"We are a small independent elementary school in Chilliwack BC with a strong sense of community.  Fundraising efforts each year make up for the shortfall needed in our yearly budget to upgrade computers.  Many of you reading this are familiar with the efforts required to fundraise for the luxury of new school equipment.  Our school families are no exception and put endless hours into raising enough money to buy new laptops last year. Below are extensive details about or experience with Dell.  Simply put, our school just wants Dell to provide us with laptops that work.  Currently these computers do not work and based on the warranty support Dell has provided so far we are not confident that these computers will ever get fixed.  Please sign/share our petition and join us in asking Dell to provide us with computers that work.

In September, 2015, St Mary's School chose to purchase laptops through the Microsoft store in Vancouver, BC and they recommended the Dell laptops that, we subsequently found out, routinely drop their network connections. These computers have had WiFi issues from the start. We have gone through all the steps we felt were necessary to ensure that they are in good working order (all updates done, trouble shooting on all 38 units, as per Dell Tech Support instructions, ensuring that our WiFi in our building is solid). We even went so far as to send Tech Support 3 of these units, for them to work on. When we received the 3 units back from Dell, we found that 2 of them are still suffering the same issues. Upon further research on our own, we have discovered 2 online forums that indicate that these devices (Dell Inspiron 3543) have a history of WiFi issues. We have been working on getting this fixed for the better part of 6 months, and have had no cooperation from Dell. We have been given the run around, have had different people in the Tech Support chain of command contradict one another, and still have computers with wifi issues.  

We finally reached the Dell Advanced Resolution Group (ARG). We felt confident that the ARG would be able to cut through the red tape, and help us to reach a solution. We had no idea that our conversation would make things much worse. Before we spoke to the ARG, we were dealing with a first level support tech, and were prepared to send all our units to the Dell Service Depot. Dell had sent us the boxes, and we spend hours boxing up 36 units to return Dell for repair. Our conversation with ARG shed an unfortunate new light on the matter.They informed us that Dell would not take all 36 units at once, and that in fact, had I sent them to Dell, and had Dell lost them, Dell would not assume responsibility for them, despite the fact that Dell had advised me to do so and provided me the means to do so. When we said this was unreasonable, their response was that it was a mistake by Tech Support to send me all those boxes, but, hey, we all make mistakes. We asked them to clarify their position. They then repeated that Dell would not have taken responsibility for such a loss, had it taken place. How is this possible? Is this how Dell does business? Make a mistake, then take no responsibility? We found this revelation stunning, to say the least.

We were then informed that, to get these 36 units repaired, we would have to send one to Dell, get it back, then send another one to Dell, then get it back, etc. etc. How long would this take? With a turn around time of at least a week, this would take the better part of a year. We stated that this was unreasonable, as our warranty would be long expired by then. Then their tune changed again, and they informed me that, in order to get Dell to service all 36 units, we would have to call Tech Support 36 different times, once for each unit, so that Dell could deal with each one individually. This was more than we could comprehend. Who has the time to call Dell 36 times, go through the phone tree 36 times, go through explaining the issues 36 times to 36 different technicians, have those 36 technicians try to lead you through trouble shooting 36 times, and explain 36 times that you don't want to trouble shoot, you just want to send in the unit. Finally, This would again, involve dismantling the 36 boxes in which our computers now sit, waiting to be sent to Dell, and re-boxing them again, in 36 new boxes. Again, this is beyond comprehension to me.

As mentioned before, we are a small school with limited financial resources. Our students fundraised for over a year to make this purchase (in the range of $13,000) so that they could have increased access to technology. And this is how we have been treated by Dell. We am baffled by Dell's inability to help us. We simply want computers that work. We are not running any complex software, or doing anything particularly taxing with these devices. We are an elementary school, and are teaching basic tech skills to our students. Most of what we do is to productivity based and web based applications. We purchased these computers because we expected them to go online and to run basic software. They do not do this.

We are imploring Dell for help and hope that some will start listening. We simply need a reasonable solution to our problem. Please."