Dell XPS 9550 Swollen Battery + Customer Support

Hi. Sorry if this kind of post isn't allowed here (didn't see it in the rules). I really just need to rant right now. I made a post in the dell community forums here, but the post was immediately marked as spam. So I'm reposting here as text.

I have just had the most frustrating experience with Dell support surrounding a battery failure in the XPS 9550.

I purchased my laptop in August 2016 for ~1500 CAD. Beautiful system, excellent specs. I’ve used it almost every day, and have never had any issues with it. Until last week.

Last week, I noticed the trackpad on my laptop had begun to rise [PIC]. When you go to click the left and right buttons on the track pad, there is a huge resistance and it fails to “click” or register that buttons were pushed. After Googling my problem, I came upon the following posts:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-offers-to-replace-swelling-XPS-15-9550-batteries-for-free-even-if...
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/dell-xps-13-9350-touchpad-lifted-and-battery-swollen/td-p/5762068
https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/Swelling-XPS-15-9550-batteries/td-p/5180839
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Dell-XPS-13-swollen-battery/td-p/6154285
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-15-9530-battery-swelling/td-p/6086174

Okay, so it’s a known issue, fine. I’ll submit a ticket and have it replaced. Dell reached out a couple of days later, and I talked with a member of their technical team. After they talked with their manager, they offered an option to “purchase” an extended warranty that would then cover my battery and all hardware for the next year. I said no thank you, I do not need a warranty on the hardware I would just like my battery replaced.

They then escalated to their manager. After some discussion, he offered the warranty again, as well as an additional option to ship it to them for ~$260 CAD to have the battery replaced. I again said no thank you, and that I would like to pursue this matter farther. He scheduled a call with Dell Corporate to happen some time in the next 60-90 minutes.

Dell Corporate calls, he begins reading my case number and immediately transitions into “you understand that your warranty is expired, correct?” Yes, I understand it is. He then says “we have not had any reports on this issue, and your system has not had any problems in the past, so we are unfortunately unable to replace your battery”.

So I brought up that Dell has had this replacement program in place (which ended in September 2018?), and asked if I was just lied to. He immediately said “yes we have had a program in the past where we replaced many batteries, but have not had any reports since then, and the issue must have went away”. I tell him that if you manufacture a laptop in 2016, in 2019 these laptops will be using the same hardware they were manufactured with, and that I was giving him a report on this issue right now. He reiterated that they would not be able to replace the battery, and we ended the call. He was extremely dismissive on the phone. This whole thing reminds me of the Nexus 5x problem (https://www.reddit.com/r/nexus5x/comments/6cvin5/google_will_replace_your_bootlooping_5x_if_you/)

I am extremely frustrated at the moment that the replacement service is no longer offered because “the issue must have went away”. On a premium $1500 laptop. For which there is known problems for. I love the laptop, but can I justify purchasing another when there are so many alternatives. So yeah, for anyone with the same problem in the future, heads up.