Review of Service and Support

This forum has several threads relating to reviews of new machines. I'd like to start a discussion on service and support after the purchase and find out if others are experiencing some of the same frustrations that I am facing.

I am a road warrior for the US Navy traveling 75% of the time. My Sentia 1.7 Mhz / 60GB HD / 1 GB RAM was the best price/performance light laptop available on the market last year for under $2500 (govt limit for certain computer purchases). I carry this machine halfway around the world as I train submarine and surface ship crews each week. I use it to work out of my hotel room mainly accessing my office and personal email servers. It has been a steady and trusted workhorse for the last year.

But 8 months into ownership, the AC adaptor pin attached to the motherboard got bent and broken. I sent it back to Alienware for a motherboard replacement and the frustrations have begun.

Alienware has a special corporate technical support phone line to call that allows me to access separate personnel to work on my problems. When I call in my call is screened for initial problems and then I am sent to a tech support representative. I have had a range of guys with different ethnic backgrounds and all were interested and invested in solving my problem. Understanding them has been difficult on two of eight total calls into the tech support line, but not more than a 10-20% loss of efficiency in troubleshooting.

Pet Peeve #1: I am frequently asked to wait "two minutes" while my support person checks with a supervisor or completes his notes in his computer. I am placed on hold and the new age , sirenous space music begins to play and puts me to sleep. Since I am usually calling at night, at the end of a long day this MUZAC is hard to take. I get the marketing theme of alien music for Alienware, but I would prefer any other kind of music other than rap. (Sorry folks, but I am that old.) (((NOT)))

Let me get back on topic. After the first repair (which luckily occurred over Christmas and New Years) came back on 1/5/05, I hit the road once again. Well it took less than a month before I started having one of those phantom video screen problems found on this message board (video screen would go completely dark randomly during startups). I lived with the problem for two months since I was on the road and the workaround was to startup the computer about 10 times until the screen came on and then to leave it on for the whole week. In the meantime, I called into Alienware Corporate Tech Support on several occasions hoping that a new support rep would finally know more than what was displayed on their info support system screens and give me some hope beyond downloading the latest video driver.

When I finally sent the machine in a second time, Alienware replaced the motherboard (with integrated video processor), the LCD screen and the keyboard (which independently decided to fail with several keys choosing not to work anymore). Now a little more than one month later, the LCD screen goes 95% dark (a ghost image is still barely visible on the screen) and only reappears when you tap the side of the monitor or next to the touchpad.

Now Alienware is good about sending FEDEX labels to pay for shipping back to them. They do 2 day service which is fair and understandable for the price that you pay for extended warranty work. I have not noticed a significant delay from the time they receive the machine to the time they send it back (it has been 7 and 5 days previously). They have also worked with me to send it to my home and not work location so I can put it back in service quicker (Reminder: I work at a Govt lab where the shipping department holds onto things for a week or two before they open it up, inspect it, make sure it is what is said it was, mark it received and set it aside for the delivery folks to bring it to my building when it's my building's turn to have stuff delivered to it.) So this is a great convenience for me.

Pet Peeve #2: Alienware wipes the hard drive and reinstalls the original software before they pack it back up and send it back to the customer. This requires me to back up everything on my laptop before I send it in and reinstall a bunch of software each time I get the machine back from service. I understand the necessity of efficiently reloading the original software on the machine and the need to establish a baseline for warranty purposes. What I dislike is the loss of productivity in the half day each it takes to backup and reinstall all the software and reference files that I use.

NOTE: The financial cost of the loss of productivity or ability to work due to the absence or delay in restoring my laptop has already exceeded twice the original cost of this machine. This means that the total cost (and consequence) of ownership of this machine has been far greater than just the purchase price of the laptop and the technical support! Businesses should seriously consider this when evaluating what kind of technical support is available for different machines and service levels.

Now as to the quality of the repair and the repair-inspired unintended consequence.s.... I have some issues here. This is the most frustrating area.

When you go to the doctor, you expect to get treated and get better, not come away with a new and exotic disease. When you take your car into the garage, you expect to have your car's problem solved, not replaced with a new problem in a different component. When you take your wife into a bar, you expect to go home with her and not some other woman (Well there was that time in Honolulu when my wife and I got drunk and met that nice couple from Kansas City...... but that's not the point!)

What I am trying to say is that 5 months after trying to fix a power connection problem on my motherboard, I fighting loose connections or wires in a newly replaced LCD monitor.

I think I'm getting refurbished parts to fix the suspected problems with my machine and that is allowing new problems to creep into my system. This may be Alienware's policy in order to keep tech support costs low. I have not been able to get a straight answer to a straight question from the customer service or tech support reps that I talk to. Is anyone else experiencing this suspicion?

If it is true, it is my single most compelling point as to why it may be better not to use Alienware's extended warranty and to purchase a third party extended warranty with on-site support and OEM replacement parts even if it does cost twice as much. I just bought two more years or tech support from Alienware based upon the initial problems that I had, but now I'm thinking I need to spend more money for a separate service support capability.

The last point I want to make on Alienware Service and Support is their TECH SUPPORT web page. It seriously lags the competitions (Alienware go visit Apple or DELL). It is poorly organized to find the answers to basic question, the FAQs are obtuse and I have a hard time believing that these are the most frequently asked questions, and finally the links that I most frequently click when I visit are not accessible when the page first comes up. It needs a total redesign based not only on it's past usage, but also a solid field test with novice, intermediate and advanced computer users. My basic observation of internet based support information sites is that well constructed, logical, accessible and intuitive web sites reduce calls into tech support and is the most cost effective way to keep customers supported, informed, and happy after the purchase.

Pet Peeve #3: Since I have some Human Factors experience in the design of user interfaces on the Navy's C4I systems, I speak with some authority in this area. The most frequently accessed menu selections in pull down menus, or links for your various support areas should be the first selections in these pulldown menus or link buttons that are displayed when the page comes up. Hit the link for Customer Service and Support and you get a page that shows the same FAQs that were on there last year when I first bought my machine, and a visual display that says that I am not logged in. Everything else is buried beneath this stuff and you have to scroll down to find it. THERE IS NO EASILY IDENTIFIABLE WAY TO LOG IN TO THE SUPOPORT AREA THAT IS QUICK AND CONVENIENT TO USE. Even the SUPPORT pull down menu does not have a SIGN IN option.

So overall I'm assigning Alienware a B- grade for tech support and service.

Telephone wait times have not are horrendous in my experience, no one has ever insulted my intelligence or was rude, tech reps were concerned and empathetic. The quality of their repair work has been marginal. The economic consequence for me or this lack of quality has been irritating and has me on the fence as to recommending the company to anyone else.

The web-based service and support is marginally effective, but mostly frustrating for someone like me who is computer literate and technically sound in trying to troubleshoot and correct computer problems. I'm used to better and get frustrated when it is not available from a company that hawks its supposedly superior position with Award Winning Service and Support. PS, they don't back it up with a pop up window tellling you the exact award and the agency that awarded it.

Still lots of room for improvement Alienware. Keep at it.

Alienware good to its word

I have to give credit to Juan G and the alienware support team. I fedexed my Sentia back to them on the Thursday after my original post and emailed Juan G on the following day. I received my repaired Sentia back on the following Thursday.

Two good things about this turnaround and two minor ooops. The first good thing about the turnaround was that the quick response. I truly appreciated the short turn around time such that I could get back to work and be productive. (I was freaking out since I had to write an ANSI/ISO Q9001-2000 compliant Quality Management System Manual for my office and had broken out the pencil and paper to go old school on my task.)

The second thing about the good turn around was that I had asked Alienware, if it was possible, not to reformat and reload my hard drive since I did not appear to have any software related problems. They complied with my request and I was back up and running immediately after unpacking the machine (savings of about 4 hours in reloading application software and old project files).

The one small oops was that initially the CD/DVD combo drive did not work. I popped in several data and music CDs and nothing registered. A quick check of the Device Manager and WINDOWS said everything was OK. The drive was on the list of devices and the drivers checked out as OK. I went through all the software directed HELP screens to fiddle with the software driver but no help. (Of course the Alienware Support Disks were of no use since the computer couldn't see the CD drive.

Finally in frustration I asked myself "What would Alienware Tech Support Do?" (just teasing, but with a hint of truth) So I went into Device Manager and deleted the driver, shutdown the machine, physically removed the drive, blew on the connection, reinserted it, started up the machince into BIOS, reloaded "Optimal Settings," continued startup and let WINDOWS find the new device that was just discovered.

Everything was fine after that.

The second ooops is now my two right USB connections are non-operative when the machine was returned. I haven't called into Alienware Tech Support to cover this since the left one is working and presently I only need one functional USB connection. But damn, it's back to my please fix my problem and not give me any new problems. And did I really gain anything by sending in my machine in to be repaired? Will I loose another week of usage?

My Dad taught me long ago that 9 times out of 10, things don't go as planned. And the other time, you have no right to expect anything different.

To be fair, I have had only one interaction out of 20 or so lifetime experiences with hardware repair technical support that has worked out well or right the first time. Now that one time was about ten years ago on an old, old, old Mac Performa. it was at a three man, Apple retailer/repair facility in a back corner or some old industrial park. The technician was as the stereotypical computer nerd who was completely white because he never saw the light of day. His work bench was littered with dissected machines and he was diagnosing/repairing six or seven simultaneously. I got truly lucky and could stand around and talk/learn from the technician as he diagnosed and replaced a bad component in about a half an hour.

I don't think this can happen anymore. There are too many manufacturers, too many models, fewer specialty houses, and the chance of finding a true hardware geek working in tech support is rare these days.

But what I can say is that my experiences aren't anything that a good Quality Management System can't get in and vastly improve. "It's all about the processes!" Work hard on improving your processes and the results get better fast.

Obviously when the hardware technician put my machine back together and ran it through its quality check to make sure the problem wasn't occuring again, the check was not broad enough to catch an inoperable optical drive and inoperable USB connections. Connections could have loosened in the shipment back to me, but then is the design robust enough if the machine falls apart in shipment to it's customers. That might explain a lot of these DOA arrivals on these message boards.

So for all that see this thread, I'd like to give you some hope. My recent experiences tells me that Alienware is committed to its customers and their satisfaction. That is enough to put aside my fears and has removed any barriers I had to make another, future purchase. I hope this thread can give you the confidence to be comfortable with your purchase decision.