Fort Smith Gamers

So it’s time to purchase a new computer and you’ve decided you’re going to pull out all the stops and get a shiny new Alienware computer because “it’s the best gaming computer money can buy” right? Wrong! Before you take the plunge and sink $3500-$4500 into a new computer, read this article on why you SHOULD NOT purchase an Alienware. I have to warn you in advance, this article is really long, but if you're looking for a good laugh or if you even think you might ever consider buying an Alienware, I highly recommend you read the entire thing. However, you can click here if you want a shorter description of my Alienware woes.

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First, a little background information: Over the last few years I have owned a number of different computers. Among them have been an inexpensive (read that as cheap) generic ‘clone’ computer that I bought on closeout, a dell laptop and two computers I have built myself. Last year, in February of 2003, I had what I believed was the good fortune to purchase two Alienware computers. I had read several reviews stating how outstanding they were, the attention they paid to detail, and the quality they put in building what many felt were the fastest gaming rigs available for purchase. I have an area 51m laptop with a 2.8ghz P4 processor, a radeon 9000m graphics card with 128mb onboard and 512mb of pc 2100 Ram as well as a custom desktop system with 3.06mhz P4 with HT, a Radeon 9700 all in wonder and 512mb of rambus memory. I consider myself reasonably competent when it comes to computers and I can say without a doubt that of six computers I’ve owned in the past five years, including the cheap clone and the two I built, none have given me near the trouble that either of my Alienware’s have.

The majority of my friends are gamers, and my two Alienware’s have become a running joke. Those who game with me consider them buggy and unreliable and not as good for gaming as their similarly or “less” equipped rigs. I will highlight some specific hardware problems I had with each, but for every example given, their have been at least a half dozen times when the systems became unstable and the only solution was to erase the hard drives and do a fresh reinstall. Please keep in mind that I currently have 2 other gaming rigs that I built myself (I host a lot of LAN parties at my house). I load the same games, patches and other software on all 4 computers and neither of my computers (built with cheaper motherboards, one is a Celeron 2.0ghz processor with a geforce 5200 ultra video card, the other has a P4 2.8ghz processor with a geforce 5700 ultra) have had these “software issues,” whereas both of my alienware’s are constantly unstable.

I’ll go into specific problems with these computers, but first a little info on alienware’s “Grade A customer support.” I purchased my first Alienware in March of 2003 and for the first 6 months the problem with customer support was finding evidence that Alienware even provided it. A typical call yielded hold times of 30-90 minutes (that’s not a typo, 90 minutes is the limit I set for myself at which point I would hang up. I reached this limit on several occasions). The average hold time for me was 45-60 minutes, and times of less than 20 minutes were non-existent. This was the case for the first 5-6 months until finally something changed. Hold times are now very acceptable, with times longer than 10-15 minutes being rare. That’s a good thing, I thought. Unfortunately, the hold until you hang up policy seems to be replaced with a trouble shoot until you give up policy.

Both of my computers have 3 year extended warranties, and with my desktop, I purchased the onsite warranty. Unfortunately, when you call you are taken through a never ending trouble shooting process. I know what you’re thinking…”what else do you expect?” Well, with dell, you go through a trouble shooting process and if they can’t fix it, you send it in or they send out a replacement part depending on the circumstance. With Alienware, they just keep trying to trouble shoot. An average Tech support call is over an hour and I have had several last over two hours and even one that lasted over three hours. When you call, they start a trouble shooting process and they keep going through small “tweaks” that do nothing for the computer. After an hour or two you eventually get tired of this and cry uncle. Unfortunately, they have more trouble shooting to do and have to continue with their protocol. You’re only option is to stay on the phone and continue the process or call back later. The one time I thought I could out last them, I was on the phone for over 3 hours before I finally gave up and called it a night. It’s as if the attitude is help till it hurts. Instead of simply servicing the computer under warranty, they troubleshoot you until you simply cannot stay on the phone any longer (ever tried to stay on the phone with tech support for over 3 hours?). When you decide to call back later, instead of taking up where you left off, the process begins at the beginning. You spend an hour repeating what you’ve already done before going on to something new. On one occasion, a support person ran out of things to do and actually had me call back another day because someone else had “another level” of trouble shooting they could do, before the computer could be sent in on warranty.

On multiple attempts, my frustration has been high enough to prompt me to ask to speak with a supervisor. Frequently, the response has been that the supervisors were too busy and would be unable to attend to my problem, leaving me no other recourse but to sit and fume. The end result? Most issues, I have learned to live with or have erased my hard drive and performed a clean reinstall to try to fix. Some problems worked themselves out over the course of a month or so as computer problems sometimes do, others I live with to this day. Only twice have they actually agreed to let me send in my laptop or set up a service call for my desktop, and I’ll refer to those episodes below.

Now on to specifics, I’ll start with my desktop which has been the less troublesome of the two computers. To begin with, this computer comes with rambus memory, which you may know, has to be configured with matching ram sticks (i.e.-if you want 512mb of memory you can’t have a single 512mb stick, you have to have either 2 256mb chips or 4 128mb chips). My motherboard had 4 dimms for ram, so I called and specifically requested 2 256mb chips so that if I wanted to expand to 1gb of ram (something I have very much wanted to do on multiple occasions), I would be able to do so without trashing the ram I already had. I was assured that this would be no problem and the computer would be configured as I requested. I received the computer and low and behold it was configured with 4 128mb chips filling all the memory slots, completely preventing an expansion with my existing hardware. I called customer service, told them my story and was told “I’m sorry but there’s nothing we can do.” Not wanting to accept this, I asked to speak with a customer service manager and was told they were too busy.

Next, within the first month of receiving my computer I began having problems with the network card. I had purchased the gigabit Ethernet card upgrade so my computer had a NIC card in a PCI slot as well as the on board 10/100 ethernet adapter. My connection to my home network was very erratic from the beginning, so after having the cable company check my broadband connection and assuring me it was ok, I called Alienware. After excessive hold times and endless troubleshooting, I was told the card was fine and it must be my router, I’d need to call linksys to have the problem resolved. I contacted linksys, who troubleshot my router and told me it was ok. They suggested trying another router to see if the problem still occurred with my gigabit card and/or using my 10/100 onboard jack to see if it would work. I did both. I borrowed a friends router and hooked it up and still could not get the gigabit adapter to work, I then returned to my original router and changed over to my onboard lan jack and voila! A working connection! I called Alienware to relay this information and was told I should simply deactivate the gigabit card and use my onboard connection. Hold on now…deactivate the upgrade that I paid extra for and use the onboard lan? This didn’t seem correct and I said so, but was told the trouble shooting didn’t reveal a problem so they could not replace the nic card. Now here’s where I messed up, frustrated with the long wait times I’d been experiencing, I accepted this, and to this day, I have a useless gigabit upgrade in my computer and I still use the onboard 10/100 Lan connection.

My desktop also came with alien autopsy to troubleshoot errors, and alien adrenaline a video performance optimizer that I purchased as an upgrade. During the first 6 months, trouble shooting on 2 separate occasions because of an unstable system, revealed that these Alienware installed programs were causing conflicts. The solution? Remove them. So much for those upgrades.

Finally, earlier this year my motherboard went out on me. What do you expect, the computer was almost 14 months old. I called and went through the endless troubleshooting before they were finally convinced the motherboard was bad and they finally agreed to send out a repair person (the first and only time this has ever happened). Now, I bought my computer with what I thought was a 3 year, onsite, next business day, extended warranty. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sent any documentation related to my purchased warranty and the website has since gone through many changes so I don’t have any way of proving this. I was told that they couldn’t schedule the repair call, on the phone. First, I had to “secure” a new motherboard by giving them a credit card number so they could charge me the $140 the motherboard cost. They would then send me the motherboard. Upon receiving it in 4-5 business days I had to call Alienware at which time they would STILL not be able to schedule the repair but 24-48 hours after this second call, someone would contact me and schedule a visit. I asked why I had to be charged for the motherboard on a warranty repair, I was told that this was to ensure that they received the motherboard back. I was assured the hold would come off my credit card as soon as the bad board was returned to them. Keep in mind that the swap was actually to be done by their service technician who came in, did the repair, and took the motherboard with him. I had to take the financial risk so that if he had not returned the board, Alienware could charge me for it. With no other options, I gave them a credit card number, and the motherboard arrived in (I believe) 4 days. I called Alienware back, and two days later a repairman called and informed me that they could come out in 1 week. That’s 2 weeks total without my primary gaming computer. It just so happened my laptop was currently in alienware’s possession for the below mentioned screen repair, I hadn’t yet built the second of my gaming rigs, and the first has a geforce 5200 which has just about reached the end of it’s gaming life, leaving me without a gaming computer. Fortunately, after throwing an all out fit, I was able to convince the repairman to come sooner and was only without a gaming rig a little over a week.

As for my Alienware laptop, if my desktop was a nightmare, the laptop borders on apocalyptic. My biggest complaint has been overall instability. I have several tech support calls complaining that the system was unstable, buggy, and “laggy”. Troubleshooting revealed no problems and repeated hard drive wipes and fresh operating installs have not improved the situation. It’s hard to tell you any specifics; I can only tell you it’s been a problem that prevents it from being a very effective gaming machine. Any number of friends who have tried to use it at LAN parties can attest to this.

As far as specifics, the problems began before I even received my machine. I paid for 3 day shipping from Fed Ex on my computer. For a reason that was never explained to me, Alienware shipped my computer to a FedEx warehouse in a city 20 miles from where I live. After 3 calls with customer support were I was assured the problem had been solved, I made 3 trips to our local fed ex to find it had not. Eventually, I traveled to the warehouse (did I mention it was in a different city?) and picked it up myself. The warehouse was not set up for customer pickups, so I spoke with an employee on the phone and, following her instructions, went to the warehouse and looked around until I found it lying under a set of stairs where she had agreed to leave it. Now, having lived this experience, I still find it hard to believe, but let me assure you, that is exactly what happened without exaggeration or embellishment. I called and complained to Alienware about this and asked for a refund of the $75 shipping fee. After finally speaking with a manager I was told that the cost could not be refund, but I would be sent “coupons” worth $75 to make up for the inconvenience. One month later, I had received no coupons, so I called on 4/18/03 and was told they had been delayed but would be there in a week. I didn’t receive them within a week so I called on 4/26 and the customer service rep couldn’t find anything about the coupons in the computer and told me no managers were available to speak with, but he would “look into it.” I called back on 5/23 and was again told they would arrive in 5-7 business days. I placed my final call on 7/14/03 and was once again assured they were on their way. Sure enough, after another 4 weeks I did finally receive them.

Now, for what I consider the biggest of the problems I’ve had with Alienware. My laptop was shipped on 3/13/2003 and in less than 1 month the screen began having problems. I placed my first call to customer service about this issue on 4/17/2003. The screen would periodically come up in shades of brown only with all other colors being washed out. You could see everything on the screen but the entire screen was in “earth tones.” Sometimes this could be fixed with a simple reboot other times it would persist. The problem occurs at random intervals and cannot be reliably reproduced. Sometimes it may occur with every reboot other times it may go weeks between occurrences. Several calls to tech support revealed that those times a reboot didn’t fix the issue, rebooting in VGA mode and then resetting my graphics settings would usually do the trick. Unfortunately a fix could not be found, so each time it occurred I would call customer service again and while the problem would go away with a reboot, they couldn’t find a solution.

Since the problem was correcting with troubleshooting, tech support didn’t feel it was necessary to send the computer in even though it kept recurring. At one point, after several hours of trouble shooting, I was told, next time it occurs, I would need to hook the computer to an external monitor and call with the results. Finally after endless frustration and over 5 months of tech support calls, I asked for a more definitive fix for this solution. I was told I could send it in for a repair, and was informed that the first step would be to erase the hard drive and do a fresh reinstall. Now at this point, I was not very familiar with the process of erasing a hard drive and doing a fresh install of the operating system (OS) or the time and trouble related to it. I did not want to risk loosing information by an inadequate backup (which at this point I’d only done once or twice before), be without my computer, and have to reinstall everything upon its return. I elected to live with the problem which I did for approximately 6 or 7 more months.

By April of 2004 the problem had gotten more frequent and more difficult to correct. In addition, the keyboard had now broken so that it continuously popped out of the case and one of the four USB ports no longer worked. Under the direction of tech support I had erased my hard drive and performed an OS fresh install but the problem persisted. I sent off my computer and it was gone for 2 weeks. I reminded tech support of the fresh install they had walked me through and was told they would fix the problem and email me with progress on the repair. I attempted to check up on the progress and was told I would be called or emailed, but instead the next contact I received was that the computer had been shipped back to me. After being without my laptop (which serves as my primary work computer), for 2 weeks it was shipped back with an email stating that a fresh install had been done. I called to find out what else had been done, only to discover that a fresh install and fixing the keyboard was all that was done during the 2 weeks it was gone. I told tech support I was quite mad that I had not been contacted as I had been assured I would and that after being without a computer for 2 weeks they had only repeated a procedure that tech support had walked me through at home a few weeks before hand. Sure enough, the USB and screen problems were not fixed. The screen issue recurred within 24 hours of receiving the computer and the USB port was in the same condition in which I had been sent it off. I called tech support irate and asked what was happening. No explanation was given for this occurrence but I was assured that I could send it back and it would be turned over to the critical issues department who would take special care of my issue and make sure it was fixed.

I was very unhappy with this situation, particularly having to be without my computer again. Given the fact that this problem had now been going on for a year with numerous failures on the part of Alienware to fix it (and in fact a USB port was now non functional as well), I requested either a refund, a new computer, or credit for the original price of the laptop ($2973.05) towards a new computer. I was told this was not possible but was told they would upgrade my processor from 2.8 to 3.06 GHz with the repair. I sent off the computer requesting repair of the screen malfunction as well as the USB port, and was given assurances that I would be kept apprised of the situation as the repair progressed. This time my computer was gone for 4 weeks. I did not receive regular updates as I had been told and again would have been left in the dark had it not been for several calls requesting updates. I was assured things were coming along but as the weeks passed, I remained without my computer. Finally, my computer was returned to me and I was told that the motherboard and screen had been replaced and it was “as if I had a brand new computer.” Mysteriously, this “brand new computer” had the same exact USB port dead as before I shipped it and now, the other 3 ports would no longer function properly. Each time something was plugged into the USB port it would fail to auto detect, and I had to manually install the drivers before the peripherals (such as my mouse) would function. I contacted technical support and was greeted with a shrug as to why this would happen. The screen problem had not recurred and my work computer had been gone for nearly 6 straight weeks, so I decided to simply deal with it.

Fast forward 2 months until August 2004 and suddenly, without identifiable reason, the problem is back. My only partially functional computer is once again coming up in shades of brown. I attempted to ignore it, but the problem quickly got worse, so back I went to Tech support. The support reps still wanted to make me go through endless troubleshooting (none of it new) each time I called despite a year of prior trouble shooting and 2 consecutive trips to the repair depot for the same exact problem. Needless to say, I refused. I once again requested either a refund, a new computer, or credit for the original price of the laptop towards a new computer. I was flat out refused, despite repeated protestations to multiple people. Left with no other option…you guessed it, I loaded up my computer and sent it back to the repair depot.

Included on the desktop were digital pictures of the screen problems along with pictures of the screens normal appearance. I also emailed these pictures to customer support to make sure they received a copy. I voiced my concerns about the computer having been gone so long previously (6 weeks total), the lack of communication on the part of Alienware, and the need to fix not only the screen but also the USB ports. I spoke with Tech support manager Juan Carlos who assured me he would personally stay on the matter and make sure it was fixed, he would send me email updates as to what was being accomplished, and he informed me, and I quote “the computer will not be in depot more than 5 days before it is fixed and sent back to you.”

I dropped off my computer at the fed ex depot on September 3, 2004 and to date, October 18, 2004 I still do not have my computer back and no contact concerning my computer has ever been initiated by Juan Carlos, hereafter referred to as JC, or any Alienware employee (JC did however return one message I left for him). I never even received an email letting me know my computer had arrived at the repair depot. After 2 weeks, I became worried that my computer had not been received so on 9/15 I called and spoke with JC who informed me that they had received the computer a week earlier and the technicians had seen the photos of the computer problem, but no solution had been arrived at. He assured me he would keep me informed and let me know as soon as a decision on what to do had been reached. One week later, having heard nothing, I called on 9/23 and left a message which JC returned later that day. He informed me that no progress had been made and he didn’t know what was going to be done, but he would keep me informed. One week later on 9/30, I called and spoke with a customer service rep who said a note was in the computer that they were going to try going with a different brand name computer screen. I asked that she leave a message for JC to call me, but he never returned this call. One week later, I called and spoke with Peter in tech support who told me a note in the computer stated that they were still planning on trying a different brand screen but one had not be obtained as of yet. JC was not available to talk with, I left a message but he did not return it. I took the following week off from calling out of frustration and finally called back today, 10/18/2004. JC was not available, so I spoke with Josh in Tech support. Josh informed me the computer had a new screen on it but it was being held in depot still. When asked why, he didn’t know. When asked when I could expect it to be shipped back to me (today is 6 ½ weeks from the day I sent it off), he didn’t know. I asked to speak with someone in critical issues (you remember, the department the takes ‘special care’ of people with difficult problems such as mine), he placed me on hold for 10 minutes (I sat and stared at the clock), and returned to inform me no one in that department was available to address my issue. He told me he could leave a message, and I informed him my last two messages had not been returned. I requested the name of someone in critical issues (since JC had failed to return my previous two calls) that I could ask for by name and he told me he was not allowed to give out that information. I requested an email address so that I could email critical issues to get more information and he told me he was not allowed to give me that information. I asked specifically if he was saying that he could not tell me what the situation was with my computer or when I would receive it, nor could anyone currently available at technical support, nor could he give me a name or email address of anyone who could help me with this problem, he said I was correct but he would leave a message for Juan Carlos and critical issues. When I again stated that my last two messages had not been returned, he said he was sorry but that’s all he could do. I asked him to leave these messages and as of yet, I have not been called.

Now at this point, I am obviously quite unhappy about the situation, but I have gone out of my way to always be polite during these phone calls, I have not raised my voice at any point, and I certainly have not gotten obscene or profane in any way. Unfortunately, this has not yielded any results. So if you still want an Alienware computer, consider yourself forewarned. As for me, I’ve already left messages with two lawyers and a letter will be going off to the Better Business Bureau later this week. It may not yield any results, but neither has being nice. You can be assured I’ll keep everyone informed ;). Wish me luck!

Rodney

a.k.a. - Easy Meat