Spoke Too Soon

If your aggregator shows pictures, then yes, that IS my In-Laws’ Dell Inspiron 1200 that I was raving about 2 days ago. Only now, obviously and grotesquely, disassembled. Here’s what happened. Yesterday, I was setting up my laptop at work and plugged in my Cingular GPRS wireless card. After firmly plugging it into the PCMCIA slot, I noticed it didn’t go in all the way. Not thinking that anything might be damaged in there, I tried plugging it in again - only HARDER. It still wouldn’t fully insert. It seems a little rubber pad from my old laptop had found its way from the bottom of the bag into the PCMCIA slot and resulted in severely bent and broken connector pins. Oh, the fun that ensued…

Last night, I decided to remove the slot assembly and only after I had taken the whole assembly apart (again, note the above picture) was I able to unplug it from the underside of the motherboard. I needed a replacement so without hesitation I called DELL.

The first person I spoke to (can you see where this is going?) told me that the 90 day warranty had expired and that I had to be transferred to the “Out of Warranty” support department. Let me hit the pause button right here to remind you ALWAYS
GET THE EXTENDED WARRANTY!! The Out of Warranty support person said I needed to speak with Sales to order the part. The person in Sales had no idea what I needed and transferred me to the “Spare Parts” department. The spare parts lady tried, but simply could not find anything that matched what she thought I needed in her inventory and suggested I speak with Tech Support again to get a part number. Finally the support guy said that they didn’t sell the part by itself, but that I needed to replace the entire motherboard. DO WHAT!?!? Thanks, but no thanks.

My entire time on the phone with Dell was a little over an hour. 3 minutes later, I found exactly what I needed on eBay for $11.99 and it’ll arrive at my home tomorrow. You were right, Jason – Dell’s Support ain’t what it used to be.