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Thursday, August 11, 2005

Go to Hell Dell! Warranty or Lottery? On with the boycott. 

My laptop’s hard drive shit its pants today exactly three weeks after the warranty expired. I’d hate to use the word coincidence, but hey. I’ve been on the phone with Dell all day, or rather their off-shore call centers in India and elsewhere. I eventually ran diagnostics and found error code 0F00:0244. This means that the hard drive decided to fuck itself as hard as possible. Did the computer fall on the floor? Nope. Did a virus take it down? Nope. Did I spill my cocktail on the thing? Nope. Like many other Dell suckers the 0F00:0244 message is common. Part of the Dell quarterly strategy I reckon, and a great reason to sell you another hard drive. Corporate responsibility to quality and costumer satisfaction? I’ve seen pick-pockets in Mexico City give better warranties on their services.

I wonder how coincidental it is that Dell makes every PC to order after the purchase order is issued and if the warranty is accepted or not. Didn’t accept the warranty? Here have a drive from the piece o shit pile. Or to filter out the conspiracy theory just for a minute, lets just come to grips with the fact that Dell makes shitty hard drives, and offers even shittier customer service.

If a pharmaceutical company or an automobile company released faulty products on the market then they would be put up on charges, and the public would hang them high. But not the computer companies. No no, they have a blessed impunity that allows them to sell third rate faulty trash at bargain basement prices. Crashes, worms, viruses, the blue screen of death, it’s all come to be expected on the information super-highway, much like we come to expect the odd car-wreck, dead dog and injured pedestrian on the roads. Back up your drive? You should do it out of common sense, like wearing your seatbelt. The only difference is that you actually stand a fighting chance of never actually needing your seatbelt. We’ll all be reaching for the back-up disks at some point.

Comments:
Coincidence indeed ... very glad now that we forked out the $$ for the 3 year warranty. It means the darn thing will last 3 years and 3 months no doubt.
 
The mainboard of my Acer laptop died the day after my warranty expired. US$400 later, it is working. The only consolation was I brought my laptop for US$350 less than what it would cost in Australia so I thought fuck it, you win some you lose some.

Dinaks
 
Have you guys used pricespy?
http://www.pricespy.co.nz/

In Korea they have something similar. My wife and I wanted to buy a handicam so she checked online.

We ended up getting a good sony one for about $1,200 NZ when they retail in NZ for about $2,500.

Only downside is it's in bloody Japanese and can't be changed. She has a manual in Korean so can work out how to do everything technical. I can film, take photos and download it to the comp so I'm happy enough.

Can't complain about those sort of savings by shopping around online.
 
Just to let you know I work for dell, yes its common, but we use western digital hard drives, so they are not some thrid party P.O.S.
 
You guys ought to post your story at http://www.gotohelldell.com. Yes, it is a real site.
 
Roger, 10-4. I ran the error-checking on my Dell Dimension Desktop, 8400, C: just to be doing something. I'd never run this check before. When it finished it would'nt boot itself, only get as far as "Loading PBR Descriptor2..Failed" Diagnostics check came up "OFOO-O244". I guess, too bad, I'm sad, no hard drive detected. Up yours Mr. Dell
 
Sorry bud but the WD drives IMHO are a P.O.S. as their servo tracks are written as fast as possible with a P.O.S. stole IP knockoff of a Seagate writer.
 

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