We try again. They refuse onsite support.
April 15-18, 2005
(Note: My gripe is with Alienware, not with any of its individual staff. To prevent this from reading like a personal attack on some of Alienware's staff, I am using obviously fictitious names instead of real names. I refer to the primary technician who worked with me as Larry, to Larry's boss as Mo, and to a third staff member as Curly.)
On April 7, I agreed to what sounded like a simple board installation, but it actually required significant time and manual dexterity. On April 14, Larry gave directions over the phone and I tried to follow them. We spent 5 hours trying to get the system to work, stopping at midnight. We scheduled the next call for April 17, when we would take the boards back out and install them in the order (which board in which slot) Larry preferred. I had tried to do this but couldn't get the Matrox card into the desired slot. Becky (my wife) had been a tech specialist in a local school--essentially a network manager and support provider for a 300-computer network. I asked her to do the physical installation because she's better at this than I am.
Becky initially adamantly refused. We paid for onsite support. This was unquestionably a defect in their system--they had even called us to tell us about it. Her expectation was that they should install the board, format the drive, set up the RAID and the system software--essentially restore the system's software to what came loaded on the machine when it left the factory. She cited plenty of examples of vendor experience to me. I had my own examples, consistent with hers: many tech support groups would try to save money by getting the customer to act as the onsite tech, but if you asked for an onsite tech, you got one. I checked with some folk at school who had more recent industry support experience, and their experiences were consistent with Becky's and mine.
We decided to start the call on the 17th by asking Alienware to send a technician. But I was desperate. My computer was sitting on the desk in pieces, down for 10 days during the peak of my term. I tried piteous begging. Becky agreed that if Alienware would not provide onsite support, she would play technician.
When I called Alienware on the 17th, I didn't initially reach Larry. I reached someone who questioned whether I needed to speak with Larry. I don't have notes from that call. I wasn't expecting a public dispute with Alienware and wasn't making notes beyond those needed to facilitate getting this problem fixed. The person I talked with identified himself--I believe it was Mo. Mo initially wouldn't transfer me to Larry, even though I was calling a direct number on a scheduled appointment. He wanted to know why I was calling in detail. I explained my problem, and said that I wanted onsite support. Mo seemed flatly unsympathetic, he said this was a minor problem that was primarily software. It was my responsibility to handle it without onsite support, which I didn't need. My interpretation of his words and tone of voice was that they seemed rude and dismissive. Listening on the speakerphone, Becky formed the same impression. I insisted on speaking with Larry and Mo finally relented and put us through.
Larry refused onsite support more politely, but firmly. I made clear that if this didn't work tonight, Alienware was going to have to do the next fix, not me.
Becky successfully moved the boards around. To fit the Matrox card in the designated slot, she had to cut the ties that kept the internal cables neatly in place and move them out of the way. This tidy cabling system--Alienwiring, Exclusive Internal Wire Management--had been featured as a $99 value. Oh well, gone now.
Over the evening, two key problems developed:
I would have made a different decision about how we configured this computer (no Matrox and/or no RAID) if I had known up front that my boot drive would be "I" and not "C". This was another unpleasant surprise--and this time, I had explicitly raised the issue up front. I was unhappy to find the answer only at the end of the process, when we would have to spend hours to reverse this error.
We needed a third evening, April 18, to build a replacement Respawn disk (so that we would never have to rebuild the system again). (Of course, next time, we did have to rebuild the system again from scratch, but that's for a later post.)
Before the call on the 18th, I did extensive troubleshooting of the system to see whether we had improved anything, and whether there were any new problems. I tried tests that had previously failed with the Matrox card installed--and they still failed. As far as I could tell, the system had not improved. And now I had a nonstandard drive configuration. And I had failures, I think a higher rate of failures, with a connected USB drive.
I reported my results in a note to Alienware on the 18th:
As far as I could tell, the net effect was to make my system no better, and probably worse, than before.
We rebuilt the Respawn disk on the 18th and my computer came more or less (mainly less) back into service. The time to do the testing course's last two weeks of videos had come and gone. I got some writing done. Mainly, I spent hours reloading applications, downloading update patches and checking the system.
The system was down between April 7 and April 18. Becky and I made a running track of the time I was putting into this project. By the morning of the 18th, we estimated that I had spent 70 hours on these tasks.
I'm an attorney and a consultant. Over the past 10 years, I think the lowest hourly rate that I've charged was $100 (70 hours = $7000). Economically--and in terms of all of the work this troubleshooting stole time from--I would have been better off throwing the Alienware computer in the garbage and buying a new computer (from a different vendor).
---------------------
About that request for onsite support.
Alienware makes a big deal of its support reputation. Let me remind you of the support promise on their website (go to the Warranty Bundle section and click on the "Click here to learn more!" link):
ONSITE SUPPORT? They say: If at all possible, you won't have to come to us for your service needs--we'll come to you. They can say they'll give onsite support, but despite our repeated requests, on April 17 and in many later contacts, they flatly refused, every time, to provide it.
ADVANCED DIAGNOSTICS? AlienAutopsy? I still don't know what this is. What I do know is that I got zero diagnostic guidance or support. Figuring out whether the drive worked, troubleshooting the Premiere crashes, troubleshooting the USB drive failures, all of that was on me.
(Note: My gripe is with Alienware, not with any of its individual staff. To prevent this from reading like a personal attack on some of Alienware's staff, I am using obviously fictitious names instead of real names. I refer to the primary technician who worked with me as Larry, to Larry's boss as Mo, and to a third staff member as Curly.)
On April 7, I agreed to what sounded like a simple board installation, but it actually required significant time and manual dexterity. On April 14, Larry gave directions over the phone and I tried to follow them. We spent 5 hours trying to get the system to work, stopping at midnight. We scheduled the next call for April 17, when we would take the boards back out and install them in the order (which board in which slot) Larry preferred. I had tried to do this but couldn't get the Matrox card into the desired slot. Becky (my wife) had been a tech specialist in a local school--essentially a network manager and support provider for a 300-computer network. I asked her to do the physical installation because she's better at this than I am.
Becky initially adamantly refused. We paid for onsite support. This was unquestionably a defect in their system--they had even called us to tell us about it. Her expectation was that they should install the board, format the drive, set up the RAID and the system software--essentially restore the system's software to what came loaded on the machine when it left the factory. She cited plenty of examples of vendor experience to me. I had my own examples, consistent with hers: many tech support groups would try to save money by getting the customer to act as the onsite tech, but if you asked for an onsite tech, you got one. I checked with some folk at school who had more recent industry support experience, and their experiences were consistent with Becky's and mine.
We decided to start the call on the 17th by asking Alienware to send a technician. But I was desperate. My computer was sitting on the desk in pieces, down for 10 days during the peak of my term. I tried piteous begging. Becky agreed that if Alienware would not provide onsite support, she would play technician.
When I called Alienware on the 17th, I didn't initially reach Larry. I reached someone who questioned whether I needed to speak with Larry. I don't have notes from that call. I wasn't expecting a public dispute with Alienware and wasn't making notes beyond those needed to facilitate getting this problem fixed. The person I talked with identified himself--I believe it was Mo. Mo initially wouldn't transfer me to Larry, even though I was calling a direct number on a scheduled appointment. He wanted to know why I was calling in detail. I explained my problem, and said that I wanted onsite support. Mo seemed flatly unsympathetic, he said this was a minor problem that was primarily software. It was my responsibility to handle it without onsite support, which I didn't need. My interpretation of his words and tone of voice was that they seemed rude and dismissive. Listening on the speakerphone, Becky formed the same impression. I insisted on speaking with Larry and Mo finally relented and put us through.
Larry refused onsite support more politely, but firmly. I made clear that if this didn't work tonight, Alienware was going to have to do the next fix, not me.
Becky successfully moved the boards around. To fit the Matrox card in the designated slot, she had to cut the ties that kept the internal cables neatly in place and move them out of the way. This tidy cabling system--Alienwiring, Exclusive Internal Wire Management--had been featured as a $99 value. Oh well, gone now.
Over the evening, two key problems developed:
- When I attempted to build the RAID set, the computer responded with random ASCII characters on the screen. This happened repeatedly and I pointed it out repeatedly. Eventually, we were able to create a RAID set, but this was disconcerting. Later, when the RAID set failed, Larry would tell us that trash on the screen suggests a defective controller card. If we understood that at this time, we would have stopped installation, configuration and troubleshooting until the card checked out or was replaced. Instead, we burned a lot of time now, and got hit with another unpleasant surprise, later. (More on this in a future posting.)
- The system set my drive letters as "I" and "J" instead of "C" and "D". I pointed out repeatedly that this was a serious problem, I needed my boot drive to be "C", not "I". Larry assured me we could take care of this later. First, we needed to install the RAID, then we could rename the drives.
I know that people should not hardcode drive letters in their software, but my experience in testing software has been that several companies do this. The large retail software companies learned the hard way, over a surprisingly long time, to stop making this assumption. But the message hasn't necessarily reached the niche markets. Additionally, I work with software from students (I'm a professor) and with educational shareware -- they're still learning how to write software. In my situation, the last thing I want is a system that presents itself as a nonstandard configuration.
I would have made a different decision about how we configured this computer (no Matrox and/or no RAID) if I had known up front that my boot drive would be "I" and not "C". This was another unpleasant surprise--and this time, I had explicitly raised the issue up front. I was unhappy to find the answer only at the end of the process, when we would have to spend hours to reverse this error.
We needed a third evening, April 18, to build a replacement Respawn disk (so that we would never have to rebuild the system again). (Of course, next time, we did have to rebuild the system again from scratch, but that's for a later post.)
Before the call on the 18th, I did extensive troubleshooting of the system to see whether we had improved anything, and whether there were any new problems. I tried tests that had previously failed with the Matrox card installed--and they still failed. As far as I could tell, the system had not improved. And now I had a nonstandard drive configuration. And I had failures, I think a higher rate of failures, with a connected USB drive.
I reported my results in a note to Alienware on the 18th:
As far as I could tell, the net effect was to make my system no better, and probably worse, than before.
We rebuilt the Respawn disk on the 18th and my computer came more or less (mainly less) back into service. The time to do the testing course's last two weeks of videos had come and gone. I got some writing done. Mainly, I spent hours reloading applications, downloading update patches and checking the system.
The system was down between April 7 and April 18. Becky and I made a running track of the time I was putting into this project. By the morning of the 18th, we estimated that I had spent 70 hours on these tasks.
I'm an attorney and a consultant. Over the past 10 years, I think the lowest hourly rate that I've charged was $100 (70 hours = $7000). Economically--and in terms of all of the work this troubleshooting stole time from--I would have been better off throwing the Alienware computer in the garbage and buying a new computer (from a different vendor).
---------------------
About that request for onsite support.
Alienware makes a big deal of its support reputation. Let me remind you of the support promise on their website (go to the Warranty Bundle section and click on the "Click here to learn more!" link):
DEMAND THE ULTIMATE IN PROTECTION? Gosh, we just asked for basic onsite support."Demand no less than the ultimate in protection. With this plan, not only will you receive a specially discounted price, but you’ll also enjoy ...
- Peace of mind, knowing that you have an entire company at your disposal, equipped and ready to ensure that your computer is performing at the superior level you deserve.
- No fees for parts, labor or shipping for any warranty repair, no matter what the cost.
- 24/7 Phone Support. Have a computer problem at 3am in the morning? No problem.
- Onsite Service. If at all possible, you won’t have to come to us for your service needs – we’ll come to you.
- AlienAutopsy, a tool that will provide the Alienware® technical support staff with a detailed incident report for quick problem diagnosis.
- Respawn, a CD set, which can bring your computer back to its original factory condition in minutes...."
ONSITE SUPPORT? They say: If at all possible, you won't have to come to us for your service needs--we'll come to you. They can say they'll give onsite support, but despite our repeated requests, on April 17 and in many later contacts, they flatly refused, every time, to provide it.
ADVANCED DIAGNOSTICS? AlienAutopsy? I still don't know what this is. What I do know is that I got zero diagnostic guidance or support. Figuring out whether the drive worked, troubleshooting the Premiere crashes, troubleshooting the USB drive failures, all of that was on me.
1 Comments:
At 7:46 PM, dominic said…
Why didn't you just sue them for the value of the computer and your time. Just get it over with?
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