My Acer Nightmare

I didn't know where to begin writing this review, I wasn't even sure I should, but I had to share what happened to me. Most importantly, I had to share how I won a battle that at times seemed almost impossible. I don't want to post it here because if I don't post it with the links to documentation I'll get into trouble for defamation. Here is the link, for anyone who is interested:

Review: Acer, Uncut

 

That sucks, and I did notice something, they didn't give you your interest.

 

that's unfortunet. but in the future, please don't buy $2000 laptops from a cheapo brand, there's companies like lenovo, sager, dell latitude/precision for that

 

Ive had nothing but problems with acer

 

Welcome Jason!

I read through your story. I am very glad you "won", although of course it would have been much better if the ****ed laptop just worked.

Unfortunately, major companies (such as Acer, Dell, HP, etc) are moving towards the "call center" approach. Tech support by company staff is more expensive, and companies that have that have pricier laptops (Fujitsu in Europe is an example).

Stories like your own should be shared as much as possible. I will forward this to my friends.

+rep to you for sharing this with us! Best regards,
HerrKaputt

 

I agree on this, and would add Fujitsu to this list. A normal laptop, costing below $1000, is OK, but high-end laptops should be bought from good brands, with good customer support.

 

good you got this over with, now let it go and get your self a kick *** notebook as a present.

will never advise anyone to buy an acer, promise.

 

Different people different experiences: I'd never pay $2000 for anything by IBM/Lenovo or Dell - My company buys them, I have to support them, and theyre utter crap. I don't think anyone in our company has a laptop last more than a 18 months before it needs a repair or replacement.

Acer on the other hand, have 2 myself and my father has another, no problems as long as i've owned them - yes, the first one I had was pretty much DOA but I can understand failure rates - and a lot more IBM/Lenovo have turned up DOA in my experience.

 

Im glad you took the time and made the webpage about what happened. I got pissed just reading your story! Glad you receieved your money back. Good job.

 

Well done with pushing the issue with Acer. I would probably have done exactly the same as you if I had been treated that way.

On a sidenote : Acer is not all pathetic and useless when it comes to service delivery and response times. It depends on what region in the world you are living and how well that region is being managed and run.

I say this because I live in South Africa. Acer is regarded by both sellers and buyers of new laptops as the No 1 when it comes to backup and service delivery when things go wrong in this region. And that is Fact..

Hence Acers absolute domination here.

Before I purchased my Acer lappie(almost 2 years ago) I went on a mission of visiting different computer stores and asking awkward questions to the sales people. The most difficult question for the folks to answer was always: "How reliable is this lappie. If it breaks how soon can I expect it to be returned to me fixed properly?".

Every single store I visited had the same answer. "Acer South Africa provide the quickest turnaround with after sales service. They fix things quickly and properly Sir"

So I bought an Acer. Funniest thing is...this lappie has been so reliable so far that I have not needed to test Acers support here.

Don't right off Acer because Jason 85 was treated so badly by the local Acer folks where he lives. Like I said at the beginning of this post...Acer is not all bad worldwide....it depends in what region you live.

Solution: Acer should fire the useless *******s that waste customers time and result in posts like Jasons. Dead wood is no good.

Cheers,
Theo

 

I was actually considering to buy the blue gemstone but now...
cuz this was a very frustrating situation i don't want to go through

 

@Psynalizer

Welcome to tha Acer forums.

Something you should always remember is that people rarely post their good experiences with a product here. They post here mainly when they run into problems.

And we try and help.

Believe me, the same thing happens to Dell, HP and the rest.

There might be thousands of happy customers that never post. Cause they dont need to.

Then one unhappy customer posts and it becomes an inquest.

Look at it all in perspective....

Cheers,
Theo

 

Thx theo ^^

I clearly understand your point but this situation is really extreme and it really shocks me that acer would do such a thing?
I mean come on, I'm not saying it happens every 5 minutes or that it will happen to you but WHAT IF it happens to you :s
Blue gemstone looks like an awesome notebook though ^^ if it would come with a better gpu I'd buy it

 

The Blue Gemstone is awesome.

I wish I owned one.

Go with your heart buddy. Can't go wrong there.

Cheers,
Theo

 

Like TeeJay said, happy customers rarely get as vocal as unhappy ones. An adage you learn when working in retail is that one unhappy customer will go and tell at least ten others, whereas a happy customer will propably only tell one or two at the most. It's also worth notig that Acer aren't alone here, almost all companies try and get away with stuff to a point. I could reel off some stories about the aforementioned Dell/Lenovo machines I support, like them arbitrarily ceasing support for a range after only a couple of years, even though we had several hundred machines.

 

Hi guys, thanks for all the responses and sympathy!

Some of you mentioned that many companies sometimes do this. This is probably true, and we should also keep in mind that it would be impossible for Acer to function as a successful company if this happened too often. I guess my hope is that people will share my story, and that others might be encouraged to not let it happen to them.

It would be one thing if I had this experience because I was forgotten, or someone made a mistake. But this wasn't a mistake, I only made it past tech support staff after claiming to have a lawyer, just sueing in small claims wasn't enough. If I had felt like what had happened was just a result of clumsy book keeping or a management error, I would not have gone to such great length to write the article. And ofcourse, had my experience been positive I probably would not have written the review either.

The reason I wrote it was because someone, somewhere at Acer, sat down and wrote a policy to ignore people like me even if they win a case against them in Small Claims Court, and only respond when they have legal aid or the police show up at the door. They can do this because people don't speak up.

If you want my advice, don't refuse to buy Acer products. Buy whatever you want, based on what you see in reviews and your own needs. But if something terrible does happen, tell the world!

 

Here here, Jason.
As I've stated here before, companies hate to hear that you're lawyering up.

Of course, I'm the happy owner of an Acer Gemstone Blue laptop myself.
EDIT: And I've learned that the email support here in Canada is as egregious as it is in Australia - a few of my queries have been responded to with something akin to "Thanks for emailing us, but you need to call us to solve this problem." And of course, they warn in the email that call times may be longer than usual due to increased call volumes; I should think that better email support would reduce those volumes, hm?

 

wow - it is hard to climb from the bottom rungs of the 'perception of quality' ladder hen stuff like this keeps coming up.

 

Acer have opened a Canadian service depot in the last few weeks in the GVA. It should get better.

 

Well i am a Greek , and the English language its not native to me .

But i have the feeling , by reading all this text , that you had enlarge the all picture by making hypothetical judgments .

I am not say that you had not be mistreated , but the market today its a cold game .
There is no need to get that emotional .

Yes i got also in a similar story , by other company.
Yes i got too silently my money back.

The point is that you had a problem with a specific ACER ancillary.

In Europe , and most specific in Greece , Acer has four service centers,
and its one has deferent quality of service,
and deferent rating as customer friendly face .

The detail are the quality of the people that work in them,
and the quality of the management, in its and every one.

ACER its just a brand name , but the place that you trusted your system for service , its has a name , the manager of it has a name ,
he is the truly responsible.

If one, of the most exotic brands , fall in the hands of losers , the customers get mistreated.

My advice are .... Next time that some one gets bad quality of service,
aim at the managers head , not at the brand.

Thats my 0.2€



.

 

@Psynalizer

I have a acer aspire gemstone blue 6920G and I have had no problems with it. It fast and works very well! Very happy with mine

 

guys I think it's time that we open a thread to rank the different hardware companies NBR members have dealt with and the quality of their services.

 

Yes and it looks very nice too, How is the performance in games with it? I'd buy it but it seems the gpu doesn't seem to be very good or can you upgrade it with 9800 or something equal high ended? (sorry for the off topic ) most important would be I could play diablo III on high

 

Check out this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=251959

Post there and one of the folks will research and advise you if it's possible

Cheers,
Theo

 

Well, the 9500 is quite a capable card:

Eve Online (Premium Graphics Version) - 1920x1080, Medium Shadows and HDR - 50+ fps

WoW - 1920x1080, all settings max, 24bit color 1x AA - 50-60fps, 40-50fps with vsync

I'll be testing World in Conflict later this week

 

I read your whole blog and encouraged me to never buy an Acer. Ya I use to have an Acer and had issues. I know we aren't in the same situation because i bought as a third party buyer. I hear you to I will never buy a computer from acer (unless its on a deal). This companies are being really messed up. I can recommend you one thing the only store i have heard of there strong returning policy is Costco. They will give you 6 months to return the product you will just tell them the issue and you will get a full refund. That was a long time ago and i heard they still have the same policies unless they recently changed them. I hear you though Jason there is no way I will buy an Acer in my life time.

 

Until you get burned by another lappie manufacturer.

Happens all the time.

 

i've been working as a PC tech for 20 yrs... and i've seen every major company treat thier customers like crap...

it's not just an ACER thing... i've seen similar situations from HP, IBM, Toshiba, and most others as well.... so i have to agree with TeeJay, it does happen all the time.... just pray it doesn't happen to you.

 

Ya, but the thing is I hear more issues about acers than other notebooks. If i get a notebook it will either be dell/toshiba/hp (of course I don't know of them but of what I have seen and heard those are good maybe in time ill add asus and other brands) or even in time if I can get help from my friend and learns to build a notebook in the future I might try that. I take that back teejay of never buying an acer its a might if there is a hot deal like really good deal (like really cheap that if i have the money to ). Only if its a deal worth of it if not it will be a brand i probably mentioned.