I've been a long time admirer of Alienware for a long time. But it seems that the appearance of a quality product is only that, appearance.

I went to their website with the intention of buying one of their notebooks, as well as setting up a corporate account for my company. So I went through the configurator, and go to the end; only to see that the minimum shipping charge was $86!!!!!!!!!!!! I thought that had to be a mistake.

So I called them up... I called the "sales" phone number, which I mention because on the website, they make it perfectly clear that you need to call the correct phone numbers. 20 minutes later, I am still on hold. And when I finally do get the sale rep, his response to me asking about the shipping charge was literally, "uh huh". Then he made a VERY lame attempt to tell me that $86 is a standard shipping charge for an item that size! Really? an item that weighs less than 10 pounds costs almost $90 to ship?

Then I mention to him, that since I do have a business to run that I am forced by my partners to also consider Dell, and that they ship laptops for free; making it all that much harder to justify buying Alienware laptops for my people. To which is response was...
"uh huh"...
Seriously... This is the best that Alienware can do? How sad.

But! There is a bright spot for this so called sales rep... He tells me to buy the lap top and then he would see what he could do about shipping... That was his response, to having a new corporate customer.
Wow... He made absolutely no effort.

Just a rant...
/rant

 

that's annoying... you'd think in these times companies would be customer-obsessive to try and earn new business... Alienware is a VC backed company... I bet their investors would be thrilled to hear this story.

 

The funny thing is that Alienware is owned by Dell!!

There are a lot better companies Brian that do "boutique" - made to order - rigs. Try Falcon-Northwest or Voodoo PC.

I have owned a Voodoo PC laptop and it was the best I ever had. Pricey but worth it.

Just check out this bad ass piece of work!

http://www.voodoopc.com/#/productsenvy

While I represented HP, they bought Voodoo. Solid company.

 

Do NOT buy their crap! I bought a A laptop from them, and 1 week after the 1 year warranty ran out the motherboard fried, and they would not help me one bit. Absolute crap customer service!

Check out Ibuypower.com
They got some cool stuff.

 

Sorry to hear about the shitty service, I remember drooling over those computers when I was way younger. They were always the "dude, check THIS computer out" option back then.

 

Dude Brian, one word.

Thinkpad.

More preceisely, Thinkpad T500's.

Most clients of ours with Thinkpad T series are very happy with them, and they are very business oriented.

Dell laptops are a hit and miss.

My old T42p is still going strong. Heck, we have lots of T4x's at our clients that just won't quit.

 

I was about about to point out the Irony, but I was beaten to it. Sorry for your crappy experience. I would expect better in today's world. I guess they are not doing so bad...

 

There are plenty of actual boutiques out there, actually independently owned unlike Alienware (Dell) or Voodoo (HP). I'd check out Velocity Micro. They're probably the biggest of the smaller guys and have always treated me quite well. I own two myself.

 

Velocity Micro, thats one that I haven't heard of...

I sent a polite (believe it or not) note to the powers that be at Alienware about my experience, and have not received the first bit of acknowledgment. Not surprised actually.

I too found an interesting company that I was not aware of called Sager. They've got some great gear and very fair prices.

 

I purchased two desktops from GamePC (GamePC - Custom Build Computers, High Performance PC, Custom Computer, Custom Desktop PC) before switching to Macs. They are in Palo Alto, CA, and treated we well long after my warranty expired.