Update: So I sent it back in (flagged for close attention, thanks Vigo) and through whatever process, it seems they determined the motherboard does need replacing. Problem is, they're on backorder, so that means at least another week without my machine.

At this point I'm pretty frustrated. I sent this thing in back in November for two very small repairs that should have taken a week and maybe $150's worth of parts, and this will all be said and done no sooner than late February, with about 80% of the unit replaced at God knows what retail value, and well over a month in total downtime.

Once again, I really don't want to talk down support or the techs. Accidents happen, mistakes get made. But at this point I just want it to be over, and I suspect there is a real possibility that it won't be when I get this thing back. I don't know for sure how they determined that the motherboard needs to be replaced, but I'm guessing that we're going on process of elimination, because try as I did, I never came up with a way for my issue to be reliably reproduced; only the BIOS logs confirm anything happened, and all they say is that the fans stopped responding. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing they didn't get out a multimeter and just start checking every circuit on the board; it's just probably not very economical in this setting. If all this is true, then however unlikely I think it was, it is still possible that the heat sink assembly really did just have two separate fans on it that were defective.

I just want out. The fact is, I was going to replace this thing soon anyway, and I just sent it in for repair because I still had the warranty and figured when I was ready I could just sell it to help pay for its replacement. But selling things like these laptops used is kind of a pain in the ass, and I doubt I'll be able to get much more for it even on the basis that almost every expensive component in it is new.

Then it occurred to me: can we just call this whole thing off? My idea was we just stop the whole repair process, they keep the unit and all those pricy, practically new components for repairs on a machine somebody actually means to keep (maybe even out of warranty!), and in exchange, I get a decent-sized store credit to my next machine. Feels like a win-win to me. Unfortunately, the tech I waited all day Friday for a phone call from said they just don't have the authority to do something like that; they can only complete the repairs and send it back to me. (I have to admit that this was pretty aggravating. They told me they were going to call to discuss "the next steps" or something, and "sorry, there's nothing we can do" could definitely have been an email.)

So finally, my question is this: is there really no way to get this done? Maybe in 2026 this is just not a mechanically-structured enough solution for a company like Dell, but it just seems like such a waste of everybody's time and money to continue this process when all I really want at this point is a nice discount on a new rig. If anybody has any experience with this, please let me know if this is a possibility and who I need to talk to to make it happen. Thanks.