Weird Dell customer care answer ! Help me

My brother bought dell vostro laptop with one year warranty around a month ago. It was working fine untill its speakers stopped working. He called dell and they replaced them with new one within few days and after a week , same problem occures and then they refused to change them and said that this is because of high volume of "VLC player" installed and said it is not allowed to use VLC in dell laptops !! :shock i haven't heard any stupid thing like this before !!! What should we do now ????

Try talking to somebody who really knows a thing or two about his job. If your complaints are repeatedly ignored, report to the consumer forum.

Post this in Dell India's facebook page. There's an agent called Tulsi that's somewhat helpful.

^^ I second that. @OP: Do what The Sorcerer says. He is more experienced than any of us here in these matters.

ok i m putting tht thing on Dell's fb page

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Bytebolt said:
ok i m putting tht thing on Dell's fb page

I am experiencing a similar kind of problem. Did the dell changed the speakers?
They say that vlc damages the speakers of laptop. And they are not ready to replace them.

Read this btw. I don't know about speakers, let alone notebook speakers, but this pretty much sums up that VLC does damage speakers with smaller drivers: Well, some people... | Facebook

Yeah I had the same problem with my Dell XPS 15 and the guy who came to repair my PC was very helpful and he replaced my speakers and told me that the software amplification of volume used by VLC causes damage to speakers specially with smaller drivers.

I have noticed high audio distortion in the more recent build of VLC. I don't set above 100% volume (in VLC) due to this.

RCuber said:
I have noticed high audio distortion in the more recent build of VLC. I don't set above 100% volume (in VLC) due to this.

+1 IMO VLC is famous without any cause.Yes it plays all the formats but it does that job very poorly. It causes problems and the hardware acceleration and decoding of videos is very poor. POTPlayer is the best freeware out there at the moment.

Th best thing you should do is to not tell engineer that you have used vlc player, its better to uninstall the vlc player with ccleaner. tell him that the speakers blew up with windows media player, so kindly replace as soon as possible.

rider said:
tell him that the speakers blew up with windows media player, so kindly replace as soon as possible.

Just my opinion, but if people encourage people to lie then people really don't deserve assistance. Would you prefer if someone destroys something that belongs to you and says something like this? Honesty has to flow both ways for a solution to be effective.

^^ +1

Actually the VideoLan developer himself refutes the claim. Take a good look at

The VideoLAN Forums • View topic - VLC player damages speaker?

Of course, the discussion is dated April 2009 (2 years ago) so it is not exactly new. I'm not taking sides here, only one should hear both sides of the story.

I have also had a bad experience whereby my own Dell Inspiron n5010's speakers went off, it was out of warranty, so anyway I had to go for paid service....

In my opinion HP/Dell are either giving substandard speakers in their consumer oriented laptops, or, they don't have any kind of protection circuitry in place. I have not had any problems with a 7-year old Toshiba Portege in the family, which is still being used without any complaints (save for battery being changed twice).

Moral of the story : I am careful not to put the volume above 100% in VLC after the problem happened. Have not had problems since.
Err on the side of caution

and if you need more volume get a proper pair of desktop speakers.

The Sorcerer said:
Just my opinion, but if people encourage people to lie then people really don't deserve assistance. Would you prefer if someone destroys something that belongs to you and says something like this? Honesty has to flow both ways for a solution to be effective.

All I want to say i replied for simply your help, not to be join some rebel or something, if companies rules claim that the blown speaker will not not be changed if user used vlc player, you should accept it.. its same in other laptop brands, my hp engineer already told me about it that speakers will be not replaceable if you blown up with vlc player.
The only solution is to lie by the trick that I mentioned or pay for new speakers if you didn't like my idea.

W

just posting my experience here.my brother's dell studio laptop speakers suddenly stopped working one day.since it is already more than 2 yrs old & out of warranty we decided not to go for repair & instead started using earphone.then after ~5 weeks suddenly one day sound came back just like that.we did nothing at all after speaker stopped working except checking with linux live cd to confirm it was hardware problem.i still don't know what it was.maybe a loose connection or some other speaker/electronics related issue which got solved on its own after resting/hibernating during this time of 5 weeks.

they replaced it once but nt doing it again !

rider said:
Th best thing you should do is to not tell engineer that you have used vlc player, its better to uninstall the vlc player with ccleaner. tell him that the speakers blew up with windows media player, so kindly replace as soon as possible.

I dont believe this but somehow they knew that VLC is installed in my lappy and said that it is because of the sevice tag number that i gave to him.

Bytebolt said:
they replaced it once but nt doing it again !

I dont believe this but somehow they knew that VLC is installed in my lappy and said that it is because of the sevice tag number that i gave to him.

Nothing can be done as you already told them it blew up with vlc player, your bad luck.

Ok guys, not only Dell, HP and many others blame VLC. Actually VLC can provide much amplified output. And since speakers are of low quality, manufactures need someone to blame.

So uninstall VLC, KMplayer and other players before going to service centre. And remove traces from registry also. And make a story

Like tell them I was listening classical on windows media player alone in my room, and suddenly speaker bursts !!

Bytebolt said:
they replaced it once but nt doing it again !

I dont believe this but somehow they knew that VLC is installed in my lappy and said that it is because of the sevice tag number that i gave to him.

Clean VLC from registry. Uninstall it also. Now how many service centers are there in your city? Make a story that your speakers stopper working and then started working working by itself. Now again they stopped working. Else you can replace speakers by yourself also or not ?

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wow VLC causes so much havoc LOL. I use VLC so much, I have to play 2 moves for a minimum everyday.
Rather than that be tactful. Say no warning was put to me that VLC causes problem to sound card earlier, how can you take action. Ask them to replace and state you will clean VLC. As Sorcerer said you need not lie to get it done, just a little push. Say this should not happen Dell Customer support is considered to best, this is not correct way to handle this situation.

IMO, Dell, Nokia these Service Center folks are reasonable.

I will quote my example with Nokia. I use 6303 classic after 8-9 month of usage display started showing lines. Now my phone was not put in water or neither my phone acting weird.
When I went on first case they refused to correct it, and said it is fault of display I misused it. They had run their checks and mobile's board was totally fine.
I simply pointed out in case of misuse main circuit board will go bad and then others will be affected, that is in case any dust or moisture would have gone in. I also said do not put invalid points. I understand how these things work, if you suggest that is the fault why is board and phone working fine. Once I said if you cannot handle it escalate to your central service center, they said they will check.
My arguments were valid and so they replaced it after 2 days.

acewin said:
IMO, Dell, Nokia these Service Center folks are reasonable.

Same thoughts here they didn't warn me.

I posted on The FB page guys not helpful. Any more Advice ???

Tell them you want in written "This only cause by VLC and that why they decided not to replace your speaker.". And also asked them are you sure your engineer's can proof in court. Why this is customer fault who put this speaker in this system in first place and what about other Dell laptops why not they encounter with this type of problem. So, Dell is responsible for putting this piece of junk in your system not you. Believe Dell engineer are $hit they only blame their problem to other.

I also faced other issue in my 15z, so simply ****ked them badly asking explanation and they are out of option . However I'm very old customer of Dell because of there service they provide similar or almost similar kind of service in every country, the problem is all country service support is deal by India and that the biggest problem.

Dell is best known for its relationship with customers.
But in your case, am afraid to post any.

VLC destroying internal speakers? - Thats bizarre!

My humble opinion:
Its the responsibility of the manufacturer to ensure that the maximum specified electrical output from the sound card falls within the maximum permissible levels of the speakers.
And its also the manufacturer's job to test the hardware to be able to handle sustained output at the maximum specified frequency at the maximum specified power level for a reasonable amount of time.

That's what they teach electronic product design anyway.
Management books, they tell a different tale

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lovedonator said:
+1 IMO VLC is famous without any cause.Yes it plays all the formats but it does that job very poorly. It causes problems and the hardware acceleration and decoding of videos is very poor. POTPlayer is the best freeware out there at the moment.

+1 to that
I personally find vlc to be disgusting and did not install it at all in my new pc. I find it better to install codec pack and use windows media player for opening files.