Select Networking

<rant>
Dell began offering free Windows 7 upgrades for certain computers recently. I decided to accept their offer and chose Dell for my next desktop. One cannot register for the upgrade until the computer has been shipped and received. After powering up the computer and finding that the monitor was not working, I contacted Dell. It took only 80 minutes and 4 transfers before someone was helpful and got the monitor out to me. Not a pleasant experience being routed this way and that…but the last guy I talked to was friendly and helpful. My new monitor arrived today, so kudos to Dell for getting it to me on a holiday!
I tend to keep computers for a long while. This new computer is a quad-core whereas my old one was a single core. It’s blazing fast and virtual machines start up quicker and don’t bog the environment down. Although I have assembled various computers, sometimes I lack the time or it just ends up being cheaper to buy from a good place. I have had great experience with tech support and warranties at HP and Dell. I rate Apple up there too…I had a battery issue with my MacBook Pro and the Apple Store replaced it without any questions. Back to the story…I was a bit disappointed that it took so many transfers to get an answer, but am very happy with the results.

Unfortunately, I had to contact Dell again when I went to their site to register for the Windows 7 Upgrade. I decided to use the online form option this time. In the note, I explained that I could not sign up for the upgrade even though my desktop qualified and sent it July 1 at 11:56 p.m.
On July 2 at 3:10 p.m., an email was received stating that my account has been activated and that I should log in and register.
I tried to register and it did show that I was eligible for the upgrade! However, it asks that you confirm the language set and OS. I chose English 64-bit Vista Ultimate for my new computer…but this site showed that I had an Arabic 32-bit Vista Business edition. Whoa! They got all three wrong! At 3:18 p.m., I sent a reply stating that I really would like this to be fixed.
At 5:16 p.m., here is what I received back:

Dear Brian Huddleston
I would request you to choose the option for English version for 64-bit Vista Ultimate edition.

Now, I get a lot of email. However, I’ve learned from experience that I should read through something before hitting reply. I was dumbfounded that a company like Dell would have someone send an email out like this. I explained what version I was trying to select….there was NO OPTION! I replied to this email and explained that if Dell would give me the option, I would do as requested. I also sent another email out to the "Unresolved Items" link.
Today, I received another email from the same person. It said that he had re-activated my account and requested that I register again.
I just logged back into their Upgrade Site and found that the same problem exists. It shows that my service tag is eligible for an upgrade and requests that I confirm the version. No options are available, it displays that I would be shipped an Windows 7 upgrade disk for an Arabic version of 32-bit Vista Business. Another email was just fired off. Where do they find these guys? Do they even check to determine what the problem is? I’ll let you know if it ever gets resolved.
</rant>

July 6 update – Here’s what Dell sent to me today:

Dear Brian,
I have submitted a request and your service tag is eligible for the windows 7.
I would request you to register your service tag once again and select the option for English version from the drop down menu.

I don’t think they understand that there are no options available.  Yes, it shows that it’s eligible because he registered the service tag at the beginning of the process.  But somewhere Dell has bad data and it needs to be corrected.  It’s not coming from their main support site since it reflects the correct version of Vista.  It will be interesting to see how long it will take them to actually escalate it to a person who knows how to troubleshoot and test a process.  Until then, I do as requested and email back the results.

July 17 Update –
I went ahead and registered under the assumption that I could be directed to a different support group. An English email arrived (even though the site believed that I had an Arabic copy of Vista). Another support email was listed, so I sent another email off. We’ll see if there are any results from this one or if I’ll end up with a copy of Windows 7 that I can’t use. What I found out was that this support email was not to Dell’s domain but to ltg.com. It appears that Dell has farmed this out to one of the Pearson Education companies. That would explain why Dell was so unresponsive and could not fix the problem. They apparently can only register the service tag with the third-party and that’s it.

On a good note, Dell did call and is sending me a call tag from FedEx so that the broken monitor can be sent back to them. The new monitor is great

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.