Having seen a great offer in the Sun yesterday, Inspiron1300 laptop for £299.

I went to the website with the offer code, the website did not respond..............

Rang the order line went through the usual crap music and options scenario, then an Indian lady answered , she said I could order one for £299 then proceeded to try and sell me extra ram for £90!!, a carrying bag, service contract, all of which I declined............we went on for about 20 mins on my phone bill while she struggled at a snails pace to conclude the deal, by which time I decided that should I have any problems with this purchase I would not want to deal with all this crap again so cancelled the order.................shame I quite liked Dell laptops!!!

Anyone else had anything similar?, Iknow i'm in grumpy old man territory but..........***k me!!!!!

If it's Dell it's ok - I've had 4 Dells now - and while they haven't been faultless machines - the service from Dell has always been excellent, and I have to say those nice ladies in India have sorted my problem over the phone more than once with no hassle.

I'm sure iheard that Dell have very little to do with the production of there laptops,and my local pc shop say they are on the incline on there most repaired list.

I had the exact same thing with Dell 2 years ago when I wanted to purchase a laptop...
In the end, I went for an Acer Aspire, damn good value, never a days problem with it. I use it more than my main PC these days, but perhaps I have just been lucky!
Don't know what their customer service is like though, because I have never had to use it!
Fozzie

i use dells, jhave a few of em, buuut i get em from here, www.europc.co.uk, pretty decent service too

edd

I take care of around 600 dells and overall they are pretty good. The laptops have been as reliable as any others I have delt with ( I truely hate laptops as they are a b#$th to repair.) The desktops are not standard though and no laptop is. Just an example of non standard is that the powersupplies on the desktops are the same size and connector for power but wired up differently so if you replace your power supply with a standard one (which will bolt up and plug in with no issues ) you may be in for some smoke from both the power supply and your mother board. The latest ones are wired the same but still dont seem to work to my knowledge when swapped.
Dale

A mate of mine runs his own business. Uses Dell's. He has just tried to get some upgraded memory. Couldnt understand the guy on the phone. Memory arrived but is wrong. Now trying to rectify but reluctant to call back due to communication issues. Its a shame but all we want is to talk to someone who is knowledgable, conversant and can sort out the order.

Apart from that ive heard nothing but praise for Dells.

Did my meditation, and sat under a triangle for a while......................got back to the Indian lady and its all sorted ..........£299 for a NEW laptop, 1.5ghz , 256mb, 40 gb, modem, usb 2.0, dcd/dvd - + rw, delivered ........got to be good..........my other 2 Dell Latitudes have given me good service...........could be available soon for Megajolt tuning.........

Ooo well done Dave!. result

Fozzie

Are the keyboards faulty on all of them Sorry mate. I've never used their laptops but I've dismantled a few of their old desktops and not noticed anything extraordinary about them, they just keep prices down by buying a lot of everything and having some of their own stuff made in bulk. Unfortunately that means if one goes wrong, a lot of them in the same batch are probably going to as well.