It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop - Consumerist Comments

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

rioja951 — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:58:29 EDT

@blackmage439: Wasn't Lenovo the one who took over the IBM laptop division?

Because every thinkpad on the company, while still showing the IBM logos, all say lenovo.

rioja951

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

Nighthawke — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:22:31 EDT

@Trai_Dep: If Apple didn't go with Wintel chips, we WOULD be climbing the walls to come over to them.

Nighthawke

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

Uriel — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:00:39 EDT

Not that it excuses Acer's actions, or lack thereof, but I remember my friend going to Circuit City to get deals for auctions that he held, and seeing that they were trying to give the Acer laptops away with a 12-month sign-up of AOL, and they were simply not worth the $120.

Uriel

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

EvilSwine — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:33:16 EDT

After working for a company that sold only Acer and Open products I can tell you this doesn't surprise me. I think I would rather have hemorrhoids removed with a chainsaw then have to deal with their support ever again. HP is a close second.

EvilSwine

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

blackmage439 — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:29:40 EDT

"How these guys stay in business if beyond me."

That's easy. They took over IBM's ThinkPad manufacturing. With a well trusted name under their belt, they were able to secure the loyalty of many American businesses. With so many enterprises hopelessly devoted to the ThinkPad, it's fairly easy to stay in business. Besides, their main business is overseas in Japan. They care not for the frustrations of us fat, lazy Americans. They have just enough loyal customers here in the States to make them appear on-par with American manufacturers.

Besides, certain companies (I'm looking at you, DELL and GATEWAY!) don't exactly cast a sunny spot on American manufacturing quality anymore...

blackmage439

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

1309mw — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:21:54 EDT

i am responsible for over 400 Acer desktop/laptops. That is all we use. Im sure every company has faults but as far as maintaining this many computers i couldnt have asked for any better. We still have Acer 4100 Windows 98 machines that run 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.

1309mw

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

FrancescaS — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:35:09 EDT

My Acer Aspire did have an overheating problem. I bought one of those notebook cooling mats and its just fine now.

But its working well otherwise. I paid very little for it and so long as it lasts me a year, I'll be happy.

But I won't buy another one!

FrancescaS

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

Fri, 02 May 2008 06:50:59 EDT

@tcp100:

The first thing I did with my Acer laptop (Aspire 3100) was wipe it & reformat it. With an HP XP Pro OEM CD. The power management *is* in the BIOS & works just fine. Actually, for all it's hardware faults (see above), my Aspire is rock stable.

Jaysyn was banned for: http://consumerist.com/5032912/the-subprime-meltdown-will-be-nothing-compared-to-the-prime-meltdown#c7042646

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

Fri, 02 May 2008 06:47:09 EDT

Uh oh. My laptop, also an Acer, needs warranty work as the Bluetooth & Media reader have never worked since I got it. I hope I don't have the problems this guy had.

Jaysyn was banned for: http://consumerist.com/5032912/the-subprime-meltdown-will-be-nothing-compared-to-the-prime-meltdown#c7042646

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

Trai_Dep — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:39:39 EDT

Imagine, just imagine if this was a MacBook and Apple did 1/10 of as poor a job as this.
The PC fanboys would be climbing the walls.

A PC mfr does it, and it draws largely giggles, shrugs and patient explanations.

Sigh.

Trai_Dep

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

tcp100 — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:35:13 EDT

@larrybike: You need to consider something; in the 25 years I've been dealing with laptops and desktops, I've never been impressed with any 3rd party AMD chipsets.

Ever since AMD got out of the chipset business in 2001 or so, the supporting sets (Via, now mostly NVIDIA) generally are geared more towards speed versus stability.

Every AMD laptop I've used (and the same does not go for desktops) starts getting unstable when you're not running absolutely stock.

This isn't a knock on AMD (although they do have some catching up to do as of late) - but a lot of manufacturers don't quite take into account the much wider tolerances in power, memory speed, and thermal parameters that AMD processors have needed especially in a mobile situation, and 2nd-tier asian manufacturers seem particularly bad. That goes for Sony too, by the way. They still don't "get" cooling a mobile machine.

That being said - another snafu a lot of people run into with Acer is that (lame) their cooling is NOT handled by their BIOS. They use there Empowering Technology Framework software (again, lame) to monitor and do thermal management. If you wipe and reformat and don't install this, you're in bluescreenton, KY. Same goes for running linux without some clever scripts out there..

tcp100

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

tcp100 — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:29:24 EDT

@howie_in_az: No, you wouldn't have, because chargebacks can only be issued 60 days after the date the charged appeared on the statement.

What you might have been able to do is take up the issue with your credit card - many credit cards extend / double manufacturers warranties, and they will make good when the manufacturer doesn't.

On that note, I've got an acer 7720 here that I've loaded up with 4gb and an extra hard drive, not a bit of trouble and running Vista x64. I haven't had to use their service yet, but from working back at best buy years ago (when Pentiums didn't have numbers after the name) I can tell you that Acer has many divisions - sometimes two per region/country, and support varies wildly from division to division.

tcp100

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

irv — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:53:39 EDT

So far (1 month) my Acer laptop has been great, but I don't know how long it will last...

irv

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

AcidReign — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:52:59 EDT

We bought one, an Acer Aspire with a Sempron 2800+ processor, and a gig of ram. Overheat, crash. Overheat, crash. Acer "fixed" it a half-dozen times. At one point, I was told that it was dangerous to actually put 1 gig of ram in the thing, because it wasn't really built to hold it. (Manual says capacity is 3 gigs...)

I got tired of dealing with it, and bought a Thinkpad that's given no trouble. The Acer's a spare, hopefully for surfing and unimportant things. If an important family computer goes down for an extended period, I unbox an old 300 mhz Win98SE machine...

AcidReign

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

larrybike — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:17:39 EDT

i bought an Acer 9300 laptop 17", nice specs, XP MCE. Never Again. It seemed to thrive on BSOD. They replaced the motherboard and hard drive - was good for a while. I think the turion 64x2 TL-50 processor has something to do with the instability. When it works, it is great. Buyer Beware

larrybike

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

dragonfire81 — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:17:39 EDT

Wow that's unbelievably sucky.

dragonfire81

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

ShirtGuyDom — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:06:59 EDT

Who buys Acer products?

ShirtGuyDom

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

Papa Midnight — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:37:36 EDT

I actually have to wonder how Acer stays in the laptop manufacturing business. I can understand how they operate in the manufacturing of accessories but it's been their laptop manufacturing brand which makes me wonder how they stay in business. Must be licensing...

Papa Midnight

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

lestat730 — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:11:04 EDT

The only Acer product I've owned is my current 19" LCD monitor which I absolutely love and have experienced no problems with. I wonder if someone stateside would have had any better luck with this..

lestat730

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

demonradio — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:26:35 EDT

I'm on an Acer and it's been a great laptop. ::knocks on wood::

demonradio

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

secretoftheeast — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:26:30 EDT

I'm not sure if you have a similar law over there, but in CA, manufacturer's are required to extend their warranty to cover the time the item was in repair. May be worth looking into.

secretoftheeast

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

corporateamericabites — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:11:55 EDT

I used to work at Compaq in Singapore and it was well known in Asian circles that Acer made the absolute cheapest (as in worst) laptops on the market and appalling customer service. I see that their standard has not risen a bit since then.

corporateamericabites

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

Dobernala — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:56:16 EDT

@howie_in_az: A bit late for that, I think.

Dobernala

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

howie_in_az — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:49:45 EDT

Another guy was so rude that I asked to speak to his manager. He told me I'd have to hang up and call back to get someone else, and ask to speak to their manager.

Wow just wow.

At this point I would have sent it back and issued a chargeback.

howie_in_az

It Took 10 Emails, 4 Faxes, 40 Phone Calls and 7 Months To Get Acer To Replace Laptop

snoop-blog — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:47:54 EDT

better late than never!

snoop-blog