Dell must be nuts!!!

Hah, I've had mine in the queue a week longer than you, and they are trying to pull that BS with me as well.

B.

Ordered mine on Feb 17, system went into production on March 5 and they are saying 20 business days from March 5 due to backorder.

But it is a new system, and personally I'd rather wait until they have worked out the issues before getting my laptop.

If you have read all that has been going on, why would you want them to rush an XPS out to you?

Memnoch.

I'm in the same boat as you. It looks like they cancelled my original order scheduled for April 1 delivery because I asked them to add on 2 year onsite warranty and now my scheduled delivery is April 14th. I've been having a running email rant with someone I'm just sure is not from the USA.

My 9100 is supposed to ship tomorrow... and I am fully expecting the same damn news from Dell. I am mentally preparing for it, especially since I called two days ago and was told "oh yea everything is fine with your order - it looks like is should ship on the 18th". Sure it will ship; it hasn't even left production! I hope 4/14 is not the "new' ship date for us all....
Ahhhhhhhhhggggghh

Now if I wanted to be positive... you could say Dell is thinking of you as a "valuable customer" by not sending you a laptop with known problems just to have you get it on time and turn around and ship is back because it locks up under heavy 3D usage.

However Dell's lack of proactive customer service is severely lacking! Just tell me if there is a problem that will alter my ship date and be honest and I will be a much more understandig customer!
Welcome to the club

My 8600 order got canceled as well. I had to call in and re-order. Then when I requested an entire system replacement, that second order got cancelled again...... They had no idea why!!! Both times I had to call in and re-order. They did not send me an e-mail or call me to let me know that my orders were cancelled. I saw them cancelled through order status. I don't understand, do they want my money or not?! Now, this is poor customer service. After 8 years of using their pc's, I am getting fed up with Dell. I might tell them to kiss my and go with IBM.

The same happened to me when I was going to get a dvd burner replacement, because my dvd-burner was faulty!

Not sure that's the way to go.

First of all, they have no idea when your notebook will ship. It's 100% dependent on the manufacturing process. I received my XPS early last week. According to what I was told by customer care, I SHOULD be receiving it Friday

You simply have to understand that customer care simply doesn't know. Calling them is useless, and the ship dates they provide are simply wrong.

Second of all, your notebook is being held up because of a production problem. Some have heard it's because of the WUXGA screens being in short supply. Others have heard it's because of a bad batch of batteries they received. I believe neither. I believe it's because of the problem we reported with the Radeon 9700 mobility. Dell basically has a bad batch of GPU's that aren't performing to spec.

Dell has two choices with this. Build and ship them anyway, and accept the high failure rate in the field... OR... halt production until they can solve the problem. I feel they are doing the latter, which is why your notebook is delayed.

To blame dell and say they don't care about you as a customer is only half true. Sure, they want your money. But they don't want you bashing them after the fact when you get a notebook with a bad graphics board.

Seriously. If you cancel now, you're stuck waiting anyway for another vendor to come out with a machine with the same specs. Dell is first to market with this kind of machine, and there's always a chance that there will be a problem with cutting edge gear. Now that my GPU issue was resolved with a vidcard swapout, I'm having no problems with my XPS. It's truly a fast machine that was engineered somewhat well.

No, I don't work for dell, I don't have any vested interest in Dell's success or anything like that. The situation just is what it is.

They should just be honest about the delays. I actually don't mind too much waiting, it's just being lied to and given the run around.

Wish I ordered when you did though Karl. A replaced boarded unit is much better than the delay we have

B.

Agreed. They should be honest, but the average person is looking for an answer. Even if it's the wrong one. and to be honest, tech support isn't much better to deal with for the average person.

See here.

I'd feel better about the delays if we were certain that it's actually for fixing the 9700 issue. While that's as good a theory as any and better than most (much better in fact) there is still the load of other messes:

- LurkingJayHawk's "Customer-Don't-Care" experience
- The "high quality" support outside the XPS queue
- The ABC reports
- The fact that not only are they not telling us what's going on, they can't even seem to settle on the same alternate story

(Although that last may actually be a good thing - if you were covering something up, you'd at least make sure your story was good. Nonsensical responses on the other hand sound more like they just don't know....)

Maybe it is really on the up and up, but put this all together and - well, let's just say I'm not getting a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Well I'm sure that IF the customer support knew what they were talking about they would tell us the truth, they always just check their computers and tell us what the computer tells them so I don't think they're to blame 100%. The dell XPS is an awesome system, if you cancel now and reorder, expect an addition 300+ because there was a price jump.

I too was thinking about getting the new Sager but I really want to grab the upgradable graphics card, sounds promising. With any new system, I'd wait for the first few people to get it. There will always be bugs and I'm glad dell stopped sending faulty machines out.

make syou hope a rep from Dell would come to answer all these questions

The XPS is worth the wait--been playing bf vietnam w/ aa and af on with no problem. It is easy for me to say since I have mine and haven't had any problems.

Even with the problems I had, they were resolved within two days once I asked for a GPU swap.

XPS is a really nice machine, no question. While there's other options out there, I still think the XPS is the best one on a TECHNICAL level.

Did you mean that seriously? or is it a WAY more expensive alternative that has lower clocked parts and slower performance?

Sorry, PC purchases don't invoke any real "emotion" from me. Heck, mine came with a bad video card, and rather than pick up any extra "emotion" like so many others would have, I stayed level-headed and tried to help solve the problem. Throwing emotion at a purchase only makes you a zealot no one likes or simply makes you a target for bashing.

My question was actually a serious one, since so far all the competition has had a flaw somewhere that made it less attractive than the Dell and usually at a higher cost.

Now that i've researched it, I see that the sager's shortcomings are: Screen resolution (real estate is nice, but I personally prefer higher resolution for more open windows, but some would consider that a hindrance for gaming), and pricing them out identically the dell is cheaper by a few hundred bucks (at least the way I config'd it)... and maybe the fans if it's anything like the "8890" (if memory serves, that was the model that made some ridiculous noise prompting people to mod their units).

Sager has some nice points though that make it a serious consideration - hardware RAID sure would be a nice option on the XPS for sure. A TV tuner also would have been nice for some I suppose (useless for me, but for dorm-dwellers? Priceless).

I'd say I am looking forward to your response, but your comments thus far make you look like you're trying to pick a fight or some other kind of heated argument that's loaded with "emotion", and i'm not here to argue. Why else would you be in this section of the forums?