Dell replaced my laptop components with inferior (broken) parts and refusing to fix - what are my options?

Lmooboy on 23/04/2013 - 10:48

Dell was supposed to put 2 Crucial DIMMs I had purchased separately with lifetime warranty into my laptop (which involved taking it away to warehouse for other reasons). However, they only used one and a no-name one which seems to have gone bad. After two weeks of correspondence, they're refusing to do ANYTHING to fix this saying it is a third party issue and that I shouldn't have given the memory to the technician - even though I was told to give him so they could verify the fix!

The laptop is now out of the original Dell warranty, but should be covered by the statutory warranty. As far as I'm concerned, that's all beside the point - the Dell appointed technician has absolutely stolen from me (probably through incompetence rather than malice though).

After 20 mins waiting on phone, I've just been given another email address to escalate this to. I'll try there, but after 2 weeks of back and forth, not holding my breath they want to fix anything.

So, would this be something I should be going to office of fair trading to? Or small claims? Or file a police report about stolen goods - the last really appeals to me, though I'm sre the police would tell me to just go file a claim somewhere else :)

Oddly enough, one reason I went with Dell as seemed to have good customer service :( Any advice on how to get Dell to do the right thing by a customer they've completely messed around would be welcome.

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Comments

  • Davo1111 on 23/04/2013 - 10:50
    +3
    1. Document everything
    2. Report them to ACCC (It does nothing, but adds to their statistics of companies to investigate.
    3. Contact your state office/department of fair trading. They might send a letter on your behalf asking to recitify the situation. If they can't help, continue.
    4. Write a letter of demand to the people responsible. Send it registered post with that return thing, so you know they got it. Tell them your intentions, give them a week or so to reply
    5. Get proof (a signed statement) from an expert that the product you recieved is faulty/doesn't meet regulation…whatever. You can't just rock up on the day and say "my car is broken, here are the photos". They'll say "how do i know that?". the onus is on YOU to prove the services were not provided properly.
    6. Go online and book in, it costs around $30 (half for students)
    7. You'll get a legal letter in the mail
    8. On the day, rock up, sign in, and you'll get sent to a court room
    9. They'll introduce the parties, and send you to a private room to discuss your issues. "mediation"
    10. Talk, explain the problem, and how you'd like it fixed. A mediator will come in and out of the room every 5 minutes. The onus is on you guys to reach an agreement. expect repair/replacement over refund too (despite what the act says). Dont get emotional
    11. If you agree, the mediator will write down a draft of what was agreed. Then you'll go into the court room again, the judge will make it official, you'll sign it, and that's that.
    12. If you don't agree, i assume the judge will decide/postpone the proceedings. I stopped at step 11
  • Davo1111 on 23/04/2013 - 10:54

    Also, you've disallowed private messages in your settings

    • mooboy on 23/04/2013 - 10:58

      Thanks for your advice - enabled private messages (I didn't realise I had it off).

      When you say you stopped at 9 - do you mean couldn't resolve your issue? Or it needed to go no further?

      Sounds like the time and cost is going to be more than just fixing it myself: but just so annoyed as so many different things have gone with this, supposedly high end, laptop.

      • Davo1111 on 23/04/2013 - 11:35

        sorry, edited it from an old post. Should be 11

        Sounds like the time and cost is going to be more than just fixing it myself: but just so annoyed as so many different things have gone with this, supposedly high end, laptop.

        yeah its not worth it, unless you want to teach them a lesson

  • jason101 on 23/04/2013 - 14:37
    +2

    This is a terrible story and no one likes being taken advantage over - BUT - Life is short and Ram is cheap, my advice would be to spend the $20-40 on new Ram and get over it. In future don't deal with Dell and tell everyone your story - that should be painful enough for them.

    I had a ram fault on a new desktop I bought from Dell, just the over the phone trouble shooting, explaining the problem 200 times to someone in India or Malaysia (non native english speaking person) and having to deal with a tech at my house going over the same tests and nonsense again and again for 40 mins before he clipped in new ram in 5 seconds was enough to convince me that I should have just spent $40 on ram and replaced it myself.

    • StewBalls on 23/04/2013 - 17:10

      Agreed.

      Sometimes I'll stand on principle for insanely low amounts of money, but in retrospect it is rarely worth the bother!

  • aim54x on 23/04/2013 - 14:49

    With laptops you always end up having to buy them from a vendor, but with desktops I will never buy from a vendor, it is simply not worth the pain when I can go out and assemble to my spec and do my own maintenance/repairs

  • ericeric on 23/04/2013 - 18:50

    not worth the time and money imo, buy a lenovo next time.

    • Mikinoz on 24/04/2013 - 10:57

      haha really, actually dell service is better.

      • Davo1111 on 24/04/2013 - 11:50

        I think dell premium service is good (assuming you're within their "warranty")

  • Ramrunner on 24/04/2013 - 07:55

    Not a fan of Dell. People often buy then regret. Same with HP and Acer a lot of the times. Prices seem cheap, but they generally "tender" for their parts. For example, we are going to build 10,000 notebooks, which one of the HDD (or SSD) manufacturers will give us the lowest price for 10,000 units regardless of who actually has the fastest or best quality drives.

    Same with all parts.

    The is the main reason the computer shop I work for still sell a lot of built systems I think. Just get the best quality parts.

    • tonyjzx on 24/04/2013 - 14:56

      while this is certainly true i doubt it makes a difference

      what is a good quality hard drive? Wdc? seagate? hgst? there arent a lot of choices

      dell and hp etc. all tend to use high quality but not high performance parts

      dell's problem is that they sell largely to morons who have unreasonable expectations of what a pc is supposed to do

  • kaos on 24/04/2013 - 10:09

    Go to the CTTT- Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal in NSW. you're already half way there- they admitted they took the RAM, presumably you have a receipt for it when you purchased. Fill out the paperwork, pay the small fee. Most likely they will agree to fix it before you have to waste more time going to mediation.

    Remember you're doing this not for $50 worth of RAM, but to let Dell know they can't get away with poor practices. No sane manufacturer will want to spend time defending the case especially if they know they are wrong.

    • Davo1111 on 24/04/2013 - 10:53

      It also costs them money to send down a "mediation officer" to the CBD to sort out the issue

  • mooboy on 17/05/2013 - 16:06

    Just in case anyone interested: after two sets long correspondence with at least three times being told there was nothing they could do (each time they said because I hadn't followed some step which in fact I had), they've finally agreed to a refund for my replacement costs. I say two sets of correspondence as, after the first person I was communicating told me their escalations team had denied my request, I then started to email with someone in that team.

    At all times it was a polite and respectful discussion. Still a bit frustrating it took so long and so much hassle with correspondence, but at least they've mostly done the right thing. Still a bit miffed that there are a few scratches left on the case by the sloppy technician - but after they'd replaced the majority of the chassis, I think I can live with it).

    At any rate, although it all could have been handled better (namely, if they didn't have such a careless technician in the first place) but I am happy enough with outcome that it doesn't leave a bitter taste in the mouth. To their credit, they were responsive in communication and at no point did I need to threaten to take them to small claims/consumer affairs etc. Thanks to everyone for their advice.

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