DON'T BUY DELL - THEIR SERVICE STINKS

It is appalling! One hour on the phone to ask a question which they won't answer.
I have a customer laptop which has come in. Initially it looked like virus issues but after checking with two AV systems it isn't.
The symptoms are that sometimes on boot there is no mouse cursor. Sometimes the keyboard does not work. Sometimes it is OK.
So I phoned Dell to ask whether the machine was in warranty and if they could help identify the best way to fix it.
The first call lasted 6:30 minutes, after which time I closed the call. If I want to listen to music I will buy a CD of music more to my liking .
The second call lasted 10:30 minutes which got transferred between a number of departments before it finally failed when I asked to speak to someone who could speak and understand plain English.
On the third phone call which lasted 6:15 minutes, I asked for the postal address to find out where to send my invoice for wasted time only to be put back into a queue with some awful music again.
The fourth call lasted 31 minutes. I got the postal address so now I know where the invoice is going but back on the support desk I gave the service tag and was asked where the machine had been bought. I don't have that information - it is not mine - it belongs to a customer. After a stand up row I eventually got to speak to a supervisor.
I had another battle. Where was the machine bought? I don't know. We cannot progress your enquiry without validating this information. This is an enquiry to determine if the machine is in warranty. Once the service tag is given it is surely a simple matter of saying Yes or No. But no, "we have so many calls, we cannot give out that information without validation".
I was eventually directed to a web site where I can put in the service tag and it tells me. Only 9 days left by the way. Maybe they were hoping those extra 9 days would expire before they acknowledged the complaint and thus could charge extra because the warranty had expired.
I now have a good mind to put some random numbers into this just to check the warranty status of someone else's machine - all without the need to specify where the machine was bought. How ridiculous.
If I treated my customers like this I would soon have no business.
How do Dell survive? They sell crappy equipment at ridiculously low prices and then they have a captive audience - you have to use them to get anything done.
In a Customer focussed, service led industry Dell do not deserve to survive. I hope they don't.

A word to the wise. If you too have wasted YOUR time in this process send them the invoice - they might soon get the message.