Dell Tech Support Stop will nothing

Janna's Dell laptop broke, but it was still under warranty. She tells Consumerist that she contacted their technical support by web chat, imagining that it would be simple and easy to get a computer under warranty repaired. Her journey through Dell's tech support began with the chat rep encouraging her to grab a screwdriver and take her computer apart herself, and somehow got even more discouraging from there. When she finally got Dell to take the laptop in for repairs, Dell somehow helpfully cracked her LCD.

On December 7, 2009 I contacted Dell's chat support, as my computer started giving the blue screen of death, randomly not booting up, and the CCFL's were visible underneath the screen when looking at it from the side. My computer is still covered under warranty, so I figured it wouldn't be much of a problem to get it repaired. Was I ever wrong.....

Chat support wasn't any help, they basically asked me to 'find a screwdriver' and take my computer apart myself. I asked them about electrostatic discharge risks, and they asked me what I meant. The language barrier was extremely frustrating. Eventually, they ended up 'accidentally disconnecting' the chat once a so-called supervisor tried to assist me, then they called me later on....at a little past midnight my time.

Then I tried writing to Michael Dell's so-called email address, which got me to some sort of escalation department, still obviously talking to someone in India. After another month or two, I was still waiting for the third-party technicians to call me. We had come to the conclusion that i likely needed a new hard drive, RAM, and bezel.