"Out of all of the calls I made to Dell concerning this issue, only twice was I connected to India. And out of all the people I talked to, the 3 people in India were the most gracious and helpful out of all of them (well, that fellow in Canada  who finally got my drive partitioned was pretty good too)  The rest of the time I was bounced around throughout various call centres/offices in Canada.", well, their service has still gotten terrible even according to articles and ratings in all the PC magazine I read. I wonder why? However, some of the outsourcing problems to foreign countries is caused by their lack of the command of languages other than their own. I had some real problems understanding what some of the techs said and I am sure they could not understand me. A language barrior.

I had to talk to the guys in India when I was trying to get my Earthlink DSL setup.  I spent 4 hours or so phonetically spelling things back and forth with them.  Nothing got done, but they sure were nice to me.

Not to stir anything up, but as per tech support at most OEMs? Business customers in the US get American help desk folks... every time. UK business customers... ditto. Same with any business customer at any locale, really. The only folks who get Indian tech support at the business level are ...Indians. So if nothing else, the OEMs are smart enough to listen to the business/enterprise level customers. Consumer-level customers? Dunno - it's a crap shoot. /P

When I call Dell or any other tech support - for Cable, Internet, whatever - the first thing I say when they ask my name is "I'm Mr. don't F with me"  (yes, I say F and make a little joke about not swearing in mixed company) "either help me or don't waste my time."

If the runaround starts, for example "We don't ship XP" I reply "did you just say return the machine and don't buy from us in the future?" and if that doesn't work I start shouting. 

Tech support people are generally trained not to help, not to offer replacements, not to let people talk with supervisors.  The sooner you let them know you're not going to accept that, the better.

Sorry to hear what you went trough with Dell costumer service =(  and i agree with most of the people who replied here, i assembled my own computer, i'm never going to buy a brand computer... do try to learn how to build a computer, it's fun =)

My first computer... if i remember correctly it was back in 1982, a Tandy Color Computer, with 4k of RAM :p i still have it, and it still turns on... but the keyboard is not working well anymore =(

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Tech support people are generally trained not to help, not to offer replacements, not to let people talk with supervisors.  The sooner you let them know you're not going to accept that, the better.

I'm not sure what type of training Dell techs have.  Back when this fiasco was going on, the time when I talked to the tech support office where the guy told me he would try and send a message to whomever I had been talking to earlier, he also said that Dell techs don't know how to partition drives. I wanted to tell him that he was nuts to even say something like that. And I'm sorry to say that the person was from Ontario, Canada.

Also, due to the fact that HP has been taking up some of the market share that Dell used to have, Dell has closed their Edmonton office. That was the office with the one helpful guy who managed to help me to get XP on my machine and partition the hard drive.

Anyway, I'm happy with my locally puchased machine. It runs like a dream and I haven't had need to contact anyone for support, but I know when I do I will get fast and courteous service where someone will come out to look after my computer, for 5 whole years because I have a 5 year on site, parts and labour warranty. Better than anything that freak company Dell offered me.

Quote - My first computer... if i remember correctly it was back in 1982, a Tandy Color Computer, with 4k of RAM :p i still have it, and it still turns on... but the keyboard is not working well anymore =(

Wow! I had never even heard of computers back in 1982!!  I used a computer for the first time back in 1985, but that was to do up shipping invoices. It wasn't connected to the internet. My first go at being online was in 2000 when I bought my first computer. Until then I had no idea what the internet was.  hehe I'm serious. I had heard the name but had no idea what it "looked" like or how it worked.

Quote - I'll have to try that crying thing next time my girlfriend claims to have a head ache!

hahahaha!

I've had four computers, and only the first was ever from a "big" company (Olivetti), and this was back in the 486, Win95 days. That was something of a disaster, and completely dispels any myth computers once held that they were "idiot-proof".

My Dad managed to break it after a day. After two weeks going through tech support, they finally picked it up, and about a week later we got it back. One problem - the CD drive wasn't working. Back it went, another week later, and it came back.

Now the CD drive was working, but it was only recognised intermittently. After putting up with it for about three weeks, another long long battle with tech support to get them to recognise that something was wrong. Eventually, (and this was only after Olivetti had changed hands) a tech support guy comes out, installs the drivers that had been deleted during a system reinstall and voila, CD is working again.

Never again. Our next computer was from a small computer store two towns over, the one after that from my friend's dad who lives up the top of our street, and my one now from an independent online store. Out of all that, the only problem I've had was when I managed to break a DVD drive, and after that when the PSU collapsed. All fixed easily and quickly.

ookay. This is a Dell. My first. It's been restored to factory state 3 times in 3 months. First a Dell update hosed the boot cycle. Then there was an issue with their printer bloatware blocking Adobe registrations. Then the monitor went out. Of course calls to Dell support, always start out, "let's do a restore...", and the blinking monitor was diagnosed as a bad graphics card (NVidiaGForce 8600GT). Not. But with all the badly written software, shakey hardware, and wrong problem identification, I have to say everyone from the salesman to the middle-of-the-night 'tech support' guy in India, they've all tried very hard to get the machine running, and haven't charged me a cent for the calls or the replacement monitor. (22" flat panel that has spoiled me rotten.) The guy in India even went OT with me, and tried to explain what "babu" in Hindi means. I don't really trust the machine, and am scrimping money for a USB HD to back it up, but... I keep thinking of the first 2 years of my truck, when the onboard computer kept resetting itself to a 4-cylinder, when it had 6. The truck is 12 years old now, and running like a champ, despite the rocky start. Dell definitely has problems, but they seem to be trying to fix them, at least on the surface. Trouble is, this has really killed any desire to start any projects, knowing they may or may not be there the next time I boot up.

Ouch! And here I thought I had problems just 'cuz Windoze XP decided to kill the Help and Support on my system -- a 5 year old Dell. Every fix I could find, even installing Service Pack 3, didn't restore it either. Now, except for Eudora, Netscape and one or two other programs, all my Help files won't open.

I dunno. Last 4 computers we have had were all Dells. One had some issues with the CD writer so they sent us a new one The writer still didn't work until the maker came out with firmware for it, which they did a month or so later. Then it was fine. Another had monitor problems when it got to be about 2 years old. The one I am on now is over 4 years old, and still runs okay. I thought it was dead once, but hubby took out the memory modules and blew the dust off them, plugged them back in, and all was well. I have never even reformatted it. (Having said that I will probably have to do it tomorrow. lol)  The other one is a laptop which seems fine so far. I will probably buy another desktop from them in a year or so. We are not knowledgable enough to build our own, but I like being able to customize the machine a bit. I can usually get more or less what I want from Dell.

Our first computer (and I have no idea what brand it was) didn't even have a hard drive. We had to boot it with big floppy disks, and save all our work to more disks. Those were the days. LOL

seaayre, that was propbably an Apple. Imagine trying to use poser on that.  Those big floppies only .74 meg (i think, maybe less). Of course I've seen a floppy that was the size of lp record and didn't even hold as much.

I'm a build your own guy myself, with a minor caveat.  I generally buy locally and purchase what they call a "base system" - it's a computer with only the ram, cpu and case installed, then I purchase the rest of the components seperately and install them myself.

The reason I opt to purchase a base system?  That way if anything does go wrong with the CPU I can't be faulted for "incorrect installation" thus voiding the warranty.  I've done this with my last 3 systems and I've been very happy with all three, getting exactly what I wanted for hardware with no difficulties whatsoever.

A few years back I actually tried buying a couple of different pre-made PC's, one gateway and one Dell, and I had the same sort of experiences you did I'm afraid.  Nothing but problems from the get go, and since I'm not a big fan of the OS the systems generally shipped with the tech support pretty much went from slim to none when they found out I wasn't even running their pre-boxed OS.

I had one moron at gateway actually tell me that the reason my monitor wasn't getting signal was because I had installed Linux on the box.  It didn't seem to matter to him that I could plug in a different monitor and it worked fine, or that I could take that monitor and plug it into a different computer running windows and it still wouldn't come up.  No, the problem definately had to be Linux, after all, it's an evil "hobbiest" OS that is known to cause such problems.  Apparently it's also been linked to sterility and acid rain - lol.

So after that I steered clear of the pre-manufactured PC's and started just assembling them myself, been much happier ever since.

Quote - So after that I steered clear of the pre-manufactured PC's and started just assembling them myself, been much happier ever since.

I've been much happier since I sent back that Dell desktop and put their crappy customer service behnd me too :)