Alienware Customer Service: You are better off servicing yourself!

Hopefully you have already seen from my previous two posts how I feel about Alienware and the Alienware Customer Support folks. I had the continuing miss-pleasure of dealing with them once again on the topic of the Aurora m9700 I made the mistake of purchasing and the additional mistake of not returning and taking the outrageous restocking fee against.

On this instance I was trying to find out what I would need to do to get a valid copy of Windows XP Pro-64 to re-image the laptop to something that might actually be considered workable. I even offered up the possibility of shipping the system back to them at my personal cost so they could load the OS for me. Hell, I would've even paid to have it shipped back after all was said and done if I could've had a machine even semi-resembling a "desktop replacement system" let alone a "gaming system". My current setup can't even be closely compared to either... I can check email, and perform some basic MS Office work but I can't run a single game without some hiccup in the graphics or OS.

Microsoft, in it's play to try to win over customers that, rightly, felt that Windows Vista was one of the most discusting examples of a product to hit the market since the Windows Millenium Edition debacle, at least began offering Windows Vista Ultimate customers the option to roll back to Windows XP Pro without a charge. While Vista should never have been released at least Microsoft realized that the early hardware would not be able to sustain the OS in any of it's iterations.

Alienware flat out refused to accept that Microsoft made the offer and, once I got to a supervisor, stated that I would have to go to Microsoft to get that offer realized. That's great except for the fact that the OEM version of the OS that Alienware maintains comes with all of the drivers and setup for the custom configuration for the laptop. Once again, Alienware Customer Service does absolutely zero service of their customer.

Don't buy from this bunch. They are bloody unlikely to ever provide you with the support you need unless that support request falls within very specific parameters. Anything major, like my issues, are never going to be addressed by anyone within their organization.

I'll reiterate: Don't buy from Alienware! Their Customer Service is unable to service you, the customer!