So Yeah. My computer problems have been resolved successfully. Dell sent me a replacement HD with double the capacity of my old drive (extra points for it being a reliable brand of HD this time), and threw in enough physical memory to double my RAM, as well. Can I be bribed? Yes. See previous comments.
The notable thing is how my problems came to their attention. It wasn't the fact that I called Dell multiple times to make them harass the technician for me. I couldn't get the technician to call me, or eventually, to return my phone calls.
As an aside: the technician was supposed to call me on Monday, by noon, to schedule the replacement of my HD (using the part that they reordered after the tech lost it), but he still hasn't contacted me. This is not a surprise, and doesn't particularly bother me. All I was going to tell him is to cancel the appointment. But it is an interesting coda to this that even after I got the parts from Dell directly, and fixed the computer myself, the techs still haven't gotten off of their behinds and called me. I can't say enough bad things about the poor quality of customer service that the technician gave me. But I digress.
Anyway: the way that this came to Dell's attention was that they read it on my myspace blog. (That is the companion to this one, but in this blog I get to swear a lot more.). They actually have a group of people whose job is to search blogs (via technorati, I think) for people who blog about bad Dell service experiences. Amazingly, they saw through my wickedly cunning "let's call them 'Prell'" ruse. After reading my posts, the Dell guy then contacted me directly (through myspace), apologized sincerely for my experience, and swore that it wasn't typical. He must have been reading the blog (where I said that replacing the HD was a repair that I could do in ten minutes), because they said that they would send the parts directly to me, eliminating any incompetent technicians entirely.
And, before I even responded to this guy, the parts were already in the shipping pipeline. Without checking whether it would be okay, they set stuff up. They didn't wait for me to say "Yes, this will settle things," they just offered it to me, and it was in the pipeline before I could even say yes. (I was going to tell them yes anyway.) the stuff as a courtesy. Which, considering that the upgrades were not inexpensive, is a pretty great thing. The Dell guy even apologized that they were unable to send the parts the next day (a Saturday), because they didn't have them in stock right where that Dell guy was. Later that day, he made sure that they had the right address and contact information, that I knew how to contact him if there were any issues, and basically seeing that it was as satisfactory a conclusion (at least as regards me and Dell) as it could be, under the circumstances.
The parts came at about 10:00 Monday morning, even earlier than they were supposed to get here. I know that you're all wondering "you say that you could do the swap in ten minutes. How'd you do, smart guy?" It took me a grand total of 15 minutes, but to be fair, 12 of that was trying to get the new memory properly seated. The hard drive swap took three minutes from start to finish. So all you haters can go soak yourself. Anyway, it took a lot more time than 10 minutes to install and configure XP, and I still haven't got all of the previous programs that I had up and running, but I managed to save all of the important data off the old drive, and the computer is fully functional. And fast, which is a nice bonus. In any case, thanks, Dell guy (whose name and email I don't really want to post), but who will probably read this on technorati anyway. You did a great job. I'm happy that a program like yours exists, and that you have the power to try and resolve complaints quickly. I don't know whether the technician you guys hired will ever even bother to call me back, or if he's keeping the (both of the) parts you sent him (and selling them on eBay or something).
As for the rest of you all, as always, thanks for letting me vent my spleen to the empty air. Especially these last few days. It's nice to know that if you complain, people still hear you.
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