My Dell Laptop experience

In early May, my son's laptop had the audio jack break and fall down somewhere inside his laptop. A year old dell inspiron 1764. I called Dell with the service tag # and the customer service person informed me that the warranty had expired the day before. They would not budge on their warranty, despite each level of customer service person that I worked through. They stated that the warranty started the day that the unit was shipped and that they would be happy to sell me an extended service contract.

I did some searching online and found out that the audio jack problem was not uncommon. The bad thing about the broken audio jack, the sound card must read the missing jack as an indication that speakers or headphones are connected and it disables the onboard speakers. Through some forums I located a source for the audio jack. The audio jack is part of a module that includes the mic jack, two usb ports and a card slot. The source was "the parts people" http://www.parts-people.com . The link provided from the forum led right to the webpage for the part, including the dell part #, the price was $38.95 plus shipping. Easy enough. But I thought I would give dell another try. I contacted dell parts via online chat and asked for a price and availibility on the part. It went back and forth for about 15 minutes while they were trying to locate the part. Dell parts then informed me that the part was only available with the motherboard as an assembly. Needless to say, I informed them that I was not going to purchase a motherboard to repair an audio jack. So it was back to the parts people.

I was able to repair my son's laptop with the part obtained from The Parts People. Funny thing was that it came in a dell wrapper. It wasnt an easy fix, since I had to completely disassemble the laptop to replace the jack. And being the first time that I have ever taken apart a laptop, there was a lot of on the job training. Plus, since I moved on the other side of 50, my vision is not what it once was. But there were no screws left over after I was finished, and it booted up fine complete with sound. So after purchasing a total of 3 desktops and 2 laptops from Dell over the past 10 years, I would have to say that I am finished with their product.

I bet a lot of companies lose business over dumb little things like this that could easily be solved without any real cost to them.

I think that some companies realize that great customer service is the best advertising. And some companies live by the philosophy of kick the bush and two more will jump out.