Alienware Reviews

Whenever I sent it in for repairs, they deleted my entire hard drive. They said it would cost an additional $10 for them to erase my hard drive. Clearly their support is capable of not erasing the hard drive, because they offer the ability to keep your hard drive. So why not do it by default? Because they want to charge you more money, effectively holding your data hostage. Each time I sent it in for repairs, they claimed they fixed the issue, but then another issue would spontaneously appear only a few months later.

Finally, my warranty expired and, of course, my computer died again. I paid $180 to renew my "premium support service," but they refused to repair my laptop, saying it was out of warranty. Apparently, their warranty doesn't cover the work done by their own repair service! I tried to trade it in for a different one, because this one was clearly a lemon, but no. Their site told me it was worthless, and that they would "happily take it in for recycling." So I guess I just paid $3,000 for the experience of owning a broken computer for a year.

Nowhere when buying this will it tell you that. I have been working with Dell for 2 weeks and this was their answer. I'm trying to get my $3k back I paid for this piece of crap to buy a real gaming laptop. Also this was my 6th laptop I have bought from them. None of my older ones I had have ever had any issues. It's just this newer garbage they are selling.

For a time... it was good. But right after the warranty ends, literally ALL of our graphics cards go bad within months of each other!!! First the screen starts to glitch with green or purple or red lines (seems to be random) when we do GPU-intensive tasks... then, soon after the glitching, the computer will crash. I assumed it was the graphics card going bad from the signs but I spent hours and days and weeks of troubleshooting, testing and researching anyway. I mean I tried everything imaginable (besides replacing the GPU) to fix this...

Finally, I reached out to Dell tech support (Dell owns Alienware) to tell them that my GPU has gone bad... First of all, they literally don't have anyone in their technical (or other) support that speaks English natively so you can barely understand them and they can barely understand you.... so conversations go at a snail's pace - because you have to repeat everything 4 times and so do they. And no, I don't have an accent or anything, I speak perfect English and enunciate my words flawlessly.

Second: Dell tech support is THE most incompetent people I have ever encountered in my entire life. It's literally like every call you have with them - it's their first time discovering that they sell computers or what a computer even is. I literally had to explain what an SSD was to one of them!! He literally didn't know that an SSD was a hard drive. Embarrassingly stupid. And it wasn't just this one rep either. They were all completely incompetent. I might as well have asked my grandmother to fix my computer.

Anyway so I explained that my GPU is bad and provide evidence... but of course they have to follow a script and ask if I tried turning it off and on again, then they take me through a dozen more steps, then they say we need to set up a time for them to call and remote in... but of course when that time comes around, they don't call or remote in. So you have to call them back, explain everything that you explained to the first guy, go through all the troubleshooting steps AGAIN no matter how many times you tell them you already went through all of this, only to get back to "ok sir so let I set up call for remoting to in on the computer ok?"... to once again have them not call or remote in at that designated time. This goes on for weeks until finally you can get them to remote in WHILE you're on the call with them (instead of setting up a time because they will literally never call you back or remote in).

Once they remote in... this is when you find out how truly incompetent/computer-illiterate they truly are. I mean they're typing registry editor paths into Internet Explorer, then Windows Explorer, etc. before going to a manager to ask how to open the registry editor - all while I'm literally telling them how to do it dozens of times - but they literally act like you don't even exist and won't listen to a single word you say. In addition to that, they're opening stuff like Python thinking it's Windows settings (because it has a gear icon), uninstalling my keyboard (???), and doing countless other idiotic moves (I literally lost count). Once they've gone through their little list, they say "ok sir we call you back to the remote in machine at later, ok?"...

I begged them to actually call me back this time at the designated time but once again... of course they don't. So it's back to the beginning... calling Dell tech support, they keep literally no records of anything they've done on my machine so it's back through the troubleshooting steps, then back through all the same ** in a remote session, then back to them saying "DERRR IDK WHAT'S WRONG? LET US CALL YOU BACK?"... This goes on for literally months... and literally (and when I say literally, I'm not joking or exaggerating... I mean LITERALLY) close to 80 hours of phone calls... that's an entire 2 weeks of workdays... just on phone calls with Dell tech support.

But wait there's more... that's just the beginning of this absolute **-show... They finally get me to send the laptop in for them to take a look at it... and I believe they didn't look at it at all because they got back to me with "needs new hard drive"... and they send this message with absolutely no way to respond to it. So you have to call in and be on the phone for about 3 hours for them to locate your order, figure out what's going on with it and then tell you "oh I see, it needs a new hard drive"... yeah that's literally what I'm saying is not the case because I already tried 3 other hard drives when I had it. They respond with "no our tech guys don't get it wrong". After about another month, they finally agree to ACTUALLY test it and discover that it is, in fact, NOT the hard drive (no **)....

They then tell me it's the motherboard... I really believe it's the GPU but I know there's a very small possibility that it could be the motherboard so I agree to pay to have them replace it... they replace it, and without even turning the computer on after replacing the motherboard... they ship it back to me... Of course I soon as I turn it on - there are the screen glitches and crashes... it's exactly the same. Furthermore, they only install used/"refurbished" parts into laptops they repair and the motherboard they installed doesn't have a working ethernet port... so I send it back... and they replace the wifi card... I spend about another month fighting with them over this - telling them that it's the motherboard and not the Wifi card... but I finally give up... they send it back... and OF COURSE - still screen glitches (which they told me they fixed) and still no ethernet...

Another month of phone calls back and forth and what do you know... they finally agree to change the motherboard AND graphics card but they'll actually send somebody to my house this time... guy gets here... replaces the motherboard... and literally rips the GPU out so hard that he breaks the corner of the GPU off... FML. Another several weeks of waiting and they send another guy in. This last guy actually knew what he was doing and agreed that Dell's off-site tech support are the most computer-illiterate people he has ever spoken with... glad I'm not the only one that thought that.

In the end, we FINALLY got my laptop fixed but let me tell you... I have never had a more frustrating or stressful experience in my entire 35 years of life. This was literally one of the worst experiences I've ever had... and let me tell you... I've been through some **. I was falsely arrested and went through years of trials to clear my name and this was seriously worse than that.

... But that's not all. I had also ordered an Alienware X17... They canceled it with no explanation. After 3 hours and 17 minutes of them bouncing me from department to department - and again, them not being able to understand anything I'm saying and me not being able to understand anything they're saying... they finally told me that it was because they didn't have the version of the laptop I wanted in stock. They literally got it in stock the next day... what the actual **. So I have to place ANOTHER order for it - but the refund from the original takes 2-4 weeks to get... I can take the hit so I'm like, "whatever, I'll just buy another one while I wait for this refund"...

On the second purchase, I forgot to select 2 drives in Raid 0... so I reach out to customer service... another hour of them bouncing me around from department to department - finally I get to the "change order department"... only to find out that you literally can't change any orders once they've been placed... Why have a Change-Order Department when you literally can't change any orders??!! The only option I have is to cancel my order, wait 2-4 weeks for a refund and re-place the order... all just to change one. Simple. Thing... At this point, I kindly raise my middle finger to them and tell them to forget it and just cancel my order.

This is... the worst company/customer support/tech support I have ever experienced... And btw I have been working on/with and building computers since I was about 11 years old... I've dealt with a loooot of tech support. Take my advice: Save yourself some absolute torture by not purchasing anything from this company. Once I got my stuff fixed I sold it immediately. Right now my dad and friend are going through literally the exact same thing with Dell and they're losing their minds. It's insane... and I left a lot of annoying stuff out too. This was torture. I'll eat glass before I buy another Dell/Alienware product again and I will make sure that nobody I know orders from them.

Alienware command center software not compatible with windows update. Soon it becomes impossible to update the AWCC (said software) which controls the lights and thermal profiles and more. If you want to spend countless hours following online tutorial fixing something that should be done by the developer, this is your laptop.

RGB lights are down. This is a hardware issue but the customer support from Alienware will refuse to cash out their warranty by keep asking you to do more testing, and force a reinstallation of windows on your PC that will destroy all your data. If you don't do it, then they will not continue to help. All in all, they don't accept you to send your PC to factory for repair. If you like spend tens of hours fixing your own laptop so that it would do what it should, buy this.

The gaming performance with gtx1060 is very poor. Either this GPU on laptop is a shrinked version of the complete gtx1060 or it is simply defective. I play warzone. On the lowest setting, you can run 60 fps. But during gunfight, it WILL drop to 40. How does Alienware treats customer? For one year all my emails to them went ignored. But calling them will work. Do not email them. Their customer support is friendly but is a waste of time because their company only allows them to help user to fix the problem. When they won't fix my problem, they asked me, do you want to buy more warranty. I didn't want to. So they dropped my case. And it was the end of that.