Any ideas on how I can get my laptop fixed?

[epoh]

My hubby and I bought a very nice Alienware laptop about 14 months ago. 5 months ago the video card when out on it. We've been struggling with Alienware to get it replaced with a working video card ever since. We paid for extended service, btw. They send us one video card, which got the machine to boot, but the card was clearly not new, and had some damage - the screen was pretty screwed up. I work in computer support, so I know what a bad video card looks like. We called and mailed it back. Then they mailed us a frigging processor. Today we FINALLY got another video card. It looks like it came out of the bottom of a bin of used parts. There was a frigging hair inside the static bag. The heatsink is bent. The card itself is messed up and the pins don't stick up outside the casing far enough to be installed on the motherboard. I am just at a total loss as to what to do. The customer service people swore up and down they don't do refurbed parts - only new. But we are CLEARLY not getting new parts. Does anyone have any advise??? I feel so helpless. These frigging happily took several thousands of dollars and now won't even fix the dang thing!

Pictures of the damaged card to follow.

[Lax]

Alienware is owned by Dell now. You may want to see if you can deal with them to find a remedy.

[epoh]

Here are just a couple of pictures of my so-called-NEW video card.







Other photos are here - http://public.fotki.com/epoh/vidcard/

[srwatters]

Don't show those pictures to Dell. I guarantee you won't get another replacement. Always photograph ESD sensitive parts on an anti-static surface (like the bag). As little as 50v can damage some ESD sensitive parts. We just went through our yearly TL-9000 audit, so I'm bored to death with ESD factiods...

[epoh]

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure the towel didn't cause the thing to spontaneously dent. Anyway, I just took those for myself.