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February 15th, 2024 01:02
Alienware Laptop Injury and/or Fire Hazard Near Miss
<Violations as defined by Dell removed. Read the Forum Code of Conduct. The purchased 1 year warranty expired for this 17 R3 expired 7 years/1 month/9 days ago on January 6, 2017. DELL-Admin>
This is a long one, so bear with me.
The DC input jack cable plastic connector caught fire inside laptop and melted the bottom of the laptop, resulting in the death of my laptop and a 'near miss' of personal injury and/or property damage.
Dell Technical Support have repeatedly tried to make me go away, claiming 'reasonable service life' as their excuse to ignore the problem.
To summarise the lead up to the issue:
- The laptop was running and on charge, sitting unattended on fan driven cooling mat. Upon returning to the laptop, it was noticed to have shut down and blue LED on power supply was off even though it was still plugged in.
- Laptop would not turn back on using battery power after repeated attempts with the power supply removed, and the blue LED on the power supply turned off every time it was plugged into the laptop.
- There was an obvious melted/burn mark on the bottom panel of the laptop.
- Upon removing the bottom panel, it was noticed that the plastic connector of the DC jack cable that connects to the motherboard had significant burn damage, with some burn marks noted to the surrounding plastic.
- It was also noted that the melted/burn marks on the bottom panel of the laptop were directly adjacent to the burnt plastic connector, and would have been in contact with my leg if the laptop was on my lap.
I have attached photos of the burnt components.
Here are two links that show that this is not an isolated incident, which also show that customers have had their laptops replaced as a result of this issue in spite of the fact they were out of warranty.
This issue that caused this failure has nothing to do with 'reasonable service life', and I am not making a claim for warranty. I am highlighting the laptop's end of life was caused by a design flaw, a combination of both firmware (BIOS) and hardware, and that the failure was unsafe, as per the below assessment:
- The express charge function draws too much current, which has the potential to quickly degrade battery life as acknowledged by Dell, but nothing was obviously done to rectify this other than the post made in the link below
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-au/000143565/disable-express-charge-on-alienware-systems-and-improve-battery-life - The DC jack cable connector was not robust enough to safely handle the excessive current draw from the express charge function, has failed on numerous occasions including in my case, and is a fire and injury risk.
Once again, I am NOT trying to claim warranty, but pointing out that the laptop has died as a result of a design flaw causing an unsafe failure that Dell is aware of, and of which there are numerous examples of this happening.
I have not been able to find a way to proceed, so here we are. Can someone from Dell please contact me to either provide a satisfactory solution to this issue, or to advise how to process the formal complaint?
Thanks in advance.
Thanks in advance.
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DELL-Cares
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February 16th, 2024 08:52
Welcome to Dell Social Media Support, Could you private message us the Service Tag, so we could look into this for you right away?
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EvanMalowney
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February 18th, 2024 09:56
@DELL-Cares , please advise how to send a private message. I don't seem to be able to find the option.
<We have attached the out of warranty 7 year old Service Tag to your private Case number for all Dell agents to see. DELL-Admin>
That being said, I have been through this process twice with Dell tech support, and we always circle back to the fact that the laptop is out of warranty, and I am given the excuse of a 'reasonable service life' even though I explicitly stated this is NOT a warranty claim, but instead an accusation about an unsafe failure of my laptop, that was preventable. So, unless you are going to be able to work with me to find a satisfactory solution, you please advise the process for making a formal complaint about Dell's complete lack of care regarding this safety issue.
<You must follow the rules of the Forum Code of Conduct. The next violation will result in the termination of your Forum account.
Dell Technologies and Dell-EMC Moderators and/or Liaisons may at any time and without prior notice: edit your post, remove any posted message or thread, delete words that violate these guidelines from posted messages, or ban your account. DELL-Admin>
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EvanMalowney
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February 19th, 2024 09:40
And I hope Dell realises, the fact that the team keeps keep looping back to the age of the laptop, but completely ignore the preventable safety issue that ultimately killed my laptop, and could have resulted in an injury or damage to property, speaks volumes. I won't simply go away because Dell want me to, without a satisfactory solution. Please, do the needful as provide details as to how I make a formal complaint, which is the next step in this process.
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EvanMalowney
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February 25th, 2024 02:30
@DELL-Cares , it is EXTREMELY disappointing that Dell have handled this in such an UNCARING way. I'll reiterate, the fact that in all of the correspondence, there has not been a single acknowledgement of the risk posed by this preventable failure, caused by a design flaw, essentially proves that you are fully aware of this problem and are simply unwilling to acknowledgement it because of the implications. A 'reasonable service life' of electrical equipment should not end with a potential safety hazard, especially when that service life would have continued if not for this design flaw. Any other failure of the laptop could have been accepted, not a preventable one that could have caused a burn. As my polite requests to reach a satisfactory resolution have been continually ignored, I am forced to move on with the next steps. This is of course utterly not ideal, but I am left with no choice. Please do not let the long delay between me raising an application and my case being accepted, be an indication of me having gone away. Expected wait time between raising the application and a hearing date is approximately 44 weeks, but a response can come as quickly as 8 weeks.
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