excuses
Gateway claims that the
Patriot Act is holding up delivery of the part needed to fix Redwoodflyer's laptop, which has been broken since October. Seems believable to us!
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acer
We don't know what Acer is up to, but they've clearly figured out some way to make a lot of money by mailing unnecessary discs free of charge to customers. Do they own the envelope company? Is Acer secretly owned by the USPS? Or maybe someone at Acer is just trying to look busy. Nick writes:
To date I've received one batch of five flat pacs [and] one batch of seventeen flat pacs. Each flat pac has three restoration discs (for a total of 66 discs), none of the flat pacs I've received has contained the promised system disc.
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circuit city
Last week we wrote about a Circuit City customer who was
charged $40 without warning for "repairs" to a brand new computer. We received several explanations from Circuit City insiders, both in the comments and through email, that the repair was mandatory—Acer and Circuit City had agreed that instead of pulling the PCs, the retailer's Firedog techs would flash the BIOS in-store upon purchase. What was unclear was how or why this would fall under the Firedog "Quickstart" service, which is optional and includes things like removing shortcuts from your desktop and setting up your background. (Seriously,
check it out here.) Yesterday we received the following interesting email from Circuit City HQ.
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rei
- Woot: Olevia 65” 1080p LCD HDTV for $2,299.99
- Target: 12 pack Coke products for 25 cents YMMV
- Office Depot: Acer Extensa AMD Dual Core 1.9GHz 14" Widescreen Laptop for $430 after rebate + free shipping
Highlights From Dealhack- REI: Labor Day Clearance: Save up to 30% off Clothing & Gear
- Meritline: PQI 8GB SDHC Card now $25 Shipped & Other Discount
- Buy.com: Dynex DX-LCD32 32-inch LCD HDTV $480 Shipped
Highlights From Bargainist- Kmart: Jeans, all apparel BOGO 50% off
- Hoover: Summer Canister Sale: Save up to 56%
- JC Whitney: Up to $40 off purchases coupon
repairs
Reader Alex bought an Acer laptop with a 3 year extended warranty, and honestly, we lost count of how many times he's sent it in to Acer for repairs — but every time Acer sends it back it seems to get a little bit
less functional. Now he's finally had enough and is demanding a replacement. This has lead to a 5 month stand-off in which Acer is refusing to send him a replacement because it would be a "downgrade" from his current broken laptop. Alex has already replaced the laptop and was going to give up. We're his last hope...
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sales
Highlights From Dealhack:
- REI Outlet: Save Extra 20% off Any Item Store-Wide
- Meritline: SDHC Cards: 4GB $14 Shipped & 8GB $26 Shipped
- Amazon: Save $10 off Izze Sparkling Juice & Other Grocery Discounts
- Apple Store: Back to School: Buy Mac, Get a Free 8GB iPod Touch or nano
- Office Depot: Acer Extensa AMD Dual Core Notebook $400 & Free Shipping
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acer
Joelle expected Acer to repair her chronically overheating laptop, not coat the inside of its screen with "a sort of brown dripping." Acer insists that their shipping company caused the internal screen damage, and won't repair the laptop unless Joelle pays up.
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repairs
Scott in Ireland writes in with proof that it's not just American/Canadian consumers who get screwed by bad customer service. When his new
Acer laptop went kaput, it took him over half a year to finally get a working, equivalent replacement—and after all that, Acer told him they wouldn't extend his warranty for the time he was without a laptop.
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mergers and acquisitions
Acer is buying Gateway for $710 million. Meanwhile, Gateway has just offered to buy Packard Bell for $100 million, according to MSNBC.
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rebates
If you bought a laptop at the end of last year, you probably qualified for a free Vista upgrade. We did and although it took 6 weeks to get the disc in the mail from our laptop manufacturer, we didn't run into too many hassles. No so for a lot of people, according to PC World:
"I was told it would be an easy process," says William Bond, of Tampa, Florida. But, he says, the process has been anything but simple. Bond purchased a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion desktop in November at Circuit City and is still waiting for his Vista upgrade disc from ModusLink, the company handling the program for HP.
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recalls
Just when you thought that this whole laptop battery recall thing was over: Enter Acer computer. They're recalling certain models with (you guessed it)
Sony lithium-ion batteries. Reader Joe writes:
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freedom
An anonymous tipster has some words of advice to Jason, the guy who trebucheted his laptop with a Freedom Laptop Table ii: hey, bend sinister! You're using the thing
backwards.
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trebuchet
Jason obviously didn't read the warning label on the bottom of the "Freedom Laptop Table ii" informing him the device also doubled as a trebuchet. Too bad for his week-old high-end Acer Ferrari laptop.
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Consumerist
