<p>I've been having issues with my speakers on my laptop and thought, "Hey, I'll go contact Dell. It's still under warranty."</p>
<p>So, I go to their website and use their little chat service since it's the only one that's free and get somebody.</p>
<p>I immediately tell him my problem with my speakers. He then spends twenty minutes asking me if I have wireless internet or Ethernet and trying to get me to pull an Ethernet connection out of the air.
(I do have wired internet, but Time Warner is currently being an ass, so I have no phone, television or wired access at the moment due to an three day-and counting- long neighborhood "outage.")</p>
<p>Anyway, I'm not sure what happened next—as I was getting distracted with the guy, trying to Google Communism and my cousin just slaughtered my kitchen by attempting to puree an orange, and his English was horrible, so I barely understood what he was trying to ask me—but I was half-paying attention clicking things he told me to click, and the next thing I know, guy has full control over my computer.</p>
<p>He changed my wallpaper (...said it was causing issues with my speakers?), went into my directories, and was freaking me out. And because I was on wireless, I couldn't just rip the connection out to get out of whatever he was doing, and he was controlling the mouse.
I think he turned my webcam on. I don't remember turning that on... </p>
<p>Anyway, I'm now scared of Dell. I'm little paranoid that dude is still on my computer.</p>
<p>They do this often. They ask you to give them permission to go into your computer remotely to diagnose the issue. It is weird to watch the mouse pointing and clicking on things as if a ghost is controlling your computer. As soon as you close out, you disconnect the remote feature so don’t worry about whether or not he is still connected to your computer.</p>
<p>I hate calling Dell because more than half the time I can’t understand what they’re saying because of their accents. It’s ridiculous. If you live in US and buy the product within the US, you should be able to call a customer service dept. within the US who speaks with an accent that you can understand. </p>
<p>I discussed this with my dad once. He works for IBM and he knows about this sort of stuff. According to him, if you tell the person, “I’m sorry but I’m having trouble understanding your speech/accent/whatever”, they’re required to connect you to someone with less of an accent/someone not based overseas.</p>
<p>Of course, this could just be IBM’s policy. I’m not 100% sure. Worth a try, though.</p>
<p>contacting support with ANY of these companies is a hassle. i had one girl whom i could barely understand ask if I wanted a free laptop while she took control of my computer, and pop up came up. I just hung up the phone, reset the computer, and dealt with the problem</p>
<p>If you are on Windows, you could try setting your computer back to a restore point. This is if it’s a software problem.</p>
<p>Have you installed/uninstalled anything lately? When did the problem start? What have you tried?</p>
<p>Other than changing setting back to what they were prior to this problem, you could be up against a hardware problem. It could be the speakers themselves or the sound card, if you have one.</p>
<p>i own a xps dell laptop, one day the video card fried…i called dell up and i am connected to an indian man(i mention this because they advertise that all xps owners get USA based tech support, otherwise you are rerouted to india) . </p>
<p>anyway I tell him the problem and he doesnt even try to help me…instead he trys to SELL me “premium support”…I say no thanks, no thanks , no thanks…and then he refuses to help me with my laptop without PURCHASING his premium phone number.
This occurred the following day as well.</p>
<p>I asked someone else to call for me…i guess they have a better aggressive voice because he showed them we meant business about the laptop, long story short…a tech came the next day.</p>
<p>Dell support is pretty notorious but i mean you get what you pay for, lol.
Just deal with it yourself and don’t even bother purchasing their support -_- really.
Apple care’s suppose to be pretty nice but at the same time you pay twice as much for the same technology if you think about it (and the pretty design) so whatever floats your boats. </p>
<p>I have a dell and never had problems with it or if something comes up I fix it myself because I heard so much about Dell’s support… my bro did have problem once but they just replaced it I think :)</p>
<p>I have a dell (and 4 year warranty). The dell has been pretty sturdy and when I kind of screwed with the video adapter’s driver and the screen went black, a guy drove to my house and replaced the whole motherboard no problem.</p>
<p>Trying to fix something over the phone will always be a little tricky, maybe you should give them another chance.</p>
<p>I’ve never tried mac or hp though, but I’ve never really needed to.</p>