Best looking computer I never received.  
 
I ordered a Area-51 from Alienware (Dell) in February with a expected delivery date near the end of February. This was a very expensive purchase for me, but I really liked the look and expected performance of the new Area-51 computers.  
 
About a week before the delivery date, I received an email stating that the delivery was pushed out 2 weeks, and that I needed to respond or the order would be canceled. Of course I wanted my computer, so I responded. Only now my computer would be delivered on 3/10.  
 
Then on 3/5 I receive another email saying my computer was delayed again, this time with a 3/17 delivery date and that I needed to respond or my order would be canceled. At first I did respond, but then it hit me. I am spending over 3 thousand dollars with this company and they can't contact me at all when it is delayed and tell me why? Does it take 6 weeks to build a computer? Do they value me as a customer for spending money?  
 
So I called the company and said I was considering canceling my order, expecting an explanation and perhaps some concessions to placate an irate customer. Instead, within 5 minutes with no amount of care nor compassion, my order was canceled (no fuss nor muss) and with it my loyalty in a company that I had owned 4 of my last 5 computers with (Both Alienware and Dell) over the course of 8 years.

BUYERS BEWARE....Better Business Bureau acknowledges concern....  
 
I had the same exact problem as Reviewer chrissysmommie.  
 
Alienware's customer service is shit. I had my M15x for 1yr and 4 days before the laptop's monitor's hinge broke on me. I called Alienware for support and they refused to provide tech and phone support unless I paid them $60 since my Warranty had expired only 4 days ago.  
 
So I simply asked to renew my warranty, but both the Alienware CSR and their Supervisor refused and told me the only way to fix the problem was to have me pay them $805 to triage and repair the necessary work.  
 
My simple response was... "yeah right, you can kiss my ass."  
 
So I ended up parting my laptop and sold them online.  
 
My next purchase will be with iBuyPowers since they have far better reviews than the Alienshit.

Dear Alienware Support,  
 
I sent my primary PC, my Alienware computer in for three weeks hoping to have the motherboard repaired. One of the RAM slots on the motherboard was fried, and now my system only has one RAM slot instead of two. This was noted by someone whom I spoke to on the phone. Then I decided to take the time to send my computer to get it repaired, and endure the three or four weeks it would take for it to be repaired. Unfortunately, your repair staff seems to be incompetent. I can not even begin to explain the rage I am feeling after opening my computer after being without it for as long as I had to, only to reach inside and find a slip of paper with a check mark by "Failure can no be duplicated." Without hesitation, and in less than a minute, I duplicated the failure. I moved the RAM from one slot to the broken RAM slot. Tada! The computer would not start. Then the next check box is "Repaired" with the employees note beside it, "Reinstalled OS" I would like to point out that this is not a repair at all. I deliberately uninstalled the operating system myself, and I hope that Ms. Gisela Rangel did not think that I sent my computer out so that she could install Windows for me and pretend that she fixed something. Also the other option is "Not Repaired (Customer could not be contacted). I assume this means that if you cannot find the problem, that the customer is contacted to ask for more specification so that the customer's time isn't wasted and doesn't receive a broken computer; which it was, and I have. I am outraged, and cannot believe that someone working in tech repairs failed to reproduce my problem. In my opinion, you should fire this person immediately. Not only was my computer not fixed, but I received a system with two RAM cards, and they didn't even test it with two, which would have shown the problem. Nay they didn't even test it with the one I sent! I think it is absurd that I should have to send the computer a second time, only to be rolling the dice as to whether or not it will be repaired! Not to mention the huge waste of time waiting for my computer! Here is my information. I expect you to please call me back and follow up by telling me how you want to make this up to me to protect your customer service claims. Thank you.  
 
PC Number: 488869A  
RO Number: 1158743  
 
Agent Account: ******  
Phone: *** *** ****  
 
--  
 
I had to call them because they don't do email support anymore. They insisted that the tehnician had found no problems, and I insisted that I was able to duplicate the problem. They suggest sending me new RAM. I asked if I should be able to start the computer with RAM in either the top or bottom RAM slot. He said I should. I said I couldn't. He gave me two day shipping this time, but said that was all that could be done to expedite it. Two weeks later I received my computer AGAIN. I looked for the repair slip. It said the problem was duplicated this time. It said the motherboard had been replaced. I turned on my computer and tried to restore my computer from a backup with my external HDD. Turns out only one of my three USB ports now work, thanks to the "repairs" they made. I have to either return it for more repairs a THIRD time, or just deal with having one USB port when all three should work. Will call them soon but am exhausted.

This review was modified by its author, weaselgrater, on 1/22/10 12:17 PM.

Model: M15x laptop  
I purchased this disaster of a computer from a company that doesn’t understand the simple concept of customer service.  
The laptop has been a nightmare from day one. The volume kept on changing on its own while the laptop was sitting idle. The mouse pad was all jittery. The cursor would freeze up every few seconds. And those are some of the “less” irritating issues.  
I was asked to reload the OS with the “alien respawn” disk that they charge extra for. Twice. That did not help. Then I was told to do a complete reinstall with the extra disks that came with the pc. That fixed some of the issues (temporarily) that I had. At the same time I realized that I paid extra for a disk I couldn’t use since using it would bring back a lot of the issues I had in the beginning. Whoever was responsible for assembly and testing dropped the ball.  
After a while the laptop would start shutting down on its own.  
I sent it in for motherboard replacement twice. It came back with the same issues each time.  
The person placed in charge of my case tried to “upgrade” me to a 2 year old laptop that they no longer advertise on their website. Without my approval he had it shipped. I had it returned to the sender by calling the delivery company and rerouting it back to Alienware.  
Every time I called their customer service I was automatically rerouted to Dell. Go figure. Apparently Dell doesn’t have access to Alienware’s customer data so each time I called they would tell me to get lost. The only way to get hold of the right people was to call Alienware’s tech support.  
I’m still out 2000 bucks. All I got was the run around and a lot of promises.  
If you value your money don’t deal with this company.  
The day I buy anything from them again is the day Satan will be skating to work.  

This review was modified by its author, ed209, on 11/26/09 5:57 PM.

This has been the worst experience ever. I paid alot of money for this laptop, and when I called to get help and to order a replacement screen, they told me that they could not sell me a replacement but I could send in my laptop and pay almost 5 times the amount of the replacement part. I asked to speak to a manger and they REFUSED to let me speak to one. Before I finally got a hold of someone that could help me, I was transfered about 5 times and hung up on. I will never buy anything for them again, and I will not ever recommend them to anyone.

Alienware is the worst company ever. I awaited the newest Alienware laptop because I've always wanted an Alienware. They gave me a link to order it because it wasn't on their site yet. I ordered it and I had to wait almost 4 months in delays. It was very upsetting for 2 major reasons. The website kept on putting new dates on how long it would take, and I would wait for their estimation and 20 days became 4 months. They should not be giving estimations on new orders on their webpage if it is shorter than what the current orders are waiting for. Second, the price dropped $400 during the 4 month of waiting and they did not give me the lower price or a discount.  
 
When I got my laptop, I was happy because the ALienware design is really nice. But they have a lot of flaws with the design. The laptop overheated so the black coating on the laptop started to peel. The Alienware emblem scratches easily so it looks like there is a bullethole on the Alien's head. THe laptop overheats horribly.  
 
Then there is the operating problem. The Alienware that I bought came with the XP Media Center Edition. It was not installed completely and I had to look for the updates and download it myself to operate properly.  
 
There were also problems with hardware issues. My laptop crashed several times and I had to reformat the computer twice. The battery died 8 months after receiving it. I received a second battery and it died after only 5 months. Only 1 Ram gets read. Only 1 hard drive reads and then today, both hard drive went down.  
 
The customer support is horrible. I called them on several occassions and their fix is usually "remove the ram, place it back in, switch the ram locations." They gave the same fix for the hard drive and it all ends up not working. When I called to let them know about the battery problem, they saw that the laptop was drastically overheating. Their solution was to run the laptop with the bottom removed. When I called again about the overheating problem, they said that there is no records of the call.  
 
After the last time, I called customer support, my computer crashed on July 5th. One year and 2 days from when my laptop was sent out which was July 3rd. They didn't even compensate for delivery time where my laptop actually arrived a few days afterwards and they said that my year of free support expired. Unless there was a previous problem, they can only give 15 minutes of support, otherwise they will charge $40/hour for phone support. There was a previous unresolved problem with the overheating, but that problem wasn't recorded so I ended up with a $3200 oversized paperweight.  
 
I will never ever order from Alienware or Dell again. You can find better and less expensive laptops with better customers support and reliability.

Alienware is the worst company I have ever dealt with. DO NOT BUY ALIENWARE! I purchased an AREA-51 M15X and have had it only six months. I have had numerous blue screens, a screw fell out of the frame that holds the LCD in place and the internal fan is making noises like its broken. I have even done a system restore 3 times now, and it continues to blue screen. Everytime I call support, I am on the phone no less then 30 minutes waiting on hold to speak with someone. I purchased the AlienFX lighting system. I can't use it if I upgrade to Windows 7, since they haven't been able to come up with a fully functional piece of software to control it, so I am stuck with Vista if I want to use the lighting system I paid for. So I am currently on hold with them right now, since I need to setup an RMA to get all of these issues fixed, and its been over 30 minutes and I have not even talked to anyone yet. So essentially if you want to overpay for a piece of crap and get terrible customer and tech support, go with Alienware.

Order an Alienware desktop last week. Picked up at FedEx today. Removed from packaging, etc. and to my disappointment it would not post. Contacted tech support and they had me try the usual troubleshooting- reseating video card, trying one video card at a time, removing CMOS battery, disconnecting optical drive and hard drive, holding power button in for 25 seconds when first powered off, and other garbage. Support rep finally arrived at conclusion that it was a defective motherboard. Well I'm in the process of selling my home and moving into a temporary place. They refused to ship to any address except previous. Also said I would need to arrange a time with their tech to replace the board. Inquired about returning equipment and they said it would be a 15% restocking fee even if it was defective. And shipping was not covered. I asked for a supervisor and was informed that he was the only one I could talk to about anything. Basically refused to transfer me to anyone of higher authority. I will give them an opportunity to try the motherboard replacement even though it is a great waste of my time. Will update as things progress.

I ordered the OPTX AW-2210 on September 30, 2009. The web page stated it would be 2-3 days for delivery. They debited my credit card on October 2, 2009. I called them for 4 days to get a delivery date and I was told each time it would ship within 48 hours. That never happened. I had to cancel the order on October 7th, 2009 and call my credit card company and inform them of the situation. At this writing the charge still remains on my credit card.

First off, I haven't even received my computer yet. I just need to display my anger with customer service and how things haven't worked out in any favor.  
 
I won this lap-top via a contest. The actual order was placed August 24th, 2009, for an m15x. I called to confirm and was told the ship date would be Sept. 16th, 2009.  
 
A week later, I noticed no movement on my order making the date Sept 3rd, 2009. At that point I sent an e-mail(before they insisted you call) and was responded to 3 days later saying everything was fine. Sept 15th, 2009. No movement on the order. I call in and find out it's on the check stage, and that within 24-48 hours it would ship.  
 
3 Days later, I call, and processes have failed and the screen was damage, product has no ETA now when shipping out will occur.  
 
I've called everyday since then, and have had answers ranging from 24-48 hours shipping and no ETA. Customer service is the worst I've seen as far actual help.  
 
I've won this computer for free, and was told it would ship almost a month ago. I was in the market for another computer after I get this lap-top, and Alien ware WOULD have been at the top. I'm afraid with all this two-way talk, they would lose favorably. I'm just saddened by what has transpired, and I don't even have the computer yet.  
 
**Update**  
 
I've had the m15x for once month, upgraded to Windows 7, and has been running great. However the hinge is cracking ALREADY. Less than a month and the computer is breaking down. Stay away from Dell and Alienware.

This review was modified by its author, n1chol3, on 11/2/09 3:16 PM.

Alienware Customer Service is a joke... nothing but lies, guesses, and broken promises:  
Order for Area-51 M15X laptop placed 5/27/09 showed schedule to ship 6/1.  
Immediately rescheduled to 6/3 as soon as the order was accepted.  
Actually shipped 6/8/09.  
After reloading operating system 3 times and hourly reboots, internet connection problems, etc. Alienware finally authorized the return on 8/12/09. They advised it would take them up to 2 weeks to fix and return the unit.  
As of 9/8/09 they claim the unit was delayed in shipment and not received until 8/19 yet FedEx has delivery signed on 8/17.  
Worse, they say the unit has been rebuilt twice yet they do not know when it can be expected to ship.  
They never could provide status.  
They could not transfer me to someone that could help.  
They could not refund my money.  
On a positive note, when I asked the customer service agent if he wanted negative things to be said about Alienware he responded "of course not" yet he was not interested in doing anything to improve the situation.  
I spent $1,502.58 over 3-1/2 months ago and finally got a working laptop after hours and hours of phone calls and emails with tech service agents that never knew anything!  
Alienware says they will extend the warranty an additional 90 days but have never updated my account. Also they promised to upgrade the memory but did nothing. They promised too many things - I count 11 various lies that I have in writing in emails and they don't care!  
I wanted my money back so I could buy a Dell.  
After 3 more lengthly phone calls (shortest was 20 minutes) on 9/10/09 I was allowed to speak with an Alienware/Dell supervisor who contacted the Alienware repair center and found out that they still could not fix the Area-51 computer and were running diagnostics again. He then offered to cancel the system and credit my Visa card (even though all agents I had talked to previously insisted they could not do refunds). But he actually submitted a cancellation ticket and another department then contacted me and said absolutely no refunds so I had to cancel the Dell order and continue to wait. They promised to do a 48 hour burn-in test and yet the next day they had finished. They promised to ship by 2 day service but sent it by 5day ground. They promised to ship it to our new address but sent it to the old so it took another 3 days to finally arrive.

This review was modified by its author, BillT909, on 10/7/09 12:05 PM.

So I just received my M17x all decked out with the top parts to replace a crappy Sony laptop.  
The laptop is great an VERY fast, I mean after POST it boots in like 30 seconds (Vista64 Ultimate) but there is a great disappointment, really great: the touchpad!! It is a Synaptics Touchpad V7.0  
 
1- Usable area is much smaller then the pad itself (yes, I checked in the pad control panel) as in, even with horizontal scrolling disabled at the bottom there, sides and top there is a strip of 1/4" -+ that does nothing (yes, edge motion is disabled too)  
 
2- When I lift my finger off the pad the cursor snaps back on screen some 2/8" making it quite complicated to hit buttons, make selections, etc...  
So, for example, I am moving the cursor to say a window close button, when cursor is over it I lift my finger for the tap but the cursor snaps away from the button back in the direction the cursor came from.  
 
3- Tap zone are a joke, they are physically located nowhere near where you see and set them in the control panel and work badly, going from needing a light tap to a strong one to get it working and that happens 1 on every 5 taps only.  
 
4- Scrolling is horrible, acceleration is disabled, but on a long page it will go ok and then suddenly scroll like 20 pages at the time or jump the whole site up and down.  
 
5- Tap lag, when I tap, anywhere there is a few milisec lag , 400 or so, enough to be noticed and bothersome  
 
This is a freaking joke, my old $700 Sony is as precise as can be, this $5800 rig comes with a pad that is literally a joke and should keep people from buying such a laptop until Alienware fixes it, I am actually calling Alienware today and will return the laptop if a good fix is not offered, which is a shame because for the rest it is a smokin rig, but what's the point if I can't use it properly!  
 
UPDATE:  
3 days in owning this new laptop, the AC adapter died on my, already called CS, sometime next week I should have a replacement I was told.  
THIS IS NOT what I expected from a company that claims to be have the world's best laptop!!!  
If one more thing goes wrong I am returning this laptop!!

This review was modified by its author, JClaude, on 8/14/09 4:33 PM.

I have purchased two Alienware Machines in the last three years and up until last week had no problems whatsoever. As of last week however, I will no longer be doing any future business with the company due to a recent malfunction with one of my machines.  
 
Despite the fact that I have purchased an extended warranty on the machine, I still have a broken husk more than a week later. I was originally given a time frame of 1-3 business days for a part to arrive... that did not happen and when I pointed this out I was essentially told the tech must have been misinformed. Now that I've received the part, I was told initially by the tech that within 24-48 hours a tech would call me. I followed up with someone upon receiving the replacement part and was told the same thing, however, 48 hours later I have called again and am now told it may be another day or so.  
 
Alienware is a fine company as long as your machine doesn't break, once it does they do the best to avoid helping you within a reasonable time frame. I had been lead to believe that shipping an item and having an on-site tech would be faster than me shipping my machine back, but I no longer believe this will be the case. I recently had issues with an HP machine, they overnighted me a box which then overnighted the machine to them and then they overnighted it back when it was fixed, that entire issue took 5 days, the same amount of time it took for me to get a part from Alienware.  
 
Having left feedback to Alienware and contacted Customer Service multiple times, I've been told they more ore less don't care about me or my future business.  
 
Followup 8/14  
As of today I'm almost 3 weeks without a working computer, I was contacted by Alienware after posting this by a man named Charles who promised to escalate my issues. Charles has not followed up with me since then, I had to follow up to make sure they even received my pc and since then have been unable to reach Charles for a status update.  
 
8/19  
PC received back in working condition. Still not pleased with the way everything was handled, but I appreciate the follow up by Charles on the 17th and having it shipped back 2 day shipping.

This review was modified by its author, kierydon, on 8/22/09 11:30 AM.

It is my opinion that most of the reviews for Alienware, a subsidiary of Dell, on this site are likley fake. If one compares the amount of BBB complaints against their high rating here a large disparity is readily apparent. Please do a web search and many bad stories emerge.  
 
After the glowing blue alien head started to flicker, I had my notebook catch fire due to what looks like a poor case of wire routing. It is beyond repair and unfortunatley, out of warranty. Victor, the head of customer service, refused to let me speak with anyone else and told me that "even if you notebook is only 24 hours out of warranty it is your problem not ours". Yes, the notebook was out of waranty. However, a notebook is not supposed to spontaneously catch fire. This appears to be the fault of the Alienware build process and they refuse to help me out at all. I am not asking for a free notebook, bit a slight discount on a new machine would be in order it seems. What happened to going above and beyond Alienware?  
 
Having been a good customer, I will no longer do business with a company like this. I strongly encourage you to research the Alienware customer service reputation and take your business elsewhere.

This review was modified by its author, lostin, on 4/29/09.

I bought an Ailenware m15x-R1 computer for playing games. I thought I was getting a top of the line gaming computer. I was sadly disappointed when the laptop arrived. After it was charged up and ready to go I unplugged it take it to the living room. The volume control on it went nuts. It began to turn itself up and sometimes down at random about every 5-10 seconds. Then the computer began to just freeze up or just completely shut down. I haven’t even played any games on it yet. When I went to the Ailenware tech site I discovered that many people where having the same problem with their computers. They were complaining about sending their computers in multiple times for “repair” but getting their computers back still broken. The tech response to one such person was they didn’t know what was causing the problem, they would pass it on, and that they would get back to them when they had a solution. That particular complaint was logged about 4 months ago. The earliest complaints of the volume control was 10 months ago. Another gentleman complained that he his computer shut down intermittently. He got a new computer and that one had the volume control issue. Based on on these complaints I decided to just return my computer and get my money back. When I contacted Ailenware I was told I would have to pay a restocking fee of 15%. I was stunned that they expected me to pay them for a BROKEN computer. They stood by their decision to charge me the fee despite my arguments. They said I either had to let them try to fix it or pay the fee. I see that as black mail. I am not returning the computer because I don’t like it or changed my mind. IT IS BROKEN. They send it to me that way. Why should I be forced to let them try to fix something the tech people say they have no solution for. Plus, I would then be without a computer during all this fixing time. I need a computer now when I bought it not when they finally manage to fix the broken computer they send me.  
I would like to warn all other consumers not to buy from Ailenware. They don’t care about their customers or their product.