Hi there,
I'm a proud owner of a brand new Alienware Alpha. Being a fan of Steam, I'm eager to immediately play around with the system, and give the SteamOS beta a try, amongst other things.. but I've ran into a brick wall in terms of support.
Before I do anything to the machine - even turning it on, and running through the Windows setup - I'd like to be sure that I can restore it to its factory defaults, with the proper Alpha UI running and everything. SteamOS and other Linux distros will likely wipe the hard drive entirely, including the recovery partition, and having a recovery partition doesn't help in the case of upgrading the hard drive in the future.
So, thankfully Dell has a wonderful website where you can order and receive the USB recovery media for the Alpha at no charge - if you live in the US or Canada, that is.
Well, I live in Australia, and that site doesn't appear to exist for us. I don't really know, because whenever I enter my service tag or express service code, the website tells me I have no warranty, and only gives me the option to call phone support.
So I called phone support, and after trying to explain my dilemma to the guy on the phone, he was all set to send me recovery media, until he mentioned that by recovery media, he meant a standard OEM Windows 8.1 DVD (kinda useless for a diskless based machine), and that they couldn't provide the Alpha UI after reinstallation. When I explained further about the proper recovery media, it immediately fell into the "Don't know, Too hard, Can't help you" basket. Oceanic support basically doesn't have the recovery media, and they don't know when they'll get it.
Okay.. so that sucks. I'd give the technical support chat a try, as apparently they can be better with this sort of thing, but I don't have that option because the website tells me I have no warranty. Bugger. Okay, lets try the last support avenue by sending an e-mail to.. oh wait, that option isn't available either because the website tells me I have no warranty.
So I'm in this circular trap where phone support can't help because they either don't know or don't have it, and all other support avenues - including ordering spare parts - is closed off to me, because the website thinks that my day old Alienware Alpha has run out of warranty.
Guys... I will happily pay you to ship me the USB key from the US to Australia. I'll even buy the USB stick. If you're willing to let me download an image file taken from the USB recovery media, I can even do that - I work in IT, and I know how to make bootable Windows 7/8/8.1 USB sticks, and I've got tons of 16GB and 32GB ones lying around.
Just give me some kind of option here.