Inside México Service Star: Dell Computer Mexico

I bought a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop from Sam's Club in January. I consider myself a "moderate power user": I don't do a lot of graphics or video editing, but run large spreadsheets and many applications at the same time. I create lots of presentations and need to connect to digital cameras, printers and the internet (including YouTube and Skype video calls) with ease. The 1525, while considered a "budget" computer, more than meets those needs, and though it's not tiny, it's light enough that I haul it back and forth to the office each day with relative ease. You can read a complete review here: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4175 

The Sam's Club price was 10,000 pesos, which at the then exchange rate of about 14, is competitive with the dollar prices I found online ($653 - $817). That price included a one-year service warranty.

A week or so after buying the computer, it started crashing and making unsual whirring and clicking sounds, classic signs that the hard drive was about to fail. I backed up my data, ran the diagnostic utility and indeed, the hard drive was damaged and needed to be replaced. So I went to dell.com and entered their customer support area: http://tinyurl.com/cjwjvc

Once I got through to the Customer Service Chat (they will forward you to the Mexico chat area, but communicate in perfect English) I was asked for the following information:

(1) The service tag (unique ID found on the bottom of the computer)
(2) The error codes generated by the diagnostic utility. If you don't know how to run this utility, they will walk you through it step by step.

Finally they asked me for my contact information, including an address where the Dell technicians would come to service my computer. They gave me a case number, and a transcript of the chat conversation was immediately sent to my email. They told me that I could expect a call from a technician in three to five business days, but in fact, the tech called me two hours later. We set a time for them to come by my office and by the end of the day I was back in business. I was then able to reinstall Windows and the rest of the programs, and restore the information from my backup drive.

Earlier this week-- d'oh!-- my computer once again started crashing and making strange noises, and once again, I called Dell and got the same speedy service (this time they called me the day after my service request, and came to my house that same day). Now, going through three hard drives in three months is pretty strange, so I can't vouch for the quality of the parts they're using. But in terms of excellent and rapid customer service-- particularly for someone whose entire business depends on a computer that works-- Dell gets five stars.