a headsup regarding Dell return policy

L

LxT

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 22, 2004
Messages
158
I bought a dell 2405fpw. I find it way too bright, even w/ brightness down to zero. Dell exchanged it for me. New one is still too bright, so I give up and ask for refund. But they refuse, b/c I'm out of the 21 day period. I assumed (wrongly) that the 21 day period would be extended when I went thru the exchange process. Seems like a catch 22 situation: I had to try a different monitor to see if I just got a bad one, but to do that, I went out of the 21 day period and now can't get a refund.

So be very careful when asking for an exchange. If you go beyond 21 day, you will not get a refund. I went beyond it by 4 freaking days. BTW, the clock starts ticking when you place the original order, not when it ships or arrives.

Now I'm stuck with a monitor that gives me eyestrain and headache.
And to add insult to injury, they sent me a refurb; they were supposed to send me a new one b/c I got the exchange before the 21 day deadline. I could ebay it, but how much can I get, $600 top? I seeing NEW 2405 on ebay for $6-700.

Expensive lesson! This is my first bad experience w/ Dell and it really leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
 
Um have you EVER heard of a return policy that started with each return, rather than the invoice/billing date?
 
that sucks man. But try changing the brightness settings in your video drivers as well...maybe you can get the monitor to look how you want it to.
 
I was curious about that , my invoice shows two dates, the first one on the left just says "Date 6/24/05" , then right next to it theres another that says "Order Date 6/21/05" , wich one do I go by if I wanted to return it within 21 days.
 
yeah I know about the s/w driver. turning down brightness there works, but it kills any dark details. I can read my email w/o going blind, but photos are all dark.

I had an apple cinema 23" and a HP f2304. They were bright too, but I could bring down the brightness to a comfortable level w/o destroying grays. I have gammo set to zero in the video card. If I hit the restore default button, it's like a flash bulb going off right in my face. I don't know how the people in this forum can stand this. Yes there's plenty of light in my room too.

wish I'd seen this before I bought it

http://www.firstadopter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=461&page=3&pp=10

when I bought from Fry's, I got another 30 day after exchange; thanks for asking.
 
K10 said:
how do you know if the 2nd one was a refurb?
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The refurbs come preassembled in a different box, that says Refurbished on the side. It's a little obvious that it's a refurbished monitor.

However, my 2405FPW is refurbished, and I love it none the less. Not a single dead pixel, no backlight issues, no buzzing, no ANYTHING. The only problem I have with it is it's inability to display native resolution (1920x1200) on the DVI port. Works fine in VGA. But, this may be due to my antique video card, which is getting replaced quite soon.
 
LxT said:
So be very careful when asking for an exchange. If you go beyond 21 day, you will not get a refund. I went beyond it by 4 freaking days. BTW, the clock starts ticking when you place the original order, not when it ships or arrives.
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I find that hard to believe. I ordered my monitor with their website telling me a shipping time of 45 days+ and I will get it Monday, so that would mean I couldn't return it at all. It's more likely that it starts the day they ship it.
 
Personally, I was upset about the part of their return policy where they send me a defective, unusable piece of crap (the 2005FPW), and then I have to pay to send it back.
 
Also to note, once you do get it refunded, it will take up to 1-3 month to actually get that money back onto your account (at least dell preferred account). I've returned the 2005 fpw (after going through 4 of them all because of horrible backlight issues) back in the beginning of May and I still have yet to receieve my refund. I called a few weeks ago asking the status, and the representative told me that it was "accepted" on June 16th, which is approximately one month from my return date and it will be credited back to me on the next billing cycle (mid-July). She also went on to tell me that the process takes about 30 days with customer service and about another 10 days on the financial side, then you have to wait for the next billing cycle to actually get it. So becareful of what you buy and don't expect to see the actual refund back in 1-3 month.

Ald
 
K10 said:
i lucked out with my replacement. i specifically told the dell rep to insert a comment on my replacement order about not sending me a refurb. maybe that did the trick.
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I've gotten two replacement 2405s, neither of them were refurbs and I didn't specifically indicate anything.
 
I filled out the return request form online yesterday and dell responded a few hours later saying UPS will pick up my monitor free of charge on tuesday , Cant complain about that :)

I'm going to try another brand later (probably samsung) but for now hold off and continue using my CRT, My 3 week experiance with running the Dell 2001FP along side my Sony G520P 21" CRT made me realise that although LCD is best for Text and generaly looks great, CRT is still king for Gaming and anyone that says otherwise is in denial! :D (Or havent used a Trintrion / Apreture grille based CRT).

p.s. in case anyones curious why Im returning the dell 2001fp, the main reason is I couldnt get used to the washed out black levels (especialy when comparing them to my crt) and plus smooth framerates just dont look as smooth on LCD's vs. CRT. (probably a response time / motion blur thing although the 2001fp is rated 12ms)
 
Aldoria said:
Also to note, once you do get it refunded, it will take up to 1-3 month to actually get that money back onto your account (at least dell preferred account). I've returned the 2005 fpw (after going through 4 of them all because of horrible backlight issues) back in the beginning of May and I still have yet to receieve my refund. I called a few weeks ago asking the status, and the representative told me that it was "accepted" on June 16th, which is approximately one month from my return date and it will be credited back to me on the next billing cycle (mid-July). She also went on to tell me that the process takes about 30 days with customer service and about another 10 days on the financial side, then you have to wait for the next billing cycle to actually get it. So becareful of what you buy and don't expect to see the actual refund back in 1-3 month.

Ald
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That's BS, don't take that from them. They will never refund you the money if you don't put pressure on them. It may be different for others but it's like that in my case, I kept one 2005 and returned the other to get a 2405 A VERY LONG TIME AGO. Never paid much attention to what was going on at Dell until almost two months later when I realized that they haven't refunded me my money, so I tried to contact Dell, and what a frustrating experience it was.

At first the customer service rep tried to claim that I never returned the monitor, I had to explain over and over and over the fact that I kept one monitor and returned the other one, I finally gave him the tracking number that's when he promised to refund me my money. A week goes by without anything so I contacted them again, this time they told me that although they received the monitor, it is an exchange monitor so they don't have anything to refund me. I had to explain to him how the exchange monitor is for my 2405 not the 2005 and I have a tracking number for my exchange monitor also, I told him to check the tracking numbers but he kept ignoring my requests and explanations. Finally he said "Sir, you have the monitor so I'm not going to refund you." That's when I blew up, I don't remember exactly what I said but it involved my lawyer, fraud, stealing and the proof of Dell employee's signature when he received my return monitor, no profanity was involved.

After that he asked to give him a min while he talks to his manager, then he came back to apologize and told me that the credit will be refunded in 5-8 days (Same thing they told me last time.) I kept a record of everything this time including his information. Today I received an e-mail saying that the credit is already put back into my account, keeping my fingers crossed right now though as I really don't trust Dell.

If you want your money back, you probably have to fight for it since they haven't refunded you after two months, good luck to you.
 
talk to the supervisors supervisor and go up the ladder and bitch til you get results. im really good about that. my last job called me the "bulldog" because i would always bitch and get us free stuff.
 
as a side note though. time starts from the ship date.

why did it take u more than 21 days to realize the monitor was crap? shooo as soon as i plugged it in and saw that, they would have been getting a phone call.
 
machwireless said:
as a side note though. time starts from the ship date.

why did it take u more than 21 days to realize the monitor was crap? shooo as soon as i plugged it in and saw that, they would have been getting a phone call.
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Well, it took a week for the first monitor to get here, and 4 days for the replaceement monitor. So I really had just 10 days to evaluate 2 monitors. The problem is I guess I tried too hard to like this thing, because so many people here rave about it. I kept trying different things, reading too much stuff from forums. I should have just bailed.
 
the reason dell starts from ship date is because YOU choose your shipping method and they know everyone goes for Ground because its free.

Dell has some smart people on their team.
 
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