It’s off to Memphis now, where hopefully Dell will fix it. Even more hopefully, but much less likely, they will charge me somewhat less than an arm and a leg. At least this time they didn’t make me ship the laptop myself (when we moved, I conveniently threw out all the laptop shipping boxes I had from last time, which means I’d have to spend another $30 to let the UPS Store put the laptop into a box). They sent the Airborne Express driver out with a box. I was pretty impressed with this part of the service—I called Airborne Express around 2:30pm, right after I got off the phone with Dell, and they were able to arrange for same-day pickup, bringing a box and everything. I have always been impressed with Airborne’s service, unlike other carriers I could name.

It’s too bad I can’t say the same for Dell. I called their tech support number to set up the repair, and after an interminable wait, I was finally connected to a call center employee who I doubt worked for Dell, and I doubt was even in the country. He was friendly and tried to help, but didn’t know much about my problem, wasn’t able to tell me how much my repairs might cost, forgot to tell me some information about how the Dell repair process works (luckily, I’ve done it before), and the phone call took forever. At least he believed me when I told him the PC Card slots were broken. The last time this happened, they made me go through all sorts of hassle before just letting me send the darned thing in.

This will be the third time this laptop has visited Dell Repair, and the second time I will have had to pay for it. Tip: If you’re buying a Dell laptop, get as extensive a warranty as you can afford.