Buy Dell?

[seanwg]

Hi

Anyone bought a computer from dell.com/thai etc? Looking to hear experiences.. or is there a dealer in BKK?

Sean

[ProThaiExpat]

I join the request. I have had two generations of Dell laptops and would prefer my next one to be Dell as well, but would like to think there was some form of support in Thailand.

While I have used their online support and air-mailed replacement parts with local repairman in Hawaii, buying my last lap top just before moving to Thailand, the lask of tech support here would be daunting.

Since most of their computers are made in Malaysia, as far as I know, iis probably just ignorance of what is available in Thailand that keeps me from buying another one here in Thailand.

[Richard-BKK]

Hello,

I have a Dell Latitude D500 notebook bought from Dell Thailand, after some weeks I found some color difference in the screen.

Contacted Dell Thailand, made appointment and they replaced it in about 30 minutes. No big deal, no difficult questions just easy.....

[ProThaiExpat]

Please advise telephone number of Dell Thailand and where you would suggest buying one. Thank you.

[lampard10]

I have got two dells,1 lap-top & 1 desk top. When the battery went on my lap-top,i had a hill of a job to get a new one. I tried all over Thailand,and Singapore. There is just a desk in Tec City but the dealer is in KL. Eventually I traked a battery down to Pantip Plaza,BKK. On the top floor there is one shop that has hundreds of them. Good computors,but after sales in Asia stinks.

[wimster]

I advise not to buy a Dell at all.

I had one, and it was an absolute nightmare. I had to sue Dell to get several repairs done right after 12 months....hard disk, modem, battery and screen all went. Replacing is extremely expensive.

In the Netherlands some computer consumers groups succesfully sued Dell over misleading small print, advertising and (sincerly bad) warrenties.

Go for a Sony (Vaio). Have one for a year now, and works fine.

Edited April 21, 2005 by wimster

[bkk_mike]

Please advise telephone number of Dell Thailand and where you would suggest buying one.  Thank you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Honestly - enter www.dell.co.th - and you're redirected to Dell Thailand, but all the numbers are 1800 numbers in the US. Still marked Toll-Free, but believe me, phoning a US toll-free number from Thailand is NOT free.

Also, you can only manually configure a PC on that website if you're already a Premier customer.

To me, it looks like the Dell Thailand website is really just there for multinationals who have a corporate policy to use Dell globally. They do not appear to be chasing home users in Thailand in any way whatsoever...

[Firefoxx]

Yes, Dell in Thailand seems to be focused entirely on the big corporations. There are no dealers and very little attention is paid to the average consumer. A few years ago (probably still the same today) the regional center was in Penang, and any calls went there. Service was by appointment, and some local tech (outsourced?) would come with spare parts to change. The corporate service was fairly good, but I don't know how promptly they would respond to an indvidual.

[Kalavo]

Dell in Australia are extremely cluey, excellent pre and after sales support. Delivery time was unbelievably quick, laptop great value for money and no problems yet touch wood.

Sony Australia was extremely poor to deal with. Long delays delivering equipment, and a lot of arguing over the specification of the computer (according to them 512+512=768) also about 30% more expensive than Dell.

[bkk_mike]

Dell in Australia are extremely cluey, excellent pre and after sales support. Delivery time was unbelievably quick, laptop great value for money and no problems yet touch wood.

Sony Australia was extremely poor to deal with. Long delays delivering equipment, and a lot of arguing over the specification of the computer (according to them 512+512=768) also about 30% more expensive than Dell.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Welcome to www.ozvisa.com?

In Australia Dell goes after home users - i.e. they actually sell the Inspiron notebook in Oz. In Thailand, Dell is not chasing home users. example: The only notebooks available are the Latitude range.

I had a Dell in the UK - They still send me their bi-monthly letter, and I'd still consider buying one in the UK. Their Thai website suggests Thailand is not a good place to buy a Dell for the home...

[Phil Conners]

Dell are good quality but not worth the money, just like the other "big name" laptops HP and Sony.

Compaq are out of the same factory and 10k cheaper than a similar specked HP. Sony are just all eyecandy and no support. They sell consumer electronic for x's sake. I once had a Sony Vaio laptop, fell apart from the day I bought it and Sony never provided drivers for new Windows releases. Sony suck!

Acer make a nice line of laptops that are competitively priced in Thailand. Go shopping.

[RDN]

I advise not to buy a Dell at all.

I had one, and it was an absolute nightmare. I had to sue Dell to get several repairs done right after 12 months.....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Did you have only a 12 months warranty? VERY unusual for so many things to go wrong But if you only had a year warranty, I'm surprised they did anything after it ran out.

Yes, Dell in Thailand seems to be focused entirely on the big corporations.  There are no dealers and very little attention is paid to the average consumer. ..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Agreed - a great pity.

...The only notebooks available are the Latitude range....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's what I have - still going great!

About my Dell lap top:

I bought it in the UK with a 3 year international next business day warranty. I also bought an identical spare hard drive as I thought it would be the most likely part to fail in the future. (In fact, it was the keyboard).

About 3 weeks before the warranty ran out - 6 months ago - the keyboard started to play up. So I called Dell, they asked me to connect an external keyboard to see if the problem went away. It did, so they agreed to fix it. Two days later a guy arrived at my home (Phuket) and installed a new keyboard. Excellent service from Dell.

About the Dell web site:

They don't seem to have anything like the choice that you get in the UK. I was thinking of buying a new one on the web and getting it delivered to the UK and then bringing it here. But too much hassle.

[Richard-BKK]

The address of Dell Thailand use it wishly, the not answer support calls

Dell Computer (Thailand) Co., Ltd.

24th Flr, Unit 2407 Empire Tower

195 South Sathorn Road

Yannawa, Sathorn, Bkk 10120

Tel:(66) 2-670-7000

Fax:(66) 2-670-0029 / 30

[RDN]

...and the email address for notebook support bought in the UK is:

[email protected]

[Crossy]

Dell are good quality but not worth the money, just like the other "big name" laptops HP and Sony.

Compaq are out of the same factory and 10k cheaper than a similar specked HP. Sony are just all eyecandy and no support. They sell consumer electronic for x's sake. I once had a Sony Vaio laptop, fell apart from the day I bought it and Sony never provided drivers for new Windows releases. Sony suck!

Acer make a nice line of laptops that are competitively priced in Thailand. Go shopping.

We have three (3) Acer laptops in the office, nice spec. reasonable price.

BUT

All three have failed in various ways within two months of new

Luckily there are two very nice ladies in the Acer service centre in Pantip. Give them their due, all the machines were fixed within 2 days, not going to buy any more though.

Meanwhile my 3 year old Dell is still trundling along at 1.4GHz.

DC

[RDN]

...Meanwhile my 3 year old Dell is still trundling along at 1.4GHz.

DC

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

...and meanwhile, my 4 year old Dell is trundling along at 500MHz, with a few keyboard problems...

[ProThaiExpat]

My three year old Inspiron 4100 keyboard crapped out four months ago and without tech support and an belief that paying for a new Dell installed keyboard would be costely, I merely bought a mini-keyboard that I stuck right on top of the old key board and pluged it into PS/2 port.

Works like a dream and I just remove when traveling, which is rare these days. The key arrangement is slightly problematic, but worth the learning curve, as it only cost 300 Baht.,

[davee58]

I have a Dell Inspiron purchased in the UK, with "WORLDWIDE NEXT DAY ONSITE Support".

When the CD drive packed up, one week into a three month holiday in Thailand I thought I was covered, however the (very) small print on the WORLDWIDE support excludes any Inspiron support in Thailand and several surrounding countries.

The e-mail support I received was appalling:

- I never received a reply the NEXT day, it always took at least two.

- I seemingly dealt with a different person every time, often requesting all details again.

- I was promised in one e-mail that as things had been handled so badly by them that if I sent all details yet again he would personally ensure that I received service, This turned out to be bullshit.

- I asked for the name of the person I was dealing with several times, I never got even one name from them.

- I received a "Standard preformatted reply" which had only been partly completed, and had the wrong computer model and other details in it.

Finally after about 15 e-mails I decided for about the third time that they were playing games with me and sent them a mail saying what I thought of them, and hoping that their beer would always be sour.

Three months later I returned to the UK, phoned Dell UK at 14:00, and the replacement part was delivered to my door at 09:00 the next morning.

Dell support staff in Thailand are useless, incompetent, and unable to handle a support request professionally. I have worked with PC's for over 20 years and have never dealt with support anywhere near this bad. .

[RDN]

I have a Dell Inspiron purchased in the UK, with "WORLDWIDE NEXT DAY ONSITE Support". 

When the CD drive packed up, one week into a three month holiday in Thailand I thought I was covered, however the (very) small print on the WORLDWIDE support excludes any Inspiron support in Thailand and several surrounding countries.

The e-mail support I received was appalling:

- I never received a reply the NEXT day, it always took at least two.

- I seemingly dealt with a different person every time, often requesting all details again.

- I was promised in one e-mail that as things had been handled so badly by them that if I sent all details yet again he would personally ensure that I received  service, This turned out to be bullshit.

- I asked for the name of the person I was dealing with several times, I never got even one name from them.

- I received a "Standard preformatted reply" which had only been partly completed, and had the wrong computer model and other details in it.

Finally after about 15 e-mails I decided for about the third time that they were playing games with me and sent them a mail saying what I thought of them, and hoping that their beer would always be sour.  

Three months later I returned to the UK, phoned Dell UK at 14:00, and the replacement part was delivered to my door at 09:00 the next morning.

Dell support staff in Thailand are useless, incompetent, and unable to handle a support request professionally.  I have worked with PC's for over 20 years and have never dealt with support anywhere near this bad. .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How strange - I found them quite reasonable and efficient - I even had to tell the Dell guy not to come the following day with my replacement keyboard, as I was going somewhere, so he came the day after.

And the single most important reason why I bought a Latitude and NOT an Inspiron was because you cannot get support for an Inspiron in Thailand. And I thought - but my memory may be wrong - that you can (or could) only get European support for an Inspiron. At least, that was the situation 4 years ago, and has been the 2 or 3 times since that I have checked. I am amazed that you have an Inspiron with such support - the Inspirons are generally cheaper and l always assumed were less reliable, which is why - I assumed, again - you could not get worldwide support for them.

Also, when I had my Latitude's keyboard problem, after contacting Dell on their website, they emailed me and gave me the phone number for Dell support in Thailand: 1800-0060-07. Everything then progressed from there.

If it's any consolation for you, my keyboard is playing up again, in the same way as before. So it has lasted just 13 months. I blame Thaivisa .

[fmwlowe]

Hi

Anyone bought a computer from dell.com/thai etc? Looking to hear experiences.. or is there a dealer in BKK?

Sean

Hi Sean. I bought a DELL Latitude maybe a year ago, and have had nothing but great results from DELL. I recently had some serious issues with it (hard drive failure and DVD+RW failure) and once DELL was informed of my problem they were out to my home in Chachoengsao to replace both within 24 hours. They are very prompt, courteous and thorough and I can't praise them enough. I am now testing them on my other notebook that is out of warranty, for exactly the same failures. I just wrote them today, so we'll see how they do. I hope this helps.

[pitrevie]

I have got two dells,1 lap-top & 1 desk top. When the battery went on my lap-top,i had a hill of a job to get a new one. I tried all over Thailand,and Singapore. There is just a desk in Tec City but the dealer is in KL. Eventually I traked a battery down to Pantip Plaza,BKK. On the top floor there is one shop that has hundreds of them. Good computors,but after sales in Asia stinks.

I totally agree, with my partner we had two laptops and a desktop, getting any sort of support was a nightmare and any spares always out of stock. Great while I was in UK but here the support stinks. I have replaced all three computers and not with Dell.

[kerr17]

Worst experience ever.

It took me 2 months to order a new desktop and they eventually charged my credit card without my approval.

I finally get a desktop to repay their mistakes but I highly reccomend to avoid Dell Thailand.

[regedit]

I've been using Dell notebooks for the past 10 years - company policy. They've generally been reliable and good to use, and if they break within 1 year you usually get them fixed/replaced without any problems. I've had 2 fail so far (minor things), and my current E6400 seems to have a problem with the keyboard (probably a driver issue). However, I would never buy Dell PC's personally - I think there's much better stuff out there for the money.