According to the Wall Street Journal (paid subscriptions only), Dell is about to buy Alienware. (More details from ZDNet here.) Pretty soon Dell customers will be able to spend $10,000 for a PC.
It will be interesting to see how those first buyers react when they have a problem with that Dell PC and get shunted into the world’s worst technical support system. I’m still getting comments on posts from 2004 like this one, and the quote from Dell CEO in this post is priceless and clueless at the same time.
In the six months or so since I last wrote about Dell, their service has become worse. I’ve now been waiting 24 days for Dell to repair a defective motherboard on a notebook computer that’s still under warranty. The sheer incompetence of their support organization is breathtaking.
If you’re thinking of buying a Dell – or an Alienware – think again. There are plenty of well-run companies you can give your business to. You’ll get a better computer, and your blood pressure will stay within medically acceptable bounds. Trust me on this one.
Ed Bott 
It seems that in the short term at least that Alienware might survive this take over:
“Dell said Alienware “will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary following completion of the transaction and will maintain its own product development, product marketing, sales, technical support and other operations as well as brand.”
However, I’d be surprised if Dell “best practices” don’t rub off on Alienware and even if they don’t, I can see changes being forced on them as soon as Dell wants to make more cash.
Anyone who gives money to Dell obviously hasn’t done any research beforehand and I really feel for them. The range of problems that people encounter, combined with the overall poor support really does seem to leave a lot of their customers neck-deep in troubles.
Needless to say, the PC Doctor HQ is a Dell-free zone 🙂
Sadly I just bought a Dell laptop. The bright side is that it only cost me $600, and it’s a total spare so I won’t be depending on it. Yes I bought on price alone. For my real PC I have a Sony Vaio.
But my main machine is a Powerbook, which I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Doesn’t the high end XPS Renegade cost about $10K and is a pure Dell product? So that day is here. As for Dell themselves, the laptop market these days reminds me of the server market. Nobody serious buys (or builds) a cheap whitebox server and the consumer lines of laptops are equivalent. No problems on this Latitude D610 and I’m at a conference where it seems like 40% of the attendees (~6000) have D610s. So Dell are selling quite a few of those.
As an AlienWare owner, I have seriously mixed feelings. I’d like to think it’s just going to be run without direct input (read: interference) from Dell as a whole, and that they are doing it mainly to get a pre-built toehold in the AMD market. The cynic in me says they will run it into the ground.
I’m an Alienware owner too, the machine is great, the Technical Support could NOT be worse than DELL if you got rid of support. There support is trained to work off a pre-scripted document. They don’t even listen to what you’re telling them. I’ve been in the IT Support field now for 15 years and Alienware support is by far the worst I’ve come accross. we have some Dells at work and normally I don’t have to call them which is good because they’re support is not all that great either, bu still better than Alienware.
Speed wise Dell is much faster at delivery and repair though than Alienware too so I’m not sure if I feel sorry for Dell or Alienware.
Alienware support was the worst experience of my computer life. I bought one of their machines two months ago and it has never worked. I’ve spent countless hours with their incompentant staff on the phone. They sent a field tech out and he made the machine worse. I did every thing they ask me to and when I asked for my money back we had passed the magic thirty day limit. They are very clever. So i was stuck having done all they ask, with a very expensive broken machine.
Their solution? Send it to us and we’ll fix it and mail it back to you… this is not what I paid for. But I had no choice, so once again following their instructions… I just got a phone call that the case was broken in transport… and of course this will not be covered by their warrenty so now I’m two months in with a broken machine and a case that is broken and they won’t fix.
Their solution? “You can buy a new case from us” Again no choice. I hate alienware. They took my money and my time and unrepentantly screw me at every turn.
I will never do business with them again!
My advice… as soon as you see a single problem get your money back… do not do anything to help them or accomodate them… immediately get a refund. Immediately – they will do nothing to help you. They seem completely unconcerned with how horrible your experience is.
I have not heard a single appology from anyone of their staff. I can not stress how strongly you should avoid them at all cost.
This information was ban from two other non- Alienware web form over threat of legal action from Alienware. This is real information not make belive just fill out the form and publish your results
Rumors are the state of FL has been investigating ALienware. So, I submitted my complain via the URL listed below
http://myfloridalegal.com/contact.nsf/contact
I received this e-mail reply Per some agreement the FL. State of Attorney Genera
has with Alienware
“As part of the understanding from the active AVC, this complant has been
forwarded to Alienwarre”
Please goto the FL. State of Attorney General url listed
fill out the form if it an warrant isues say so, no rebate say so, over heating say so.
Don’t let Alienware get off the hook, fill the form out and post your results
Cheers
carbonman