Horror stories like that happen to every brand. I worked at a place for a few months (internship) where they sell mainly HP/Compaq. You won't believe everything i saw there. We didn't only have problems with their regular customer support, but also with their business and server support (those are totally separated from customer support).
For example: a brand new topline 19inch rack server that need to be delivered to a client the next day was DOA. So we called HP and they promised to deliver a new one before the end of the day. The end of the day HP comes like promised... another DOA!! They didn't even test that one before they brought it to us.
Same kind of thing happened with a DOA 17inch monitor... first time they brought the wrong model, then another DOA, then another wrong model. Then we called and told them to double check the model AND test it before the shipped it and it finally went right
.
We had a HP repair guy onsite asking us how to enter the BIOS of some server
.
etc., etc. Same kind of stories happened with the much less IBMs, Sonys and brandless systems we sold there.
But that doesn't mean I won't buy HP anymore, this type of things happen to every brand. You're just unlucky when you're one of those that have such problems. Around 97% are still happy users.
But i won't buy an alienware laptop anyway, they are desktop replacements, not laptops you easily take with you. Just buy a nice desktop that you can upgrade after a while.
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