Dell 2405FPW Blues

My 2405FPW widescreen flat panel finally arrived today from Dell. This is my first buying experience from Dell and I must say I am NOT impressed!

I ordered my monitor on the 6th March. During my wait for it to arrive I spent some time reading the forums on Anandtech. Fun posts about all the people that ordered their monitor after me and had their monitor in 2-3 days. How long did mine take? Well it just arrived today on the 21st. The product did not even leave Dell until the 11th and then incurred further delays with UPS. I would expect any vendor to ship products out on a first come first serve basis. Anything else is unacceptable.

Nevermind, it's here now. At least it's worth the wait... right? WRONG!

The monitor arrived by UPS. It was well packaged and very easy to assemble. I hooked it up and turned it on, and what did I see? A whole line of static white pixels at the top of the display.



I thought maybe it was some kind of configuration of driver issue, so I tried VGA aswell as DVI. No luck. So I then disconnected all external inputs, and guess what... the line was still there. A manufacturing defect. Does Dell have QA? Do they even test any of their products before they go out the door? I would have to suspect not. I was very disappointed.

So, 20 minutes on hold to Dell and 3 internal transfers later I arrange for a replacement monitor. Fortunately they will pickup and drop-off at the same time so I will not have to be without a monitor, this is one blessing in what seems like a string of disasters.

Come on Dell, get your act together! Products should be shipped out on a first-come-first serve basis. It also wouldn't hurt to turn these things on and even maybe give them a test before you ship them out.

So, my review on the 2405FPW is delayed yet again. I could technically review now, but I feel my mood may negatively influence my review so I will wait for the fully working model. Let's see how quickly then can get a replacement out... maybe they can beat their previous 2 week shipping attempt.