alienware area-51m

If I were you I would tell them that the system has not even been working for 30 days and that they should take it back for an upgrade to the 7700.

It sounds like you got one of the botched 51m's (from which there were many including my two).. and you'll be sending it back for the life of the system and it will never work properly. Basically you got a lemon, so get rid of it asap.

sue8500,

PM me with your account information and I will look into your situation. I will see to it that everything goes well in depot.

Thank you.

I also had the same problem with my 5500. It is on its way back from the depot for the 2nd time. They had it and tested it and stressed it and never replicated the problem I was having with a flickering screen. They replaced the LCD the first time saying it was defective, and then replaced the video card this time. It will be delivered tomorrow and I will be testing it tomorrow night. Their customer service was extremely helpful with me over all of this, but paying what I did, I expected a better operating computer. I doubt I will ever buy another Alienware computer again. If I ended up with a lemon, then I would expect Alienware to simply replace it with another computer, that only sounds like the proper thing to do for someone who expected a functioning computer.

Good luck though, I will definitely post tomorrow night how my system is operating now. The repair depot tried everything I did, including Doom 3 (Doom 3 seemed to throw my screen into fits every time I played it). My system had a flickering screen while I could hook a desktop monitor to it and play it fine while the LCD screen flickered. Oh well, hopefully it will work fine when I get it back since they stressed it out for a week and never had a problem with it. Isn't that the way it always it, you send it in and they can never find the problem with it, then you get it back and it fails....hopefully the video card fixed the problem. Good luck again.

Just curious how many botched systems have people been having? What steps are Alienware taking if you have a system that is basically a lemon?

Are you just SOL or will Alienware replace the computer if it is found to be problem infected? I think they probably wouldn't and the person is just out of luck, but I am curious since I may be in that boat myself.

SOL

I bought two for our company, and our partner company purchased three at the same time.

Well ONE of those works as advertised, the rest have had horrible performance, heat issues, problems with the internal wireless, problems with sound, etc.

Basically 4 out of the 5 were lemons. So we got together and realized our best option was eBay and then to just take the losses. We lost about 400-500 per system, but in the end went with another manufacturer and order 6 new systems.. we haven't had ONE single issue or problem and everything was delivered on time. I was a HUGE fan of Alienware until these problems.. and I read other posts with the same problems daily.

The only reason they have a higher customer service rating is because they have a much smaller clientbase than the competitors. If Alienware pushed out the same volume Dell, IBM, Toshiba, or other do.. than they would probably be rated well below average.

Customer support...one of the multiple reasons I've scrapped the Alienware plan for a Sager.

i hope you told the ebay bidders that the laptops were lemons...

We plainly stated that on every single auction. We told exactly what was happening, and how Alienware was handling the situation, etc.

Even after the auction was won we would verify with the winner that they knew the clause as we do not want to ship a product without the person fully knowing. We also made sure the person knew the warranty was non-transferrable.. not like it is any good even if it was unless you like having your system in the shop for 3 months or more out of the year and never having the problems solved.

dupe

It would be alot mroe than 1 400$ loss if it was a lemon then thats the hit you take if you buy it new and sell it the next day no problems... hmm someones lyingg!

Dissension is VERBOTEN

Sue8500, take people's advice and sell that sucker as fast as you can... You are lucky that you posted here and not on the "official" Alienware forums, were one's freedom of speech is severely curtailed >>> its like Bavaria in 1942 without the book burning! People, such as yourself, come to the official forums with these laptop horror stories and the posts magically disappear *POOF* Where did they go? We tell people to get an immediate RMA(return merchandise authorization) so they don't have to pay the infamous and dreaded "restocking fee" but those are moderated forums and the nazis censor everything so these posts never make it on to the forum. A couple of months go by and you here from this guy again and lo and behold, he still owns a piece of crap!!! He's told his story to AW thousands of times, he did hours upon of hours of intense troubleshooting over the phone and his lemon has been depoted multiple times but to no avail... yadda yadda yadda. People who surf the net a lot are familiar with this refrain; Alienware makes the finest gaming machines in the world but if you get a lemon, SEND IT BACK AND START OVER!!! My Area-51 has run like a wet dream for the last year and it has undergone some very HEAVY use! DOOM3, HL2 and UT2004 run like butter; flawlessly!!! I max out the resolution to over 2000 by 1500(sic) on HL2 and I play for boucoup hours at a time... My point is that AW really is the best but most of their lemons are unfixable garbage; especially their earlier laptop versions. My niece had one and I knew compaqs that could run circles around it. WE replaced the hardrive and depoted it and it still can't run a game without locking up or crashing... My niece now happily games on a cheap ass DELL and the AW lappy is in my five year old nephew's room. Check out resellerratings.com where AW customer satisfaction has gone from the high eights to the low sixes as a result of these lemons >>> some of the stories are hilarious in their similarities! Trust me, when it comes to AW lemons, the game is to get rid of it as quickly as you can, however you can...

I had a very similiar situation, but worse actually. Also after 2 months will be receiving my replacement next week. Alienware and I had come to a very good arrangement with my situation. They were good to me thus far, yes you have the wait but I think you'll be happy when you do have it.

I had one and Alienware treated me very well, yes I received a lemon...BUT Alienware was very fair, don't rip on a company if you haven't experienced it. This is to all not just viper, every company has its problems and I can promise you that no major could compare to Alienware power, not even Dell. I have been an HP owner for almost seven years (new machine every six months) and this was my first AW, yes it was bad from the get go, but they have made up for it. The Idea to return ASAP is the trick, if you don't act fast it isn't AW that screws you, its the law (that applies to returns and sometimes the 15% restock fee) that they follow by.

Customer support will be sure to handle it. Alienware screws up sometimes but it is rare they can't fix it to the customers satisfaction. If you are a return buyer you have grown to expect more, If you are a first time customer I'm sorry that your first experience was a bad one. hope your situation can be worked out with minimal headaches for you. good luck and keep us posted.