My Dell U2412Mb monitor has been acting up for a while now: dark corner and flickering. The problem was temporarily resolved by power-cycling but the issue always came back, usually after going in to power-saving mode. The other day, though, I decided to RMA it.

As I understand it, we have 'pro' support, which is supposed to make this kind of process simple and quick. However, it was stereotypically bad in reality:
- Lots of different people pass you from one office to another, making you wait on-hold for at least a few minutes each.
- You finally speak with someone that will help (which may or may not be 'Basic Warranty Support' - it's very difficult to be certain, but it *definitely* wasn't Pro Support) and you go through a diagnostic exercise, followed by a proof-of-purchase test (send proof-of-purchase by email - and wait for 15 minutes for the email to arrive in the inbox of tech support). In the end, you've spent half a day sorting things out.

Next step; I will receive an empty box in 1 or 2 days, and I will place my failing monitor in the box and send it off. It should take 7 to 10 days to get to a Dell depot. At this point, I don't know what kind of turn-around I'm looking at, but I have to imagine that it will be at least a few days - maybe 10. I suspect that I will be without my monitor for at least 3 weeks.

I had heard that the process is relatively painless (because Pro-Support FTW!), ending in another monitor being shipped immediately (that is, before I sent my failing monitor). As it turns out, the process was excruciating - in the last two days I have spent about 4hrs to get to this point. And I still have to ship/receive/set-up/tear-down before I'm done.

A conservative estimate of the cost of me handling this is roughly $300. The monitor cost $297 before tax.