F@#&* Dell in their F*@&(& ass

As of today, I'm never buying anything Dell ever again.

Storyline goes as follows. Buy Dell PC online 7-23, it ships the following week, I go to hook it up a few days later and the video card that came with it is bunk. They say no problem no problem, we will send you out a new one but it will be within 2 business days. I'm like okay that's fine shit happens. A week goes by and still no video card. I call and they are like sorry but that item is on backorder and it should ship Tuesday and the eta for replacement parts for consumer models is 8 business days. I'm like 8 business days? The first guy told me I would have a new video card in 2 business days, what can you ship me now? It doesn't have to be a better card just something comparable with dual DVI on it. Sorry we cant do that because (long winded bs excuse about compatibility). Anyone who knows anything about computers knows that a PCI-E video card is the same no matter what. So I go, okay the first guy was a douche and should have told me the proper SLA and not had set my expectations so high. Deep breath and wait for the video card....

Video card arrives I pop it in, it works like a champ so thats good right. I am rebuilding the o/s at my house so it doesn't have all that Dell crap pre-loaded on it and it takes me a few days to get all her various programs. It looks just peechy on my dell monitor so I figure no worries right? I get over to my moms this week and hook up her shiney new computer to her nice new 22" widescreen monitor. To put it simply, the image quality stinks, on dark images there is backlight bleed through bars at the top and bottom of the screen and the pixel creep is awful around any kind of high contrast text. I hook it up to my moms old P4 and set it to the correct resolution, same crap and I've hooked up the new computer to different monitors and it looks peechy. So I'm like well you know what, let me just exchange it for the better 22" model with the upper model that has a usb hub and a adjustable stand.

First person says, I'm sure we can help you with that let me get you to the right department however. Okay no worries.. The 2nd person says, well sir we can't let you return the monitor. I'm like okay this ought to be good, he explains that dell only has a 21 day satisfaction garuntee, to which I explain that given my experience with the video card I have had a running system for less then that time... I could tell they weren't going to budge. So even though Dell is getting perma-banned by me if you do buy something make sure you check it out the day you get it!

So then it was an additional 25 minutes on hold to talk to a tech support rep. Then I had to basically spend 15 minutes convincing him that I had tried every conceivable way to make the monitor look better and it is simply a bad unit. After that it took another 10 minutes for him to process the RMA and 5 minutes on hold and finally after 1 hour 19 minutes and 23 seconds of wasted time I get a replacment monitor sent to me. Hopefully I just have a bum monitor and the next one I get will be fabulous like the people who have given it 5 star reviews but I'm not holding my breath.

Regardless this customer service nightmare has scared me away from any new Dell products for life.