Dell Updates
A quick update about my Dell Latitude saga. I called customer service today at 7:00 a.m. and had a pleasurable and productive, albeit lengthy, exchange with their representatives. I have managed an exchange for the ill-fated Latitude XT, and the process is everything that it should be. They are sending a replacement laptop, and when I receive it, I'll just have to send the broken one back. Hopefully they will ship it overnight, but that is doubtful, and I still haven't received any confirmation e-mails or phone calls that the exchange is going to actually happen. I am cautiously optimistic.
Quick Update (2/10/2010):
I have heard back from Dell, and everything appears to going well so far. I will say that I was dismayed that the standard laptop exchange takes 10-12 days to process. They have assured me however that my exchange is a high priority and will be shipped overnight when it is ready.
Another Quick Update (2/18/2010):
So, I received the replacement laptop as of yesterday, and everything works. Well, pretty much everything. The battery it came with was near dead, and while I did receive two CD-ROM attachments, one doesn't fit the CD-ROM, and the other, which does fit the CD-ROM uses e-SATA instead of USB, which the laptop doesn't have available. So 8 days, and overnight shipping means it wasn't too bad of a wait for exchange, and just as I was about to call Dell about the not quite right bits I received a call from them. They were OK with me swapping batteries, and tech support should take care of getting the right CD-ROM bit to me. All in all, it took about three weeks to get everything straightened out, which was a tremendously long time, but on the plus side everytime I interacted with Dell's customer support staff, it was delightful (minus the call about the original shipment of the first laptop).