A couple of weeks ago I decided to reformat my home PC – it now gets only occasional family use, but it had had a lot of use, and things were starting to go awry. The machine itself – a Dell Dimension 8300 purchased new in 2004 – is still going strong, although it has had a failed hard drive and a failed powersupply over the years. I seem to recall that the hard drive went one month out of the 12 month warranty – dang.
Anyway – I went looking for the original CDs that came with the machine. Like many people, either the machine never came with the cds in the first place, or I have filed the CDs away in a spectacularly useless spot.
I borrowed an XP Home CD from a friend (I’m licensed, right?), installed it, but then my key wouldn’t work. No problem – I’ll work around that – it must be possible, right?
No work-around could be found that would work, so 30 days in Windows got really antsy about not being activated, and shut itself down. Worried about my files, I put another copy of the OS on there so I could access my files – but knew that that would give problems in 30 days.
So – I called Dell. After 20 minutes on the phone, and being transferred from tech support to customer care to tech support to customer care, I was able to order the CDs that originally came with the machine. At no cost, delivered to me. Having expected to have to pay, I was a bit surprised by that.
The CDs came today, three days after I ordered them. The bouncing around between departments wasn’t too good, but I spent virtually no time on hold so that made up for it.Credit where credit is due – Dell came through.