Buying a Dell computer Forums

ianhibs

I happen to be a big Dell fan fan because of the quality, backup and the ability to customise your computer. However this post is not about the merits of the company but for those who, like me, have decided to buy a Dell - in my case a laptop.

If you go on their web site they have all their various offers and you can choose, customise and order online. Ignore the ordering part. Call their sales line instead and you will be put through to some red hot salesmen in India.

I only did this because I had a query which I couln't answer online. Anyway Ravi (that was his name) immediately offered to do me a cheaper deal than the Internet price (it came out at a £20 pound saving - no big deal I hear you say). He then tried furiously to sell me the 3 year call on sight extended warranty. I told him my opinion of extended warranties. Then at last moment he did a "drop sell" on me and reduced the price to £90 - just under 50% off. I checked whether this covered all Europe and agreed ( not bad for £30 a year) I also managed to get two special offers on more memory and a bigger hard disk combined for the same price.

The end result is, I believe, I have saved about £160 on the Internet price.

Ian

peejay · Campsite DB Admin

Hi Ian,

Did a similar thing with my dell, got a customised version with an online price, then rang Nelly from New Dehli but only managed a £30 discount over and above the online price, hard bargaining is not one of my strong points and no doubt i could have done better if i'd tried harder. Better than nowt though.
You did very well Wink

pete.

C7KEN

I'm reading this on a DEll 9300 laptop with the 3 yr next day international warranty, the second dell machine i,ve had, the other one (8200)is on the table next to this one, I am delighted with mine bought of a third party Dell dealer at great saving and living over here in Spain the warranty is very comforting

ianhibs

Rapide561

Hi

I am using a Dell Dimension 4600 - about three years old. I have sold this now and am replacing with a Dell Laptop.

I shall probably purchase through

roboughton

I have a contact at Dell who is like my account manager what ever the price on the net is he will do it better every time Smile

Dell have never let me down yet although understanding some of the staff is sometimes hard especialy when trouble shooting.

But if you CD Rom goes at 10am Monday they will have anew one to you by 12pm Tuesday you cannot say fairer than that. You do however have to fit it yourself Sad

not good if you know nothing about PCs but a engineer is never far away.

baldlygo

I'm another that has been happy with my Dell laptop Inspiron 8000.
When I bought mine online I didn't haggle the price but I did decide to request a second hard drive. This was agreed at a very resonable extra cost - a great deal less than if bought seperately.

The second hard disk has been very handy as an instant spare system which can run a completely different Operaing system.

I would do the same again if buying another Dell. You can get all sorts of extra help when you are buying a new machine. A different story when you decide to make a change or addition to your old laptop Exclamation

Pusser

I am not a fan of Dells but of course, I only get called out to sort Dell problems out and never get called out by those that have nothing wrong with it.

I have made these observations though. When I have had to trash the hard drive and reload everything back on I have been amazed of the number of variations of mainboards, graphics, and sound drivers available for just one model. And trying to find out which driver is for the one you are working on can be a time consuming job even using the s\n search which also gives a list of different drivers for it.

I would assume from this and the fact that the BIOS date is normally much older than the purchase date of the model, that they just buy in whatever is the cheapest deal they can get on these basic components thus there will be much fluctuation between those PC's which are reliable and those that are not.

This is the only PC supplier I have come across where this happens to that extent. In the eighties Dell was an excellent product and a competitor to IBM mostly in the business sector and I would imagine the success of Dell and Compaq was the downfall of IBM.

But now I have major reservations but only from observations as they have appeared to me.

C7KEN

Hi Pusser On my recent trip back to the UK I took a Toshiba machine belonging to a friend to have a new screen fitted as the service on Laptops here in Spain is diabolical, so for me to have 3yr next day Dell backup on mine is very comforting, the only thing that has gone wrong was the dvd writer on my last machine dell 8100 which Dell replaced next day, I agree they can have diferent components on the same model eg the dvd drive was orig hitachi and replaced with a sony but do I care? not as long as it works ok. Smile