Dell warranty fulfillment

I had to do some serious pushing to get Dell to fix my laptop, Natalie, under warranty after I made the “honest mistake” of telling the first quizzing tech support guy about an apparently unrelated drop.  I called and e-mailed and called and e-mailed and called until a manager returned my call and came up with a compromise that didn’t involve me giving them money up front.  The next-day home service was out, but the laptop was picked up that Friday (more than three weeks after my first call) and taken on the condition that it would be repaired only if the problems were unrelated to any mistreatment.  It was repaired and I haven’t been billed yet.  I received a survey through an outside company (http://dell.prognostics.com/) afterward.

I was as fair and honest as I could be which was especially easy since the survey distinguished between the phone technical support, which I was dissatisfied with, and the mail-in repair, which was fantastic.  I print my answers to the two open-ended questions in the survey.

The following was in response to the “other” category of a question about why multiple calls were needed to tech support.

Under corporate policy the fact that I mentioned a drop, unrelated to the problems, meant that my next-day service was voided.  And of course, from above: recurring problem, recommended fix didn't work, didn't get call back from manager.  The technician had to research how my problem could be solved under warranty.  The manager did solve the problem; the laptop was picked up and repaired.

This response was to a question about what could Dell change to make its service better.

The idea that a computer can be shifted from in-warranty to out-of-warranty based on the customers honest responses to questions is shocking to me.  "Was the system dropped?"  Yes, a short fall that has no noticable connection to one problem, let alone an additional pre-existing problem.  It is an outrage that saying 'yes' to the fact of a fall revokes the right of on-site repair under warranty.  Only if the problem is identified by a technician as due to inadequate customer care should the warranty be voided.  Simply drop that policy and I'll be satisfied.