Finally, the Month-Long Dell Laptop Repair is Over

By Rico, 9:09 am Wed Feb 18 2009 - Editorial, Featured - 31 Opinions

Or more like a month and 10 days. To recap, I had my XPS M1330 repaired last January 3, after it failed to boot-up. Octagon promised it would take two weeks worth of business days (excluding the weekend in other words), but the laptop was ready for pick-up last Friday—after 30 business days.

Why was it important that my laptop be fixed as soon as possible? Personally, it wasn’t too much trouble, since I had a desktop at the office and at home to work on. But again, what if someone’s livelihood depended on what needed repairing? Wouldn’t he or she like it repaired as soon as possible?

So What Took So Long?

The reason given for the 1-month-plus repair? The Dell service center’s “elimination” process. According to the Octagon technician, Dell’s people suspected that the LCD was at fault, so they had a replacement shipped over from Malaysia. When that wasn’t the cause, the motherboard became a suspect, so a replacement shipped from Hong Kong.

I do appreciate the thoroughness, but then again, I was away from my laptop for more than a month. If Dell Philippines went through all that trouble for their consumer product launch, an event that fell short of my expectations, couldn’t they have set aside some funds to maintain an inventory of replacement parts over here in the Philippines?

Do Not Buy Dell

After all, that’s where their customers are right? And I’m pretty sure their customers would really appreciate it if a mere laptop repair (which was under warranty, thank God) wouldn’t take so long.

I can only imagine things would be worse if my laptop was no longer under its one-year warranty, the only thing that kept this lengthy affair from costing me anything. Would I have had to pay for a replacement LCD, only to spend for nothing, since its installation wouldn’t fix things? Would a replacement motherboard, the solution, even require more spending on my part?

Again, for the record, something has to change in Dell’s repair process. Until then, I repeat my recommendation that you do not buy a Dell laptop or computer here in the Philippines, unless you want to wait quite a while your computer breaks down.

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