So I bought this very expensive high end quad video liquid cooled ALX system from Alienware last spring. One concern I had when looking at it was that cutting edge technology is both more likely to break and also more difficult to find a person who can repair it when it does. But Alienware seemed to have that covered. They offered a warranty with guaranteed fast on site service. So I bought the extended warranty and got the machine.
Sure enough on Friday I had no video. I called their tech support and went through all the gyrations and he finally decided it was a bad video card. So I asked when a tech would show up to fix that. Not so fast, they don't do that for water cooled parts. I have to ship my whole computer to Miami and have it fixed there. But what about my on site service warranty? Well that doesn't apply to water cooled machines. But my machine was water cooled when I bought the warranty, isn't that a contradiction?
Basically I was deceived. They sold me a warranty and made me a promise that could never apply to the computer I was buying. Thus, I am out of a computer for whatever time it takes them to fix it and ship it back to me. Worse yet, because the possibility never occured to me that I could not get it fixed on site, I have not password protected anything on it, so whoever opens it up there can basically waltze through all my financial and business records with impunity.
I do have one consolation. I figure 90% of PC video game players play MMORPG's. These are Alienware's target market. All of those people visit our site. I think I may write up a review of Alienware telling people about this issue. I wonder how much their sales will be dropping this quarter?