I was giddy with excitement when I went to Best Buy last night and purchased a Toshiba laptop to replace the Dell Inspirion 1720 paperweight. I purchased this non functioning, money pit, time wasting, blood pressure raising POS in July. Since then, there have been more broken promises from Dell than the entire cast made on the last season of Desperate Housewives. I would love to have John Stossel from 20/20 do an episode of "Give Me a Break" about how Dell breaks their customer service agreements and leaves the customer with little or no resource. I have been trying to get my computer repaired from day one. I bought the most expensive and comprehensive warranty that Dell offers. They have not made an effort to repair or replace my computer. Yesterday, I was promised a full refund and was told that my computer would be picked up today. I took ANOTHER day off work.... another broken promise. I called Dell AGAIN and was told to take tomorrow off in the hopes that Dell might actually keep a promise. It is my intention to send a letter to the editor of every major newspaper in the US. I will do everything in my power to see that Dell's customer service or lack there of is made public, Yes, they will call you back repeatedly if you are a prospective customer. Once they have your payment, good luck. I have transcripts of my chat logs with their live chat employees where I have set for forty five plus minutes being ignored. Isn't it ironic that their sales centers are in the US and the product is made in Malaysia and who know where the customer no service center is located. Please look for addtional blogs on my My Space page and a video on You Tube. I also intend to post my experiences on msnbcnews.com and every other place that allows open forum discussions. Gotta love freedom of speech. I'd love to hear from other customers Dell has duped. The only people I don't intend to hear from is Dell.

Kris: I'm sorry you had a bad experience dealing with Dell trying to get support for your Inspiron 1720. You will hear from someone soon.

I hope we can resolve the issues that have occured and do want to apologize for the frustration this has caused.

MButler: You are right, and thanks for your comment. I decided to link customers to the main home page because I thought that was the best entry point instead of choosing Home and Home Office, Desktops, etc.

To answer your question about how to get to ratings & reviews: the best way is through a product's main page. Here's the product page for the Inspiron 1420 notebook, for example.

I agree I should have been more clear. I will update the post to provide more clarification. Thanks again.

Just another little note - Perhaps your review pages should also include users of machines no longer being sold.  I purchased a XPS 400 (now the 420, I believe).  Have had a few problems which are now (I hope) being addressed - the most recent diagnosis is the video card memory has gone bad.  (I had seen this referenced in the forums and was able to diagnose the problem without a lot of computer technical saavy) Now, I am supposed to receive a refurbished video card (Nvidia 7900GS - also no longer offered) later this week with onsite install. (Even with "next day" service, I am told it could be 3-4 days.)  I have not been able to locate a place to review (or to read reviews of older systems) - which I believe would give future potential customers a chance to see how Dell supports its product (or doesn't). 

As a side note - I have been a Dell customer for about 8 years and have been responsible for either purchasing or recommending the pruchase of about 15 to 20 machines. (Business, family friends) I had a few problems with the last Dell I bought and was at the point of not buying from Dell again, but felt it best to give another chance, because my first was a workhorse.  Sadly, I have been dealing with a major problem in less than a year - the last several months have been spent with the belief I had a software conflict. (My calls to Dell in August put the blame on the software.  The software company blamed the computer.  Spent quite a bit of time before I decided to live with it - then it got worse this week.) 

Tonight, the agent was very helpful, however, I am a bit disappointed to learn that a refurbished card is being sent, especially after buying the full warranty.  AND after reading several forum statements which indicate that their refurbished cards have failed within a few months, I am pretty concerned about what will happen next...