What is it about Dell and schools? Last year we had a story (see "Dell Gets a Failing Grade in School") about the failure rate of Dell computers in a high school. Now our recent discussions about useless extended warranties prompted another reader to relate his experience with a Dell intended for use at college.

"My daughter's $2,400 desktop Dell for college was expected to last four years, and was covered by an extra-cost, four-year in-room warranty", the reader wrote. "The PC lasted from September to January of her freshman year before the hard drive failed -- 4.25 months. The drive was warranteed for 12 months by Dell and by Western Digital, but Dell refused to admit the drive was bad despite all the evidence. On top of that, the drive was one of a huge bad run of WD Caviar drives everyone knew about, including me. So I had it in writing Dell would NOT use this drive on the machine!"

"They never came to service her machine, not ever," the reader wrote. "What they did was tell her to re-format the drive and re-load Windows. They told her to do this more than a dozen times, and she did it, all under the SAME incident number -- so they knew. Then she became disgusted and brought the PC home to me. After Dell gave me the format-and-install run-around three times, I threatened suit for fraudulent warranty. Then they sent someone. He installed ... a new Western Digital Caviar drive! It lasted 45 days before a massive failure."

By this time both the reader and his daughter had learned their lesson. "I returned that one to WD under their warranty, put the replacement drive they sent up on eBay, and bought a better drive for the Dell. Not much point to that -- daughter would never touch it again. She went through Kenyon using the desktops they provided in the dorms. Maybe I've been lucky, but in 70 years I've never dealt with a worse company than Dell."

What worthless warranty stories do you have to tell? Post your comments below, phone the Gripe Line voice mail at 1 888 875-7916, or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.