Hey guys when it comes to defects, I'm pretty understanding. I've visited factories before
and things sometimes slip through the QA. If you've ever received a defective product
it's normal to have companies replace it, or repair it,
and generally they get it right the first time. With Dell... well dell is something else.
So let me share with you my story about the Dell Inspiron 15. It's given me a
new appreciation on how bad tech support can really be. Welcome back to Reviews for Life.
A little while back I got the Dell Inspiron 15 during their back to school sale. It seemed
like a great decision at the time - a modern CPU, amazing price and has decent reviews,
at least on dell's website. Now, when I received the laptop
there was this really minor defect. In fact it's so minor it's almost not even worth mentioning
And that's it. The back panel would click when I pressed it against the laptop.
I mean in hindsight I probably shouldn't have gone through the trouble
because it really didn't affect performance or anything at all. But every once in a while,
you want to live a little, and ignore warnings from others, just to experience things firsthand.
So I gave dell tech support a call... and... the service rep on the other end was super friendly.
She listened to my issue and even asked for a video to understand it better. Unfortunately
that didn't speed up the troubleshooting process because she still had to go through the debugging
procedure. This procedure is basically a script they have to go through to rule out
any user error. After about an hour we agreed that there was something wrong with the back plate and
that it needs to be replaced. A few days later a technician comes over and replaced it at the end
of the service. The technician said it wasn't just a back plate issue during the assembly process.
What likely happened was that the back plate was forced into place, damaging the chassis.
So even with the new back plate there's still clicking noises. He requested a second repair,
this time with a chassis repair. now the chassis repair is a little involved essentially you have
to remove the internals and the screen and migrate everything from the old one to the new one.
So after a few days another technician came and did just that. Now, I was pretty busy
that day so after he was done I immediately signed off on his work. Later that evening,
when I go to use the laptop... Surprise! The track pad no longer clicks. Now normally,
this is the point where I would cut my losses and return the thing to buy something else.
But I was honestly really curious to see how long it would take for a full repair.
Also at the time it was hard to find any better deals than what I got. So once again, I gave dell
another call and the representative made me go through another troubleshooting procedure.
Again after an hour we agree that there was something wrong with the trackpad. A few
days later a technician came over to repair it. After learning my lesson the first time
I made sure the keyboard and trackpad were both working before signing it off. Later that evening,
I go to charge the laptop and now the charger is no longer recognized. What's weird is that
the usbc power delivery port charged flawlessly. In Software Engineering we do something called
regression testing to avoid issues just like this one. It's basically where you ensure
any new fixes or features don't break the previous ones. Dell should really include
something like this in the repair manual. At this point I was approaching the 30-day return window,
but for the sake of making content, I decided to go down this path just to see how far it will go.
After another one-hour call, the rep determined that the charging brick needed replacement. And
once again the technician came over to perform the repair. This time even after the replacement
the issue still persisted. The technician told me that he's never seen this particular issue before
and calls dell tech support. Now this line is slightly different from what consumers get to use
because it requires an employee ID. After about an hour the end result was that I needed to send in
the laptop for a complete diagnosis and repair. About three days later I got everything back
and it worked as it should. I've been using this particular laptop for about two weeks
now and there weren't any issues that I noticed. They even installed a clean version of windows
without any of the bloatware. So how bad is dell tech support? Well,
they did get it right eventually. After four weeks of back and forth and three hours on the phone,
yeah it's pretty bad. The lessons learned here is that if you don't get a perfect laptop
right from the get-go, then it's probably best if you return it back to the store and order another
one. If that isn't an option, then request to have it sent in to the depot for repairs
this avoids wasting time on the phone and having technicians come over. Alright guys,
that's it from me, thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.