Any Indian living in the USA will tell you how difficult life is in the US without a laptop. I came to realize it after my laptop gave up on me one fine morning. :(
Dell - a company revered to be one of the best laptop makers was my choice when I purchased my first laptop. The Inspiron 1420 from Dell served me really well for my entire first year in the USA. However, laptops these days have an uncanny ability to die after your warranty ends. My laptop started to freeze with a corrupted screen and I couldn't work on it anymore. For the video link of the description click here.
I was hesitant about making my call to customer service after hearing about the ensuing horror stories that many customers faced from "Mr.Smith", "Josh" or "Bryan" as their service technician. An almost perfect American accent will wither off once an Indian talks to the customer support I guess :P. So anyways, the first guy tells me my warranty is about to expire and I would have to extend it. Eager to get this settled first, I paid a substantial amount to extend my warranty for three years. Then I get connected to a lady who asked me if I tried rebooting the system. (Duh!) And then, I get connected to XXX(name protected). Now, this guy says I might have problems with my drivers. Okay, so he connected remotely to my computer, uninstalls and reinstalls my drivers and gave me his personal number to call incase I experience the problem again. Sure enough, I got the problem the next day. I make the call, he does the same thing again. The problem repeats itself on the 3rd day. Finally, the technician says he thinks I have a problem with my NVIDIA video card (you think huh!?). He sends me a box next day to pack the laptop off to God knows where and assures me that it will be fixed. All said, I have to say though that this technician is one of the nicer guys I talked to among others. He was patient in listening to my problems and assures me that I need not worry over my investment with Dell. However, only time will tell whether he was genuine or it was a marketing tactic to get me to stay with Dell.
For now, I advise people to avoid Dell and HP. They are both crap in build quality of laptops when compared to the likes of Sony, Toshiba and Lenovo. That said, I do value other people's thoughts on this matter! What do you think?
Kamal
4 comments:
There are definite alternates to the big brands - an example of a new and upcoming one is asus.
I have a phone from them and they are good at customer service.
Its bad when big companies reach the top spot and fail to retain it due to their negligence.
That is true. These companies don't realize that it was the customers that brought them to this position in the first place.
Hey Kamal, If not Dell, not HP, then only Apple remains. Any idea as to when you LP will be back?
Hey Sujata! Well there are alternatives to Apple like I said. Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba are revered for their build quality and style. I have no idea when my laptop will be back though. :(
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