very unhelpful helpline

<p>I laptop was given to me by a friend because it wasn't booting. Since I dabble with computers as a hobby, I had a look. It had a bios lock and hard drive lock enabled. The laptop was given to him as a gift overseas by his niece. The service tag shows it as being about 2 years old but in fairly good condition. Apparently the niece got it from the USA 2 years ago, enabled bios lock and somewhere along the line forgot the password. I ccontacted Dell via facebook and was asked the service tag number which I supp****. I was informed that to assist, I would need the name from the original invoice. After some frantic searching by my friend, his niece was able to track down the invoice in electronic version.</p> <p>I uploaded the invoice to Dell facebook helpline but they blankly refused to help, saying the name does not match on their database. I understand that for security reasons they need to take precautions but after supplying the original invoice, what excuse can they have for not helping?</p> <p>They cannot even supply an alternate means of verification to assist. My friend is the legal owner of the laptop now but he cannot use it because Dell is being stubborn.</p> <p>ps. The laptop is no longer under warranty so it's not like he is *****ing someone elses warranty.</p>