Shipping Times...an education. - Page 2

Good Things happen to...

Craig-

Just so ya know - I ordered 3 8600's and 5 8500's on October 23rd and all but 1 arrived Yesterday. Dell is not AW and AW is not Dell easy enough - but 30 days Dell is not.

bought a inspiron 7500 close to 4 years ago, back then it took 5 weeks for me to get the lappy. friend of mine bought his dell lappy a year ago took 6 weeks.

All 19X12 -Dell 8500- New KeyboardSTIFF

All of them are 19X12 - it’s the only version I bother ordering. Some folks think it’s a bit too small - but once you get used to it you don't want to go back... My purchasing department advised that the wait would be 25 to 40 days - I was surprised to see them roll in so quickly. The longest I have waited was 3 weeks - and that was on our very first order that was placed the day the 8500 was announced.

8600 - Picked these up on request - I'm not crazy about the Centrino's that we have used in the past. Few of our developers wanted more battery life and it appears the 8600 runs a good hour + more than the 8500. IMO - the 85 and 8600 are desktop replacements and why not go with the most power you can get. If its battery life you want this series is not for you. According to Dell they are selling more 86's than the 8500's.. Go figure.

I have had 3 different 8500's ( this is the first with BT - funny I did not notice the space for the Blue Light on my Prev... guess now that it Glows BLUE its more noticeable) - 1 when they first came out... What I have noticed about the ones from our new order is the keyboard is much STIFFER - I never really noticed the bounce in my other 8500 - but now that I compare them side-by-side it’s noticeable. They must be using a different kybd or done something to stiffen them. I never had a problem with springy kybd - but so far I like the new one.

So with my new*new 8500 - I'm not as angry at AW for screwing up my order's (actually I have 3 AW's on order - all in various stages of incompleteness)

I buy for Govt and our own employees.

Btw - all of my rantings about AW - I am quite confident that AW is not a great company today - but I still have hope that some day they will get their act together... they have time :-)

Am I the only one who doesn't really care about the wait time...I knew before buying AW that if you want something exclusive with above average build quality you have to wait. The fact is that 99% of people who buy an AW want just that an AW so waiting is a benign issue. Having said that, of course I would love my laptop 1 week after I ordered but then again it wouldn't seem as special! I'm not a big fan of mass produced items and if they truly are custom built gaming pc's then bring on the wait time...have you guys heard of wait times on Bentley's (custom built as well!)...

In this day and age of immediate gratification and cynicism, it sometimes nice to just to sit back, wait and have patience.


PS: to the guy who was touting his Dell's all coming in 3 weeks...guess what 1 wk, 2 wks, or 5 wks it's still a Dell however you look at it...

Notebook - Lets get Real -

I'd love to know how much experience you have with Dell's - Do you have a particular problem with the 8500 series Dell - Do you feel the 19X12 is a bit too slow/low for your needs? Lets compare notes.

Please tell -

N

Setting Customer Expectations - Bingo

This has nothing to do with being mad at a company because it takes X days to get their product out the door. It is plain and simple - In MANY MANY cases AW does a very poor job (see Subject).

And like you Craig -I had no problem waiting on my Harley's. My 1st CVO *Switchblade*- took over 1 year to arrive - granted this was during the dot.COM period here in the S Valley so wait times were quite long. I knew the wait would be long when I ordered - I knew the CVO's wait was even longer than a standard Hog but I went into it with my eyes open and when I took delivery 1.2 years later I was a happy customer.

I wish I could say the same about AW - and their customer support managers.

notebook_gamer,

i dont care about the wait time either as long as its a quality product that's the important thing to me. if its a quality product then i can care less about their service and support cause chances are i won't even use it. i also came into this with eyes open expecting worst case it would take two months till i see the lappy. and totally agree i think they should give us an account to get into the forumns, they already got our money wtf.

This all goes back to Alienware's stupid phase system. IMHO, it's a bad idea. When someone keeps checking to see what phase his/her system is in, and see's that it's stuck in phase 5,7,11, or whatever for days or weeks sometimes, it gives the impression that AW is somehow ignoring you and your system specifically. This starts to give you bad vibes towards the company.

Case in point: with me, I was stuck in phase 11 for 9 days. I was really starting to get mad and discouraged with AW to the point that I was thinking about canceling the order and going with someone else. The funny thing is though, I received notification finally that my system shipped on 11/5 and is scheduled to be delivered 11/8. I ordered the computer on 10/22. That means that from the time I ordered it to the time that I actually receive the system, only 17 days total have passed. That's only a 2 1/2 week turnaround time. Pretty fast for a custom ordered computer.

However, looking everyday to see what phase your in gives you the impression that it's taking forever to get your system built. They should just tell you: look, it takes 15-20 business days to have your system built and delivered and leave it at that. Get rid of keeping track of your order with the phase system. You then might get pleasantly surprised how fast your order comes in.

well it seems to me now that all the back ordered parts are in everyone seems to moving much faster....go figure . I am curious to see how much longer this is going to take. I started this process on 9/26 ordered 10/10 was on phase 2 till 11/3 then in two days skipped to 9.... The only thing that annoyed me was being stuck on 2 for so long waiting for them to process my payment. I am now confident that they started on my lappy before they finished processing my payment. I guess my point is they have the phase system to make one feel closer to the build process. It's like watching cookies bake in the over. However it also seems that the updateing of the website may not actually reflect how far along you laptop truely is. Which is obviously annoying. I just hope that for all our waiting that the product we get is flawless and evrything they make it out to be. Or at least close. By the way anyone up for some Call of Duty action once we get these bad boys


PS. By the way a I am curious is there anymore paper work that has to be signed before you get your lappy.

there's a saying i forget what it is something about watching water doesnt make it boil any faster or something so i guess i'd agree that time goes by slower if your checking every second if something has happened but at the same time the phase thing does give a level anticipation like counting down the days to christmas. two ways to approach it i guess.

It all boils down to this. If Sager could get the 5680 built from CLEVO in 2 days, so can alienware.
Alienwares build to shipment time period is a joke.

I ordered my sager on a tuesday, it was at my house FRIDAY MORNING. Alienware's delays and Alienware can suck it.

out of curiosity anyone know when the aw laptops get painted? do they come from uniwill that way? i would think if not then that's also part of the process that slows things down, same thing would happen if you got a sager with color no?

it is possible that they do come painted before hand...

You need to take the "testing and benchmarking" out of the delivery delay mix. That process takes mere minutes. And you would be surprised to see, in the alienware forum, what many customers recieve as alienware "tested" systems. I agree that there needs to be a better way to track the build of your high performance machine. The current process isnt black and white. It is very grey and misleading. A lot of Alienware is. But a good alienware is an incredible piece of work and worth the wait. The original topic about the delays being the fault of outside vendors/ if that is the case/ comes down to alienware's lack of communication skill and part bad management. A large corporation like alienware needs to have all parts in stock at all times. It would really suck to wait a month or two to get a faulty part replaced under warranty. Sometimes the "phases" look more like a smokescreen for being overwhelmed.

-aurora