All I Want For Christmas Is My Working Laptop (aka Dell Service Sucks)

It's now going on 6 days since my laptop decided it was too tired to work anymore. Dell's performance in resolving this issue has been anything but stellar. Here's the background, you decide.

Problem 1: It's the Motherboard, Stupid

When I first called and talked to the Tech Support technician, I explained to him that I thought the problem was with the main board. Why? Well for a year now I have been having an issue whenever I shutdown or restart my machine (you know that Blue Screen of Death thing). The most recent plague, and the one that led me to the call, was the consistent crashing and the Bios (yes, the message from the Main Board) complaining that the amount of system memory had changed and it was lowering the amount.

So this guy has me remove the RAM, put one in, put the other in, seat it, re-seat it. Whatever. A bunch of hokey-pokey dancing and the problems don't go away, they just look more and more different. We don't get the RAM mention for a 20 mins (so I guess that solved it, I should use half as much RAM). SO he blames it on my Windows install and leaves me to run one last Diagnostic (takes like 2 hours to complete). Finally, it complains of no errors, I start up the machine and I get the bloody memory warning again.

I call back now and tell the guy, "Hey, I think it's the main board". Again, he says that it's the memory. At least he said he thought it could be the main board as well (he went on mute and checked with someone that told him no). SO they schedules some new memory to be sent to me. When Dell says new though, they actually mean some refurbished memory.

I get the new memory. No dice. Same error. Still no computer.

Problem 2: Thanks for the warning

So I call to alert them once again, "Hey, I think it's the main board" Now that they've wasted 3 days with this stupid memory fix shit. So finally the guy agrees and says they're sending out a new main board to the technician and he'll call me on Thursday to come by and fix it.

Wow! That's cool I am thinking. So I wait around all day like an asshole hoping that this guy is going to call me so I can get back to work. Guess what. No call.

I just got off the phone with another one of them now. According to her, that guy's on holiday now and won't be back until Monday. So he'll call me then to make arrangements. Hello? When they scheduled this to go out, they knew he was not going to be available so why the hell didn't they tell me this to begin with. Now I am stuck another 4 days without my machine.

To top it off, she's warning me that I need to return my original memory so that they don't charge me. The last tech told me that I should hold it until the main board is shipped so that we know for sure. Make up your damned mind. It would have been returned if your friggin' tech got his ass over here today with my shit. Who's fault is it exactly?

All I know is they're so lucky it's Christmas time and I'm in such a fucking cheerful mood ;)

Happy Holidays Friends!