Dell Computer Telephone Support

I bought a new XPS ONE desktop computer with the pre-installed software bundle that Dell sells online. A Roxio software driver was causing "a stability issue" with the software and was disabled by Windows Vista. So I got error messages every time I logged on -- brand new pre-installed software.

I spent 3 hours on the phone with Dell support and an hour with Roxio support and they could not figure out how to fix it. Roxio said the solution is to install the current version. Dell installed an older version of the software with the new Windows Vista Ultimate -- and it did not work.

It took another three hours of telephone calls to get someone at Dell Customer Care who could understand the issue. She told me that Dell refuses to send software to customers for this because "Roxio is free".

Roxio was part of the software bundle that was sold to me by Dell for $1400.00. That's not free. And it didn't work because of a Dell error. They refused to send the current version so I could try to fix it for them -- and their tech people could not correct the problem with three full hours of remote connection to my brand new machine.

The customer care representative told me that if I would like to return the entire computer I would have to call a different department at a different number. There is no brick-and-mortar location for Dell.

The service was an amazing production. But after six hours they could not resolve the problem and refused to send me the correct software for the operating system that they pre-installed.

This problem occurred out of the box. I may have to send this back and get an imac because I cannot imagine trying to deal with Dell's phone system and under-qualified support teams with a more serious problem.

Dell's representative said that Dell would would not send the software correction and agreed that Dell would rather have me send the whole thing back to them and buy an imac.

I guess Dell as stock in Apple.