Anyone else getting the run-around from Acer Support

I would just like to share my recent experience with Acer support and was wondering if others have the same experience.

When I bought my Acer 8930 with Vista installed I was very happy. Started to install and change everything to my liking. I played the HD disk that came with it and all was ok. 2 Days later the same disk would not play anymore. Ok no problem I had other things to do.

I was also transferring files between the Acer (Intel wifi card build in) and was getting speeds of 2.1MB/s. My IMac on the same network was showing 4-6MB/s. So, I installed a netrgear USB 300 adapter on the Acer (using an external drive, because the Acer drive was still not working) and I got indeed the speeds of 4-6MB/s.

So I contacted Acer support. Their reply: " please contact the manufacturer of the network card...." Oh wow, can you imagine if the light of your car does not work. Do you bring your car to the dealer or to Philips?

A few days later I installed Windows 7 64bit after installing all I contacted Acer again. This time about the drive. Their reply:" Please reinstall Vista, in order to do a better analysis, because the laptop was sold with Vista and not Windows 7."

Both replies are absolute Bull**** (excuse my French). I gave them my opinion and will wait until Monday to get a reply. If it is still a reply in the same trend as previous I will ship the laptop back with the friendly request to repair it.

Is this normal for a company such as Acer?


Regards,

JJK

 

if you put the recovery disk in can you boot to it?

 

LOL, I can even provide better support than Acer.
Sorry to have to say this Acer Support consist of 90% largely incompetent people.
That is how I became good with computers after I bought an Acer Laptop.
First what is the network specification?
Is the wireless accesss point set to Wireless G or N?
What is the specs for your USB adapter G or N?
What is the specs for your Intel adapter G or N?
Did you update the Wireless Driver as well?
Based on what you described I suspect that your Network Access point (Router) is set to both G and N capable.
However the Netgear Adapter is N capable hence switches to N speeds which is fast.
However Acer 8930 might be set to G speeds only or it may not be N capable.

 

Which country are you from? Well, here in the Philippines they suck bigtime, but my dad's experience with Acer teams on Singapore are kinda like Cloud 9, so he says.

Regarding the drive, have you checked to see if the drive shows up in the device manager? there might be issues or something, also does it still show up in your My Computer? I had an experience with an Acer laptop once that had its drive disappear from the explorer after getting an update, and I had to change some values in the registry for it to show up again. What model is your drive?

 

Gee you're lucky you got a reply. The motherboard on my Aspire 9300 laptop was toast when it was only 1 year and 10 months old. I called Acer and after what seemed like 10 years and was finally able to leave a message about the problem to which I never got a reply. After you call once it's impossible to leave a message again. Seems like their message answering whatever recognizes your phone number and won't let you get through again. I have since sent 3 emails about the problem over about three weeks and have never received a reply to a simple question like "where can I get a new motherboard"? I just bought a new Dell. Gee I wonder if I'll ever buy or recommend Acer to anyone?

 

Dell also has issues sometimes. Depends if the person you are dealing with has any knowledge or interest in keeping their job.

 

I've had terrible support from Acer for a problem that could easily be Googled. (I was just trying to get an RMA). They went so far as to refer to me to Gateway's support site.

 

Normally I avoid such threads because they are completly useless. While I sympathize I must say that this could happen with any company, not just Acer. You can hear about crappy support and horror stories for all manufacturers - Dell, HP, Toshiba etc..
Nevertheless Acer is indeed at the bottom of the the companies providing good support chart, based on my experience of course. Though IMO they're compensating the lack of support with the cheap prices they tend to maintain.

@weinter I just couldn't resist here.

So you can provide better support than Acer. You're basing that on what? On your experience with ONE(or several)incompetent tech you've dealt with? And how exactly did you calculated the percentage of the incompetent people in Acer support? So you have experience with all the company's techs which are...I don't know...10000 people for example, worldwide, and you can actually tell that 9000 are incompetent?
You're a knowledgeable, experienced person and I'm sure everyone, including me, appreciete your help around here but sometime these statements you make...

 

I sent in my laptop once (actually for my old laptop 4520G more than once new laptop 4530 never) .
Before I sent in I told them graphics Card issue.
They didn't listen.
Throw in a motherboard and DIDN'T test and throw back at me I had to go down personally and requested them to replace the graphics and ask them how come they didn't swapped the graphics card because it was the one having the issue.
They also told me they had to run a burn in test !!!
Come on in electronics there are no such thing as burn in test if you tell me believing in myths such as burn in test means competent I have got nothing to say.
They told me out of stock.
Can you believe it ? When you need a liver transplant does the doctors give you a heart transplant hoping it will solve the issue just because they ran out of liver transplant?
Oh and they forgot to put back my dummy cards before returning to me so what does this imply? Shoddy work.
I had to wait for the GFX to stock when this time they swapped the GFX it worked. However the motherboard (they replaced with a refurbished one with the old UUID (not mine) intact) failed soon after and start making weird beeps.
When I got my replacement laptop after I complained about now they warped my casing,lousy motherboard and how many times I sent it for servicing, I made sure never to sent the brand new laptop back and it has been surviving well.
I got a harddisk failure 2 months back but did the replacement myself as it is no longer under warranty and it is easy and it is still working with self provided servicing.
However as I have only own acer laptop i do not know about service standards of other brand hence I didn't comment about them.

Speaking of my past incidence still made me angry.
1)I had to sent in my laptop 2 times for 1 issue.
2)Each time I sent it in it came back with more scratches and warp plastic casing due to rough handling.
3)The whole incident was only resolved when they send me a replacement system because they are unable to resolve the old issue and the old model was no longer in production.

I am still very angry when reminded about it and you have to make me bring it up...

 

Thanks to all for your replies. Here is the additional info as requested by some of you.

@ Tanware: No I can't. The drive spins for 2 secs and stops.

@ Weinter: The Router is set to G. I have not yet upgraded to N. Both USB as Intel Wifi card are N and also set to this.. Additional to note is that since I upgraded my switch I can transfer with my Mac between 6-9 MB/s. Spec of card: Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 5100/5300 (dual-band quad-mode 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N) Wi-Fi CERTIFIED®

@ Kisetsu17. The drive is a Slimdrive Blu-ray Disc™ (BD)/DVD-Super Multi Double Layer. I have tried to update the drivers and it shows up in My Computer. However, when I click it the drive bay opens and asks me to place a disk inside. When I close the drive (with disk) the light goes on for 2 secs and after that....Nothing.

Thanks to all for thinking along. At least I got here already far more support in 3 days time then from Acer in the past 2-3 weeks.


By the way, does anyone have a website address of the company that produces the sSlimdrives for Acer?