Dell PC and warranty

Hi,

About three years ago I bought a PC from Dell for my sister-in-law, at
the time Dell were doing a special offer on the warranty and we got a
four year warranty which expires next year.

The PC recently started blue-screening on startup so when she asked me
about it I advised her to call Dell as she had the warranty. The
treatment she is getting from Dell is abysmal. The first time she
contacted them she was on the phone for a couple of hours at which
point they could not diagnose the problem and promised to phone her
back. When they did the next day they were talking her through taking
the case apart and checking the connectors etc. Now I can understand
the reason for checking this but surely they should not be expecting
someone who knows nothing about the internals of a PC to start taking
it apart?

I have not seen the paperwork for the warranty so I am not sure what
exactly it covers but my original impression was that it is an on-site
warranty. Dell are saying though that the warranty only allows for
telephone support.

I have never had to deal with Dell waranties before but has anyone
else had problems with them? Are Dell just delaying in the hope that
she just gives up.

Thanks
Andy

It is probably a 3 year limited warranty. Normally Dell only provide on-site
support for the first year.

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"AndyColeman" wrote in message
ups.com...
Hi,

About three years ago I bought a PC from Dell for my sister-in-law, at
the time Dell were doing a special offer on the warranty and we got a
four year warranty which expires next year.

The PC recently started blue-screening on startup so when she asked me
about it I advised her to call Dell as she had the warranty. The
treatment she is getting from Dell is abysmal. The first time she
contacted them she was on the phone for a couple of hours at which
point they could not diagnose the problem and promised to phone her
back. When they did the next day they were talking her through taking
the case apart and checking the connectors etc. Now I can understand
the reason for checking this but surely they should not be expecting
someone who knows nothing about the internals of a PC to start taking
it apart?

I have not seen the paperwork for the warranty so I am not sure what
exactly it covers but my original impression was that it is an on-site
warranty. Dell are saying though that the warranty only allows for
telephone support.

I have never had to deal with Dell waranties before but has anyone
else had problems with them? Are Dell just delaying in the hope that
she just gives up.

It seems like it's pretty much expected in computing that you do some
meddling with it yourself so that the warranty provider can be sure that
it's not a simple fault. What I'd do is go, ring up the Dell phone support,
go through all the connectors they want checking - literally a 2 minute job
if you know your way around a PC, and then they should accept an RTB - the
phone droids are usually very pleased to be able to speak to someone who has
some clue and doesn't need to be told everything as it makes it easy for
them to hit targets. I very much doubt that it's a 4 year on site warranty.

About three years ago I bought a PC from Dell for my sister-in-law
The PC recently started blue-screening on startup so when she asked me

Hmm warranties generally only really cover hardware faults.. Which it
might be. But I can't help think that if it has spent three years of
use it may be rather gunged up. If you know about this sort of thing
it might well be worth backing up, wiping everything and reinstalling
windows from scratch and then the latest driver updates, service packs
etc. Can be rather a job to be honest but after three years it may
well seem like a new machine and solve the problems for another three
years. And if it doesn't you have a pretty strong case for it being a
hardware problem. If you can spot any error message when it blue
screens it might well give you a hint.

For what its worth we bought our first modern computer in about 1995 a
dell with a three year warranty and two years 10 months later the 15"
monitor died and they came out and replaced it straight away no
problems. If you can pin down a specific hardware fault I find they
are actually quite ok. Mind you they do sometimes take two goes to
deliver a working replacement part.