Thursday, April 12, 2012

Dell Must Hate Children With Cancer

You'll recall in March I wrote about how my Dell laptop died. I was unable to get through to Dell to get any help. They have a clever phone system that prevents people from asking for help.

I sent a letter to Dell asking for their assistance. It's been three weeks and I haven't even received a courtesy F-you response. My letter was not returned, so I must assume they received it.

One of my friends has a contact at Dell through his employer. Through my friend's inquisition, this person at Dell offered to repair the laptop for $350. I paid $499 for it. Is this a joke? For $350 I would expect a fully refurbished and upgraded laptop containing a folder with 8,000 digital images of scantily clad hot women.

Therefore, the only conclusion that I can logically determine is that Dell hates children with cancer and my recommendation is that no one should ever buy a laptop from Dell. I challenge Dell to convince me otherwise.

Here is the letter that I sent to Dell, which I think is a reasonable request. Even a response informing me that that would not help me would have been appropriate. Nope. The silent treatment.

February 29, 2012

Dell Inc.
One Dell Way
Round Rock, TX 78682

Dear Dell,

I am writing in regard to the Dell Inspiron M5030 (Service Tag 9865XM1) laptop that I purchased about 14 months ago.

In October of 2010 my 3 year old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. She is being treated at the University of Maryland Medical Center under the care of Dr. Teresa York. Since she was in and out of the hospital I decided at Christmas that it would be best if we purchased a laptop for the family so that either my wife or I could stay in touch with the world while we were there. I didn't know much about laptops so I asked several friends for their recommendation. ALL of them recommended DELL. I then purchased the afore-mentioned DELL laptop at the Best Buy in Owings Mills, MD.

Unfortunately, last week the laptop seemed to stop operating. A series of seven beeps resulted when I attempted to turn on the computer. I "Googled" this and read that this means that the processor has failed. I attempted to contact DELL via your website, but learned that my warranty had expired about 2 months earlier. I then asked several tech-savvy friends how to go about replacing a processor in a laptop. All of them said it was not worth it and I'd be better off buying a new laptop.

When my daughter was diagnosed with leukemia, my wife made the decision to stop working so that she could care for her. And as you can imagine our medical bills are substantial, thus the double-whammy of a financial hit. When she was diagnosed with leukemia, we put our trust in our daughter's doctors. When we purchased a DELL we put our trust in your company. I am asking if there is anything DELL is willing to do to help us remedy the situation. I realize that I may have no rights whatsoever. However, I am hoping that you have some compassion to help us.

I appreciate your consideration and would appreciate a response.

Respectfully yours,

1 comment:

Kent Allard said...

Doh! Sorry to hear this is still ongoing. My mother in law has had quite a few Dells over the years and always manages to get them on phone somehow. She's gotten free stuff out of them on more than one occasion. I'll have to talk to her and see what her secret to getting through to and getting stuff out of Dell is!

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