Computer resolution

Short story:

Right after my last Alienware post, Jason filed a report with the AG and the BBB. And I called and made sure I knew the process for disputing the charges on my credit card.

And then I waited.

About 2 weeks later a woman called me, claiming to be "working on the BBB complaint directly with the CEO". And apologizing profusely for the time it had taken her to contact me but "they have me working on a lot of these right now"...

And so she told me that she wanted me to let her have them ship a new computer to her directly and let her "play with it for a few days" and make sure it works, and then send it to me. I asked her if she was kidding.

And she said well, they really wanted to keep me as a customer and blah blah blah and they would just go ahead and ship me one directly right now. And said uh....the only way I would even consider that was #1 if they would give me something in WRITING that if anything was wrong with it I could return it with no restocking fee and #2 I'd have to run it by Jason. And she said she'd have to run it by the CEO, and that she'd call me the next day.

Well she didn't call me the next day, but she did call the day after and said that the CEO wasn't willing to give me that guarantee, so they were going to just refund my money. ALL of it. No restocking fee. And after a couple of back-and-forth emails, I got it in writing.

So, basically Alienware finally did the right thing, but only after 1000 phone calls from me, Jason, and a complaint with the BBB. And they weren't willing to stand behind their product enough to send me a second one with a no restocking-fee guarantee. And I suppose I could say that Alienware FIRED me as a customer because I was too much of a pain in their ass.

Whatever.

I finally bought a super-fine-and-geekerific Gateway with the SAME VIDEO card as the Alienware one, a 17 inch monitor (the Alienware one was 15 inches), the extended warranty, MS Office 2007, a new digital camera, and the extended warranty for that, for $1200 CHEAPER than the Alienware cost.

Greta likes da new computer too kthx.