Wow, I have had a few problems with Dell, but nothing like this. Even when I ordered my N900 (with all its shipping issues), the rep I had was courteous and was constantly in contact about the status of my order, same when I ordered my last laptop with them. In the end I have to agree with geneven, just call/chat back with someone else.

I have to deal with customer reps at dell a lot... Unless I get Gold Support... I resign to an hour of head bashing.

Maybe... maybe 1 out of ever 20 of those chat sessions resulted in someone that could follow along without asking me benign, stupid, or completely unrelated questions to my problem.

We had a bunch of laptops of a certain series that became known around here for their ability of their CAC readers to just stop working. Ultimately, we figured out (after many, many, dell sessions) that we need a new PCMCIA cage assembly. The problem is... nearly every time we talked to a dell rep - they sent us a new motherboard.. because they were sure that's the problem.

Finally - we had one of the delivery guys give us a part number.. and we simply told the rep's we need them to ship part number XYZ. That worked about half the time..

Ah, I had a similar run-in with HP customer care once.

I needed to know my parent's computer's onboard sound card model for some reason (quite a while ago), and so I asked HP customer care since I was feeling particularly lazy that day.

I ended up asking them about a possible Pulseaudio problem, specifically saying that I had Xubuntu 9.04, and not windows (because they would probably go and direct me with windows instructions.

The rep disconnected me (probably realizing that she didn't have the capabilities to answer.).

Later, I got an apology email, with an extensive explanation on how to find my sound card model in windows 98.

*Sigh*... the punishments of being lazy...