New Laptop Service

[Paul B]

My wife just bought me a new Dell laptop and a good one. The Ispiron 9300. It worked fine till I tried to download the updates to the built in McAfee protections suite.

As a side note I've never had any luck with McAfee as it has crashed every computer I ever put it on, but the package came with 3 years of service so I thought maybe they had their act together.

No such luck. It crashed the computer twice and I had to start over from the factory settings. When I tried to remove it it was even worse with the computer spitting all kinds of errors and not once was I able to remove it completely.

Here's the good part, my wife bought the best warrantee they sell for 4 years so I called customer service - after all the computer was 2 days old. They said they would be happy to help, but since it was a software problem I would have to pay them for their time. I couldn't believe it and the conversation eventually downgraded to me telling them I would just return the whole computer since it was only 2 days old and I was very unsatisfied. They didn't care and even gave me the number to return it. What is wrong with their marketing and customer service - this seems to violate every principle.

In the end a friend came over and actually rewrote some code to get rid of the Mcafee and now it has Zone Alarm and Grisoft - it works great and I don't think I'll carry out my threat

[BritinUSA]

The guy you spoke to on the helpdesk was most likely 'Bob' from Bangladesh. 'Bob' most likely doesn't give a rats behind what happens to your computer or to Dell either. All 'Bob' cares about is whether he will get a seat on the roof of the train when he goes home tonight.

[Patrick Sweeney]

Ah yes, the "His computer geek buddy will take care of it" service plan. Doncha love it?