display! Ummm who hit you on the head and gave you a job? I told them I have a 1 year on-site warrantee that I paid for which means you have to come here to fix it! Of course he told me about the fine print which on-site in their language is not what we know it means. Good thing I didn't buy the 3 year on-site warrantee! What do they do on-site? I smell false advertising, what a waste! I then asked them about a refund on the system and they said I would have to pay them 15% of the entire order to restock it. That's $700! How are you going to charge a customer $700 to restock a defective laptop? This is an unfair practice; I should have gone with dell for all my web/video/media needs! I rather give my business to people who at least work for my business. They also gave my company and myself the run around and would not give us names of their supervisors. When we asked to speak to a supervisor the rep put us on hold and when he came back said his supervisor didn't want to talk to us. Umm, ok... but you took our money though right? We had to argue just to speak with a supervisor, and they transferred us to some other department to speak with a supervisor. They would not even compensate us for this huge inconvenience of taking our $4,000.00 for a piece of crap product that only lasted a month. Also note the other weird things we seen was clicking of the power adapter, "We were like what the hell is that noise, its loud!" I could fry an egg on it that's how hot it gets. The second thing is that the pc itself gets very hot where your hands start to ache from the heat! What's with that? I thought this system was suppose to be the best on the market? The system gets to hot for a laptop. Where the vent is on the left side, the plastic started to dis-color from the heat, turning a slight dark color. I though maybe it was form my hand but after wiping it off with a damp cloth we see it was the body itself turning.
To sum it up. We are stuck with this, and we sent it back on 4/8/05 to be fixed. I will update more here when I hear of anything. Man did we get ripped off!
4/15/05 NEW UPDATE...
I emailed Alienware's customer service yesterday to find the status of my repair, my company's media project is on hold due to this bull and my client is freaking and want his product. I got this email back from alienware saying they could not help me. So their customer service email address does not give customer service?
Their Email:
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Thank you for contacting the Alienware Technical Support Team.
For this type of issue, you will need to contact our Customer Service Department directly. They will gladly provide you with all the information and help regarding this matter.
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So after this email, my day was to busy, I would not be able to call them that day, so I figured I'd call them the next day. Then at the end of that same day I got another email from the same support email address saying it has been sent to their shipping department! What's the deal? No one told me nothing, no notifications, multiple emails saying they can't help and now its done? Does the entire company have some sort of communication problem?
Their Email:
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Thank you for contacting the Alienware Technical Support Team.
I am very pleased to inform you that your system has been diagnosed and returned to perfect working condition and been sent to our shipping department and is ready to be dispatched back to you.
Should you need additional information please go ahead and contact our very knowledgeable and supportive Customer Service Team. They will be more than glad to help you.
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Well I'm happy its fix! So I guess the customer service email address was correct! So is it a mood thing? Does the person who answers these emails have to be in the mood to answer a question? So yesterday I wrote them back asking what the issue actually was, and will this happen again in the future! I heard back from them today on the 15Th saying the following, and also I did notice a little attitude in this email, or maybe its just me? You decide...
Their Email:
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Thank you for contacting the Alienware Technical Support Team.
The problem was traced down to a faulty “inverter board” that has been already replaced. There is no reason to think that something like that could happen to your system again.
We hope the above information proves to be helpful.
If you have more questions or any technical issues regarding this or any other topic do not hesitate to contact us again. For fast answers and tips you can visit our “Knowledge Data Base” at
http://support.alienware.com.
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Ummm, right! So you put in some magic alien beans or an alien anal probe so your faulty product will not break again? These people must be joking, come on! I've been in the computer business since I'm 15, I've built my own systems from all OEM products, nothing is guaranteed. not even a fancy laptop from a company that can't even sell descent products. That's like me saying the sun is actually green, or the moon is purple... Will you believe me cause I know about computers? Not! But anyway that's it, a faulty inverter board. I guess their quality control people are on vacation, and the quality control checklist they send out are computer generated. When I get the system back we will see how long it will last before there is something else wrong and requires me to send it back. I only purchased this for its horsepower but the system seems to be a mule after all.
After reading the past reviews, I hope I don't receive my laptop back with scratches on it or features missing as other's experienced. I will update more upon arrival of my $4,000 defective alienware product in a few days.
My company spends a lot of money on a lot of new high powered computers and servers that hit the market, and I think alienware is still to small and amateur to be ranked as a good company in any way, or placed in a category where real working companies like ourselves can use their products in a manner that would make us productive. Lets put it this way, this company also sponsors adult sites. I've seen a site listed on their sponsor list that does web design and media but has a message board that has major adult images where people post adult items, pictures, and videos, foul language, etc. Are they hurting that much where they have to give some guy a free pc to get advertised on an adult message board? Very unprofessional for a company that deals in custom computers. If you want the link just look on their sponsor list, you'll find the media company icon posted with a quote from the site owner on it! Alienware seems very proud of who they sponsor/advertise with! lol
Tom Allen / President / BrainScanMedia.com, Inc.
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