The good: Dell appears to have fixed my computer by implementing the solution I suggested
The bad: It took two months after I suggested the solution, two separate depot repairs totalling 13 days computerless despite the fact that the problem occurred under an on-site service warranty, and an assortment of additional stressers.
The details:
The problem was that, following an in-warranty replacement of a failed hard drive, my BIOS sporadically failed to recognize the presence of operating system on the hard drive. This was a particularly stubborn problem, and had persisted through all possible troubleshooting and one previous attempt at depot repair.
I felt like they were grasping at straws when the best idea they could come up with was another attempt at depot repair and I was very reluctant to send my computer away and have to spend some time computerless, but the telephone technician told me it would be expedited since it's the second attempt (5-7 business days, rather than the standard 5-10). Since my first attempt at depot repair had only taken 4 days all in, I reluctantly agreed to give them one last chance.
I received the shipping box on a Monday, which was the day before my grandmother died, and when I learned of her death I decided to postpone sending out my computer for a week. Being computerless is very stressful to me, and I didn't want the additional stress when I was freshly bereaved.
So the next Monday, I dropped my computer off at the closest Purolator shipping office (a local print shop). I decided to drop it off rather than having a courier pick it up so I could use my computer for part of the day on Monday and prepare it for shipping at my leisure rather than having to have the whole thing ready by 9 in the morning because I don't know what day the courier will come.
Unfortunately, there was a snowstorm on Monday, so the Purolator truck didn't show up at the store to pick up my package!
After a frantic Tuesday morning spent trying to figure out why my computer wasn't in the Purolator system, it was ultimately picked up on Tuesday evening, and arrived at the Dell depot on Wednesday morning. I figured no big deal, last time around it arrived at Dell on Tuesday and was back in my hands on Thursday, so I'll probably still get it back this week.
The Dell tracker showed that they received my unit at 8:30 and began diagnosis at 2:30. Okay, a bit more of a delay than last time, but still reasonable. I was heartened to see the expected return day showing Thursday.
But on Thursday at 10 am, the status changed to "Customer Hold", which meant it was on hold until they got some information from me. I waited and waited, willing the phone to ring, obsessively checking my email, but no one contacted me.
As you might have noticed if you follow me on Twitter, this stressed me out. What was the problem? Why did they need to contact me? And if they so needed to contact me, why hadn't they done so yet? Had they lost my computer? Was it going to take months to fix? What could possibly be going on?
I spent much of the day stressing and crying and catastrophizing, and when I hadn't heard back by the end of the depot's business hours I started emailing and tweeting at anyone I thought might have information. I finally got a snippet of information from @DellCares: apparently, the depot hadn't been able to reproduce the problem. But that just raised more questions. Why did they need to contact me? And why hadn't they? If you need information from the customer about how to reproduce the problem before you proceed further, what is gained by not contacting the customer? It seems like in this case you'd either ship it straight back with "could not reproduce" to keep your numbers up, or you'd contact the customer right away so you could move forward. Both @DellCares and one of the techs I'd been emailing with said they'd have the depot get back to me the next day, so I eventually managed to soothe myself to sleep.
On Thursday at 10 am, I still hadn't heard from anyone. So I checked the tracker again, and it said the hold had been lifted at 9 am. But no one had contacted me! What was going on here? From where I'm sitting, it looks very much like they wasted a day (thereby doubling my number of computerless days because of the weekend) for no particular reason!
At 11, the tracker said they'd begun repair. I was glad to see progress, but how could they be repairing if they couldn't reproduce the error? I hoped this was just an interim step towards shipping my computer back to me.
Meanwhile, the email tech told me that the hold delay was due to the depot having to find out whether I have a complete or limited warranty. How does that take a whole day? And why did the tracker say "customer hold" when that wasn't information that they'd find out from me? And what kind of strange crazy problem did I have that required them to double check the warranty?
On Friday, the tracker still said the computer was under repair and the next update would be Monday. So I bolstered myself for the stress of a computerless weekend, exacerbated by all these questions about the mystery hold.
On Monday, I eagerly refreshed the tracker over and over, but it hadn't been updated despite the fact that it said Monday was the next update day. Had the repair failed? What if they couldn't figure it out and insisted on holding onto my computer for weeks and weeks? Partway through the day I received an email the email tech, but all he had to say was that the computer was still in repair. It seemed like the email was either automatically generated or he was blindly transcribing the tracker status into email without regard for utility.
Then, towards the end of the day on Monday, the tracker said the repair was complete and they were shipping my computer back to me! I was half delighted and half nervous, uncertain if the problem would actually be fixed or not, and, because of the various horror stories I'd read online, partly dreading that my computer might come back in worse condition. I'd already decided that if this repair hadn't fixed it I wouldn't accept a third depot repair because it was just too stressful for me, so I was also partly dreading having to be assertive to get my computer fixed without Dell marking me as a problem customer.
I received my computer on Tuesday. I was so worried that something might have gone wrong that I videoed the unboxing and the first few boot-ups, just in case I needed evidence of any damage or evidence of the problem reoccurring.
The first mystery was on the slip that came with the computer, telling me what work had been done. Under "The unit was received with the following cosmetic issues which is not covered by Dell's HW Warranty", everything was checked (Scratches/Marks on top cover/Case, Scratches/Marks on LCD Screen/Bezel, and Scratches/Marks on Palmrest). There were no scratches or marks when I sent it out! I inspected it closely, and discovered...there were no scratches or marks on it when I received it back either! Did the depot check all those off as a matter of course so they wouldn't be obligated to repair any damage they did??? Yet another source of distrust!
Dreading the prospect of having a damaged computer in hand that Dell would refuse to prepare, I booted up, still taking video. On the first boot-up, it said "Setup is preparing your computer for first use", just like it did after my last depot repair. Figuring that meant they hadn't tested it like I asked, I created an account, finished the installation of Windows, and decided to boot up a couple more times to see if the problem reoccurred.
On the first boot-up after the installation of Windows was completed, I saw that there were in fact two Windows accounts: my own, and one named "Dell". Maybe this meant they had tested it! I did two more boot-ups from complete shutdown, and the problem didn't reoccur.
I looked at the device manager, and saw that the hard drive they'd installed wasn't Western Digital this time! The device manager said my hard drive was a "ST1000LM024-HN-M101MBB", which, according to google, is a Samsung hard drive - just like I originally had and I requested after the first round of hardware troubleshooting failed back in December!
That appears to have solved the problem (so far at least, knock wood). Since I got the computer back, I've had 8 boot-ups from a power-off state and 3 boot-ups from a hibernate state, and it has worked every single time. I sincerely hope this means it's fixed!
A squandered opportunity
This whole saga has been a squandered opportunity for Dell to delight me and win back my unquestioning loyalty. As I mentioned in my post about how Dell needs to empower its employees, the telephone tech was not empowered to dispatch a Samsung hard drive as I requested, even after we'd eliminated every other variable.
If he had been empowered to do so, the whole problem would have been solved with the second on-site service call. I would have been delighted with Dell for, once again, saving my ass in the dying days of my warranty, and would have blindly gone with Dell for my next computer purchase, buying the best gaming laptop they'd be willing to sell me with all the warranties and upgrades available.
Since the problem would have been solved before xmas, I would have told everyone at xmas (empty-nester baby boomers and millennial young professionals, most of whom have more disposable income now than they ever have before) all about how Dell saved my ass. But, since the problem was still ongoing at xmas, I instead was telling them about how Dell was stressing me out by wanting to send my computer to a depot even though the problem occurred under an on-site warranty.
Since I wouldn't have had any reason to google up other people's Dell depot experiences, I wouldn't have seen other people's horror stories and therefore wouldn't have been stressing out nearly as much. I wouldn't have been saturating my Twitter feed with worries about Dell. I wouldn't have been blogging extensively about everything I found stressful about Dell. I would simply have written one blog post praising their warranty service, and gotten on with life.
But, because the Dell telephone technician was not empowered to take my suggestion of using the original brand of hard drive, and because the first round of depot repair either couldn't or didn't this suggestion, my loyalty was not won over and all the word of mouth and social media I produced about Dell over the past two months was full of stress and worry.
They should be able to do better, and it's rather their loss that they didn't.
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