My Personal Dell Horror Story at Computer Repair Fort Lauderdale

The BeginningrnI purchased a Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP monitor a couple of years ago from someone else who has used it for eight months. It had a three-year warranty. About a year ago, I noticed that it had developed yellow tinting around its edges and that they were spreading inward.rnI contacted Dell and, to their credit, the customer support representatives seemed well educated, were courteous and polite and immediately offered to send me a replacement. The replacement arrived and was broken along the top edge, with bits of jagged glass hanging off to the side.rnI contacted them again and they sent me another replacement. This one had blue dots splattered all across the front. Contacted them again, this time via email so that I would have a written record, and they sent another replacement. This one had some other issue (at this point, I’ve lost track of which one had what issue) and I contacted them again via Twitter.rnThe fourth one had a detached front panel which I fixed by pushing it back in with my hand. Turned it on and it started making this screeching noise. Turned it off and on again a few times. Same deal. I even made a video of it, just as proof that I was indeed facing all these problems.rnAll of these monitors (30-inchers, mind you) were lying in my room, occupying a sizable chunk of floor space, so I had them send someone to pick the monitors up from my house. I had half a mind not to return them, so I could sell them off if they didn’t ultimately fix my issue. But I pointed the guy to the monitors and he started packing them up. Then he asks me to take out my car and drop him off at his office because he’d come to pick up four 30-inch monitors on foot!rnI contacted them again, thoroughly pissed off at this point, and demanded either a refund or an upgrade. They denied both, for various reasons, and offered to send me yet another replacement. They started pleading with me that they would get it right this time and telling me that they would send me a new unit instead of a refurbished one (which they had also promised me on the last two occasions), so I had them they sent me another monitor. The fifth one.rnGot it, plugged it in and it had the blue spots issue again. I took pictures of it and sent it to them. At this point, I was in no mood to accept any more compromises. When they next called, I told them I wanted a refund and nothing else.rnThey refused and offered me a downgrade to the 3007WFP instead! I would later learn that this is standard policy at Dell, to offer inferior replacements to placate customers. Not sure how effective it is though. I almost blew my lid when they suggested that.rnThe MiddlernFinally, we started talking about an upgrade to the new U3011 and they gave me the same reason for denying it as they had every other time, “It is not available in India.” I asked them when it would be available and they said they had no idea.rnBut they offered me a deal: If the U3011 were to be officially launched in the country within a year, they would send it to me with a one-year warranty (not the standard three-year one). If not, my current warranty would run out (I had already been dealing with them for over six months by this point) and that was that.rnI had him send that to me in writing and accepted it. Why, you ask? Because of what I did next. I ran one Google search and found several news stories about that monitor having been launched here a month ago. It was also listed as available on Dell’s official website for India.rnTo make it bulletproof, I called Dell Sales separately and asked for this monitor. They sent me a quote and everything, eagerly telling me that they could ship it on the very same day. I forwarded this email to the customer care guys and shouted at them for being the lying crooks that they were.rnThey apologized and offered to send me the U3011 now, but with reduced warranty. What’s more, I would have to pay 12.5% in taxes because of some state law, which had apparently been inapplicable on all the other monitors they had sent me so far. So I had them ship it to a different state and then paid shipping to have it shipped from there to my own state. No 12.5% tax levied, as I’d suspected.rnFinally, I at computer repair Broward and at computer repair Fort Lauderdale had a perfectly functioning upgraded monitor! The Dell UltraSharp U3011, with billions of colours and an IPS pan…wait, it would not even turn on! I consulted the manual, I changed outlets, I even changed power cords. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.