Denied warranty because I haven't sent back old laptop that I was sent a replacement for

The DC jack on my Alienware has been sketchy this last month, so I decide to take advantage of my purchased three year warranty and see if I can't get a repair.

I call dell technical support and get through to a guy who tells me that I don't have warranty which is complete nonsense. I can see in the preview of all my devices that I have it just fine. What's odd is that on the individual page for the laptop it says there's an issue - the tech support guy says this means I don't have it.

So I let him remote access my desktop and check the device list screen. He confirms it's a bit strange, so he starts communicating with the warranty team. Whilst he's doing that, I notice on my devices list that there are two identical R1 laptops, each with a completely different service tag. A bit more digging and I notice something very odd, apparently another laptop was sent out 20 days after my original order.

I decide to search my emails for the transaction confirmations, and I bring up two separate invoices on the days - the original purchase on August 11th 2023 (the laptop I own), and a second one on August 31st 2023. I check the invoices and I notice my original purchase is for the full amount, has my full name and my address on it, but the second invoice has a value of 0, and whilst it still has my name on it, it's been sent to a completely random address in another part of the country. The other curious thing is that whilst the salesperson registered to my original transaction was a chaimaa_r, the mysterious second invoice was dealt with someone called michael_b

I have a vague recollection of the name chaimaa, but this Michael person I have no clue about. I then notice I actually responded to this email when it came through saying that I thought it was a mistake as I didn't recognise the address, but I never heard anything back, and so completely forgot about it. I think I remember thinking it was a clerical error or something.

So it transpires this second laptop, with a different service tag has been sitting on my account as registered to me this entire time. What's even more curious is, I notice it DOES have warranty on it. I'd never noticed any of this previously, because I'd never needed to check my devices in the Dell account.

So I start trying to explain this to the current representative I'm talking to and he starts looking into it. He claims that their records show I was sent out a replacement laptop after the initial one, and I was supposed to send the old one back and for this reason, I no longer have the warranty on it.

I explain to him that I never requested a replacement laptop as I've never had a problem with this current one. I don't recognise the address on the second invoice, and I have no idea who this Michael B is.

He requests I send him the invoices and we do a security check where he asks me to write down specific information on paper and take a photo of it next to my current service tag, but it doesn't seem to resolve anything, and he just continues to repeat that I need to send the old laptop back over and over again, and it starts to send me up the wall. I try explaining to him that it makes no sense that Dell would first take your word that something is wrong with the current one, send out a brand new laptop in the post and just 'trust' the customer is going to send the old one back. Tey always do an arranged pickup and swap with an onsite-visit, OR you send your damaged laptop in for repair first. There's no logic to what he's saying at all.

He spent a lot of the call not being able to respond to me properly, he just kept saying 'you do not have warranty on this laptop' and 'what you are describing just does not happen'.

We ended the conversation with him escalating it, and I'm waiting to hear. I don't know if he thinks I was trying to scam the company, but by the end of the conversation I had reached peak enrage.

Has anyone else ever encountered something like this? I don't know what to think about it? The only thing I can think of is that this Michael chap (with the dellteam email address) was running an internal scam, and I somehow managed to get caught up in it?

<Posting a Dell employee full name is not allowed. DELL-Admin>