With all of the negative stories about Dell tech support (plenty of which eminate from a co-worker’s general direction), I thought I’d post a tale of service that to some may seem to be nothing short of astonishing.

The other day, I noticed that my latop’s DVD combo drive was taking longer to recognize newly-inserted discs, making increasingly louder noises, and the clincher: stuttering on DVD playback. I checked the warenty after logging into Dell’s support site, and opened a ticket online (I’m told that’s the key). The ticket was opened just before 2pm, I got the automated response immediately, and the reply from the tech at 4:17pm. The reply didn’t try to take me through the usual diagnosis proceedure they usually want you to do, it simply apologized for the problem, and said they were shipping the replacement. And ship it they did: it was hand-delivered to my desk by a DHL courier the next morning, around 9:00am! Not bad at all, Dell! Hopefully that’s more the rule than the exception!