Dell Support - difficult or just waiting for warranty to expire?

I am writing this in the UK where I live - just to give an indication of location and potential options.

On Sept 11th I got a notification from Dell Support Assist that the SSD in my Optiplex SFF desktop is failing.  My current warranty (Pro Support Plus) expires on 22nd Sept - so a timely warning.

I used the Support Assist interface to raise a ticket and started an exchange with a support agent who does not appear to be willing or able to solve the issue OR is simply waiting for the warranty to expire on 22nd Sept when it will become my problem (I assume but hope not).

I have sent the data as requested by the agent, tried to run some diagnostic software during the boot process (which will not run on my machine) and finally answered a (presumably standard) set of questions about the machine which suggest the agent believes he is dealing with a laptop - clearly not the case.

It is now the 18th Sept (7 days after first raising the issue) and I am no further on despite having a Pro Support Plus package.  I am about to leave for a week holiday so there is no chance of finalising a solution prior to the Pre Support Plus end date.

VERY unhappy about the situation but no way of contacting anyone apart from the original service agent. Again, a clever way by Dell to prevent "problem escalation" and having to deal with unhappy customers????

Is this a deliberate tactic by Dell to "play for time" until it shifts from their problem to mine?  It certainly seems so.

Just an extra point - running the Support Assist software today for a hardware scan shows no issues with the SSD.  To me this suggests that the Support Assist software is potentially not working correctly - but I am just a dumb end user who installs this stuff to help me to keep my computer in top shape.

FS