They should have just done a credit card charge back once Dell didn't fix the issue in the first month. Never let a company take months to fix an issue like this. Just get your money back and go somewhere else.
If you pay for a laptop and it arrives broken that's the vendors fault. If you're still using and paying for a broken laptop 8 months later that's your fault.
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Unsolicited feedback: your messages are coming across as extremely defensive. Is anyone here really threatening you? Or posing any kind of real threat? The people here would actually probably like to be on your side. HN isn't in the habit of defending big tech behaving badly.
Tl;dr: You might catch more bees with honey...
So I opened a dispute with CapitalOne, my CC company. They were very clearly not on my side. I had to fill out a form which asked for things like a letter from another retailer explaining why the chargeback was justified. I filled it out, included tons of supporting documentation including my emails with iRobot. (I didn’t do the letter, though.)
CapitalOne forwarded it to iRobot, who responded with a form letter that didn’t address the complaint at all. (Just “our return policy is XXX—my problem was that they weren’t issuing me an RMA so I could actually conduct the return… a problem I had clearly laid out in the complaint.)
Despite them not addressing my complaint, CapitalOne reversed the chargeback and sent me a letter that gave me something like 14 days to respond (iRobot had 60 days to respond, IIRC). This was over the Christmas holiday, so I didn’t see their letter.
I was very disappointed with the experience. CapitalOne wasn’t providing me the consumer protection I expected of them, and there didn’t seem to be a human in the loop. I did a search for an alternative CC, but didn’t find anything that seemed like it would be better. (I though the Apple Card might be a good choice, but apparently they’re getting a lot of complaints about the actual provider, which is Goldman Sachs IIRC.)
Fortunately, the complaint did bump my support request up to executive escalations, which was my original intention anyway, and it was eventually resolved to my satisfaction, including iRobot paying return shipping and even dealing with UPS losing the return package. I’m now the happy owner of a functional j7. FWIW, I think iRobot’s issues were more about staff shortages than any intentional malfeasance.
So everything worked out. But I’m still unhappy with CapitalOne—I had a good case for a chargeback, but they didn’t even read it before siding with the seller.
Long story short: chargebacks aren’t the panacea they used to be.
Do your own research though--I am definitely not an expert in churning/credit cards, so there may be better cards etc. for your lifestyle and whatever type of reward you prefer (i.e. cash back vs airline miles).