Earlier this year I wrote about Dr. Cem Kaner's meticulous chronicle of his experiences trying to get Alienware to fix, and then ultimately to refund his money for, a lemon of a computer he'd purchased from them. Since then, I've received a rather constant stream of complaints about the company, almost rivaling the gripes generated by the commodity PC vendors like Dell and HP.

What's struck me in particular is how similar many of the reader tales about Alienware are to Kaner's in terms of involving both faulty hardware and unhelpful support. "I would tell my story about my Alienware Area 51M laptop in its entirety, but I would merely be reiterating what happened to Cem Kaner," one reader wrote. "Though I did not have to go through the extremes he did to get his machine functional, I did encounter hardware issues right out of the box. I too experienced delayed delivery issues, hardware issues right out of the box, and failing tech support that knew nothing about PCs or basic networking. In total, the machine was sent back for repair three times. The last time it was in repair for a month and when it was returned to me, the modem was broken, the SD card reader they were supposed to fix was still broken, they had chipped the lid in two places, and the DVD+/-RW has some type of thermal paste that drips into the tray and keeps it from opening properly and potentially ruining media. I travel for a living, this machine was purchased to be my office and for its perceived durability and reliability and excellent tech support. Instead, those of us who purchased an Alienware system have all spent thousands of dollars on machines that often equate to little more than a doorstop or glorified paperweight."

That first step - just getting what you ordered from Alienware - can be a doozy. "Alienware customer service is absolutely deplorable," wrote another reader. "I ordered a $7500 set of two computers with multiple accessories for my small business over a month ago. Now it's over three weeks since they were supposed to arrive, and I have partial shipments only. I have to be the one to call customer service every few days, and I get a different story every time but no computer. The whole situation is ridiculous and I never get to talk to the same person twice. Nobody at Alienware ever calls or e-mails me back, either. And to think I went with these guys to get away from the lack of customer service from Dell."

Unfortunately for some customers, that first delivery may not be the only time they find themselves waiting computerless. "My Area 51m-7700 is being repaired right now, its second major hardware failure in the first year of ownership. I have been very unhappy with both the computer and the service. I regret buying Alienware, I will never buy from them again, and I am urging all my friends not to buy from them either."

Occasionally, if the customer is persistent enough, even Alienware will finally admit the machine is a lemon. "My fiancé ordered an Alienware laptop in July, an engagement present to him from me," a reader wrote. "The unit arrived and it did not connect to the Internet. It was sent in to Alienware's repair site twice, taking about 3 weeks each time, and we have logged about 20 hours with various tech support people and customer service reps. They are unwilling to give us a refund or replace the unit. And it's been 5 MONTHS!" Fortunately, a letter the reader wrote to the president of Alienware finally seemed to get someone's attention. "Once I informed the 'customer service team' that I had written the president, it seemed to change things entirely. They called me back within a day and credited what I spent on the laptop to spend on a new system. While this isn't exactly giving me my money back, it will hopefully get us a working computer."

Others, though, reach a point where another Alienware computer is the last thing they want. "After seeing tech reports and advertisements about Alienware, we decided to purchase a $4,600 Mj-12 workstation to run advanced 3D animation jobs for our company, a multimedia design firm," wrote a reader who deeply regrets that she had not seen Kaner's website before making that decision, as her story closely parallels his. Alienware shipped the system without the second processor she'd ordered, the first boot-up produced an error message about corrupt OS files, long hours of calls to Alienware ultimately resulted in the system being completely useless. The next day I phoned Alienware again and explained my dissatisfaction with the system in general, and asked that the problem be resolved as quickly as possible. We had already begun to lose money on the jobs that we had planned for this workstation. I was told that the system would have to be shipped back for repair and was given an RMA number."

Ten days later, the machine came back from Alienware with a note indicating that nothing had been done that the reader hadn't already tried before. "All that aside, after receiving the shipment today we removed the computer from the undamaged box to find the metal casing was damaged," the reader wrote. "The bottom of the case side barely fits on the tower as it is smashed in -- meaning this machine had been dropped from a height. Obviously, this was not FedEx as the box was our original one and was completely undamaged. I cannot believe that an Alienware employee would damage a system so obviously and then simply box it back up and ship that same damaged system back to us as 'fixed.' We simply refuse to continue to do business with Alienware and demand a complete refund of our original purchase price for the computer that never functioned properly. We've documented all this for Alienware, and they can look up under our corporate account number, which was 332203."

While it's pretty clear Alienware isn't the answer, we are still left with our original question. If you are willing to spend more to get a high-end system with top-quality support, who should you spend that money with? Post your answer below or write me directly at Foster@gripe2ed.com.

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