The New Computer That Wasn't

Well, our exciting new computer adventure has turned into a royal headache. After receiving our new computer, setting it up, and transferring all of our files over to it, we discovered that, in addition to having the storage hard drive set up incorrectly, it had a faulty cooling fan. After HOURS on the phone will Dell tech support and some bad communication on their end, we discovered that a replacement computer was en route. Hoping that the new tower would solve our computer issues and we could get on with the business of actually USING the new computer, we anxiously awaited the replacement computer. After spending more hours scrubbing our data off the faulty computer and uninstalling our software, I wasn't really looking forwarding to setting up a new computer … again. The replacement computer arrived and we booted it up, only to discover that it had Windows Vista installed as the operating system, in spite of the fact that we had ordered and paid for a Windows XP installation. To add insult to injury, we also found that the storage hard drive had been incorrectly set up AGAIN.

To make a long and aggravating story short, after a few more hours with Dell tech support (and being transferred from one department to another and back again … several times), it seems that, oops, they goofed up with the storage drive installation again (which was fixable), but that they had neglected to inform us that all replacement PCs were shipped with Windows Vista, regardless of the fact that we didn't order and didn't WANT Vista (I told them that they had also neglected to tell us that they were shipping us a replacement computer at all – I only found out that they had when I called tech support back to check on the status of the issue). Since they could not or would not fix the operating system issue, we had the option of sucking it up and dealing with Vista (ugh) or sending the whole system back. Since I was beyond disgusted with Dell at this point, we opted to pack everything up and send it back.

So, Dell has lost a long-standing customer today and I've lost hours and hours of my precious "free" time. The only positive thing I can say about this experience is that they didn't give us much hassle about returning the computer and they paid for the return shipping (although we've yet to see our refund). That is the last computer I'll ever buy from Dell. Now it's time to start computer shopping (again)!