Got my refurbed XPS L702x this morning, started it up, and immediately noticed a vertical black line...the dreaded dead pixels. Turned out they weren't completely dead; after doing some diagnostics, the red would show up, but nothing else in that vertical line of pixels. Doing your own diagnostics is laborious and annoying...I even downloaded and flashed to the current BIOS then performed the video tests again.
So then the real challenge followed: going through customer service, tansferred onto Dell Technical Home, transferred over to Dell Technical for XPS, where after explaining all the tests I'd done, the person in technical service asked me to hook it up to an external monitor -- no easy feat considering I don't have an extra HDMI cable lying around!
After confirming that the LCD was what was defective and not the video card, the technical rep said he would go ahead and seek authorization to get on-site replacement of the screen. Somehow I had been expecting the worst, where I'd have to get an RMA, print out a return slip and have FedEx return the laptop -- doesn't always seem that way?
For some reason, after a 5+ minute wait, the rep then tells me that he needs additional authorization, so I'd have to wait a little longer on the phone...at this point it's already 45 minutes on the phone and over 1 1/2 hours since I first turned on the laptop and discovered the flaw, and beginning to work my way online to finding the things I need to go through (testing video, updating BIOS, etc). :P
So f-i-n-a-l-l-y, after one hour on the phone -- thank goodness for bluetooth headsets! -- everything is approved, and uh, now I have to wait 2-3 days for a technician to come here and fix it. Well, at least I saved a TON of money to make it all worth it.
And by the way, if you buy a product from the Dell Home product side instead of the Dell Business side, chances are your customer experience will be very different...I got native Indian-speaking reps the entire time on the Dell Home side, but previously on the Dell Business side, I've had nothing but native English-speaking reps.
All the same, if you know what you're talking about and they know that you know what you're talking about, you'll always move ahead of the process a lot faster.
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