I’ve just been made aware of an annoying new trend that I thought my readers should be aware of. Was Santa good to you this Christmas? Perhaps he dropped a new Dell laptop or PC down your chimney this year in exchange for a few cookies and a glass of milk. Unfortunately, if he stopped by Wal-Mart on the way to your house to buy that shiny new computer, he might not have known that Dell will refuse to provide service to you if you need it (and if it was pre-loaded with Microsoft Vista, chances are good that you will) because, according to Dell, Wal-Mart still “owns” your PC, not you.

One of my clients related the following tale: Her new Dell laptop, purchased from Wal-Mart and pre-loaded with Vista, stopped booting a couple of weeks after she took it out of the box. She spent a couple of hours on the phone with Dell Technical Support before learning that her laptop was still listed in Dell’s database as belonging to Wal-Mart. Before Dell would offer her any support at all, she had to call Wal-Mart and ask them nicely to transfer the ownership of the laptop to her name.

Here’s the scoop: Rummage around in the paperwork that came with your computer for the “Retail Purchaser End User Agreement.” Among the legalese in this document is the following statement: “Dell-branded warranties and services will become effective when you have transferred the ownership of the product into your name, although the warranty period commences on the date of the purchase.” There’s also a web site listed:

http://support.dell.com/retail-walmart

It would appear from that web page that you can fill out your contact information and the “Service Tag” from your computer to initiate the ownership transfer. However, if your computer won’t boot or can’t get on the Internet (thus, the reason you needed support in the first place), this won’t work for you.

My client was told to call Wal-Mart directly at 1-800-925-6278. She reports that the person she spoke with said that they would put in the transfer of ownership for her. However, they also required the store number of the Wal-Mart that the computer was purchased from. You should be able to find that number on the Wal-Mart receipt.

The transfer of ownership looks like it will take upwards of five business days to complete – leaving you without support until then – so I would highly recommend that you do this now in order to avoid any lengthy delay in the event that you need to call Dell for support.

In my opinion, this annoyance is unforgivable. Now that Dell has begun selling their computers in massive retail outlets such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Staples, and since they already know exactly which computers are on the shelves in those locations, they should have built a better mechanism for providing support for those systems without putting their users through this unnecessary hassle.

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[Author’s Note: “Ask the Geek” is published weekly in the Stratford Star - the penultimate reading experience for residents of Stratford, Texas, population 1,920. It is posted on WritersCafe.net for posterity. Feel free to comment, but I can’t promise you’ll make the Star.]