Travis is heading to college in a few weeks. That’s very exciting, but he’s nervous that he’ll be heading to school with no computer or no working computer. He got a new laptop at the beginning of the year, and it’s no longer working all that well. The touchscreen keeps touching itself, moving the pointer to random points on the screen and disrupting whatever he’s doing. A Dell technician came to his house, didn’t fix the problem, and broke his headphone port. A second tech didn’t help all that much, and now it’s at Dell’s repair depot, still not getting the touchscreen fixed. What should he do?

I have a dell xps 17 laptop purchased late December and delivered January 5th 2012. I chose to get the touch screen option and that has been nothing but problems. In around March and April I contacted support because the touchscreen would randomly touch points on the screen. Very annoying when you’re working on something and suddenly everything’s minimized and having to fight with the laptop to keep the windows up! Or it randomly scrolling down the page.

The first dell tech was an idiot and we asked his boss to have him banned from our house. Last system he worked on he took the Bluetooth card that my mother needs for her mouse, 3 minutes after he left we called him, he said he wouldn’t come back because he was doing 80 on the freeway( in a 55-65 zone).

Then on my laptop he didn’t fix the screen… But broke the headphone port. Now only 1 out of 2 works. The second tech a few days later tried to fix the screen, but didn’t. It touched random points less, but didn’t fix.

While I am on vacation I scheduled my system to be sent to the dell repair center in Houston, I saw all they did was replaced the wireless card (wifi and Bluetooth would randomly drop connection), didn’t mention anything about Bluetooth or the screen or headphone port.

I get back on the 8th and leave for college on the 17th. What could I do if the system isn’t repaired fully? Would it be too late to say its a lemon and ask for a full refund to buy a different brand laptop?

It’s not that it’s too late to call it a lemon. It’s too soon. Lemon laws apply only after an item has been repaired three times for the same problem. Dell may be trying to get around this buy pretending that the touchscreen isn’t a problem while it’s in for repair. See whether it works when it comes back, and whether the documentation says that a repair on the touchscreen problem was attempted.

When it’s time, if Dell won’t budge, have a chat with the office of Michael Dell. A general EECB might work, and you can reach the office of Michael Dell at michael@dell.com.

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