the only effective avenue to possibly get some resolution from dell is to file complaint on bbb.org.

that will yield someone from dell contacting you how might help with your issue. 

there are dell peronel (not other users like outselves) here that try to contact you here via private messages but i have found them to only waste your time and one inparticular that actually said some quite offensive and inappropiate things to me in the private mesages.  she remains nameless as if i state her name they delete my message.

this board is not effective place to express an honest exchange of ideas or experiances as they monitor posts and delete them per the terms of service that we all have to agree to to be here.  unfortuntely they do not explicity state their policy regarding what is aceptable and what is unaceptable to post here and simply delete things without explaination stating that their terms of service effectively states that they can do whatever they want...  so the bbb.org is more effective as the number of complaints, and the number of resolved complaints are published there and so they seem to be motivated to try to keep their ratio low as anyone cal read it.

good luck.

That 512-338-4400 number takes myou straight to a automated and right back to the calling pool!!!! FOR ANYONE ThAT IS ThINKING OF BUYING DELL... DO NOT!!!!.. ThEY WILL NOT hELP YOU JUST CONTINUE TRANSFERING YOU TO 15 OThER REPS ThAT YOU WILL GIVE TAG NUMBERS AND INFO TO ThINKING YOU WILL GET hELP AND YOU WONT!!!! ThEY ARE hORRIBLE I JUST SPENT 1300.00 ON ThE XPS STUDIO BOUGhT SEVERAL DIFFERENT WARRENTIES ON IT AND NONE OF ThEM SEEM TO BE ANY GOOD!!!!! TODAY I hAVE BEEN TRANSFERED 15 TIMES COUNT ThEM 1...2....3...4...5...6...7...8....9...10...11...12....13.....14....15....   MONDAY I WAS TRANSFERED 10 TIMES EVEN ThOUGh I SPELLED ALL MY INFO OUT TO ThEM.... AND FINALLY GETTING A TICKET NUMBER WhEN NO ONE CALLED OR ShOWED UP YESTERDAY AS I WAS TOLD I CALLED TODAY AND WAS TOLD ThAT ALThOUGh MY ADDRESS WAS CORRECT MY NAME WAS DAVID GOOD AND PhONE NUMBER WAS A 210 AREA CODE INSTEAD OF 918... MIND YOU MY NAME IS OMEGA FRENCh NOT CLOSE TO DAVID GOOD!!!!!!! I CALLED TODAY AGAIN WAS TRANSFERED 15 TIMES NO ONE TO hELP!!! I WANT MY MONEY BACK NOW!!!!! I AM ON hOLD WITh BEST BUY NOW AFTER BEING TRANSFERED BY ThEM AGAIN I AM AT ThE POINT I WILL TAKE STORE CREDIT And BUY ANOThER LAPTOP BY hp OR APPLE EVEN WILL PAY MORE AT ThIS POINT JUST TO GET OUT ThIS hELL!!!!

File a complaint at www.bbb.org to get some sort of response.  Telephone, online chat, email, and this forum are just a waste of your time.

I spent 3 hours on the phone with Dell today with an issue on a brand new Vostros 1520 laptop...  long story short, I just received a shipping label from them to return the unit.  Looks like Dell prefers to loose us as a loyal customer rather than even try to help resolve a problem.  They wanted to charge me before they would discuss a fundamental issue with the Operating System that they sold me with the system.  Seemed really odd that they didn't even bother to say "use system restore" or "reload your computer with the provided CDs."  Little wonder why they moved from the number 1 slot to now the number three slot in the last two years.  And they missed their quarterly earning sending the stock down 7% after the closing bell today.  Good job Dell.

As you found out, Dell does not warrant operating systems, though I thought there was a 30 day software support agreement, but that may have disappeared as well. I do not know of any manufacturer that will provide software support for free beyond a minimal window.

Regarding the person who bought from Best Buy... Just an idea... Have you transferred ownership from Best Buy to yourself? If not, that explains the incorrect anme and phone number... Just a possibility....

Also, there is an Unresolved Issues link at the bottom of this page to escalate your questions / concerns. If you haven't tried it, do so.

And, if you bought it at Best Buy, you should have the option of having it repaired by the Geek Squad through your local store.

Good luck to both of you.

Actually Dell does worse than simply not warrant operating systems.  They are actually rude and insulting about it with obnoxious comments like "you don't ask a car manufacturer how to drive the car you just bought."  But I wasn't going to ask them how to drive a car I just bought, I was going to ask them ask them if they knew how to make the broken car that they sold me work.  They would not even listen to my question before pressing for credit card information to discuss the problem.  Again, this is on a brand new system not even a day out of the box.  Interestingly, after multiple people said I could not return the Windows 7 software that came bundled with the system which they don't support for a second, someone did offer me to return just the operating system instead of the entire system.  I would have done that early on and just installed XP, but they shot themselves in the foot with thier miserable customer service and now this company will but their computers elsewhere.  These Dell support people provide answers without even listening to the customers questions.  They are very confident and seems like they know what they are doing; that is if trying to go out of business is what they are doing.