I wonder if one of the legal advisers to Acer Etc: had a problem with a purchase and received the same poor service as many others have on this forum! Would he/she then stand by the statement/warranty handed to the customer?

I would doubt that in all honesty.

Like you say you do an exchange and treat it as DOA well more people like you would do your employers proud.

The thing is that comparing a retailer to a manufactuer is a common mistake. Sales of Goods acts and Trading standards don't apply to a company like Acer because the customer receives their product through a retailer, and the retailer got it from a distributor and the distributor got it from Acer. Obviously a retailer and manufactuer are at opposite ends of the spectrum so different rules apply. By law the manufactuer isn't obliged to provide a functioning product, only the retailer is. So the DOA policy itself is simply a gesture that Acer does. I've had people call the 5 day rule insulting because a retailer will exchange within 30 days sometimes. But all I do is explain to them this difference. They don't like it but they understand why it works like that and usually after much grumbling they'll calm down.

Would a legal advisor stand by the contract? Depends, people are difference so while some might be understanding because they did afterall create the warrenty guidelines others might be more hypocritical. In the end, the warrenty is there to make sure everyone is treated equally. Even if that is a pain in the ass when you're on the receiving end of a limitation of the warrenty itself.

I'm not special in how I deal with the customers. The DOA policy is well known and you could call up at anytime and find that its honored. The situation often is though that sometimes the customer wants their problem resolved yesturday not in 5 working days from when they call. Alot of some of these stories I see here appear to be missing critical details which explain why things happened a certain way. However I'm also certain that some of them are totally true and the bulk of these bad encounters look like administrative issues. Either the case was logged with a detail incorrect or something was messed up down in the engineer pits.

If someone has an active issue then post the serial number of the item and I'll have a look on the system and maybe give you a call or email to confirm that details are correct. Maybe I'll see that something was logged incorrectly and be able to fix it. No promises though, I'd be just doing it as a casual favour and as I said, I'm not doing this with Acer's consent so I need to keep any sneaking around in their database on the sly

I managed to tread on my handheld Acer n30 in my sleep (and I made the mistake of telling this to the support staff). The support staff won't give me a quote for repairs. The gizmo set me back £130. Is it worth me trying to get them to fix it (and paying I don't know how much), or should I bin the thing and get something else?

Well, lying to us on the phone actually works against you. Because if that PDA came in and an engineer saw the state of it they'd issue you with a bill for having it sent in and the time of the engineer spent away from other repairs to complete paperwork. Lying to customer support is a bad idea, because we are less forgiving should we find out you did it. Claiming that you received something in the box and it was broken when you opened it rarely works. I've never in over 5 years known an idem like a PC, PDA or laptop come out of the box and be broken from the start. It just doesn't happen unless the box itself is very very damaged.

As for estimates, we can't give them for two reasons. The first is that Acer as a company needs to make money, some of that comes from bills as a result of providing quotes. We're told not to give estimates for that reason mainly. But the second reason is that we honestly haven't got access to the figures for things like that. We could go ask a supervisor, but do you think they'll tell us? Don't bet on it, they didn't become supervisors by breaking the rules and guidelines agents are told to follow.

I'll tell you this though. It costs the company less to replace PDAs than to repair them. So what do you think they prefer to do? I didn't tell you that though. hehehe

The one annoyance I found with them though is their disclaimer saying they may wipe the hard drive, so to back everything up before it is sent off. Of course in my case I couldn't boot the computer up so couldn't back anything up! As a result they had to wipe my hard drive and reinstall windows, so I lost a years worth (about 15gb) of uni work, pictures, music etc. Luckily I had finished my dissertation a few weeks before, but it is still annoying.

Now I wanted to comment on this because I get at least a dozen calls a day like this. Now lets be totally and utterly fair here, looking at it from a logical point of view. Data that is important should be backed up, however how many people actually do that on a regular basis? I don't, sometimes I do. But the fact is that its our personal responsibility. Its annoying yes, but to ask an engineer who has no less than 4-6 laptops and maybe desktops sitting infront of them as they work on them to backup the data on those is unreasonable. Also it would further delay repairs. I remember one employer who I worked for used to do backups and because we took responsibility for the data we'd sometimes get complaints because some files were missed because the customer didn't make it clear what needed to be copied. Basically a company that decides to do the nice thing usually gets a bite in the ass from ignorant customers who don't take responsibility for their own actions. So as a rule, most companies don't do it. Just be glad we warn you it might be lost.

It was working the night before, but not the next day. However no lights came on, and pressing the 'power on' button did nothing. Quick call to Acer, again fast service and arranged collection. However it's out of warranty now, so it's going to cost me £35 just for them to look at it, then they'll quote me for the repair on top of that. I'm hoping it's not a hard drive problem because again I can't back anything up since I can't start the computer up! They've had it a couple of days and I haven't heard anything, so I hope it's not too expensive and it's done quickly (and that it's not a hard drive problem!)

Ok. Things that break out and are just out of warrenty are a sticky issue. According to the warrenty the company is not required to repair it. Not ideal, but frankly warrenties are bound to expire sometime or later. The exception to these rules are few and far between. Without seeing the case history it works like this. Any repairs which are done by engineers and required spare parts have their own warrenty. Basically the fitted part is not supposed to malfunction within 3 months from the date of it being fitted. If your laptop had had something like the mainboard replaced within the last 3 months and now its dead then even though your out of warrenty the repair wouldn't be chargable. Some agents aren't always aware of this clause and frankly it only takes a moment of lapse to forget so forgive some of us for being human. Sometimes it pays to call up twice to double check information, occasionally we're not all falling asleep at our desks in the morning. heheheh

Not heard for a couple of days? Thats normal. Chargable repairs sit at the bottom of the priority pile next to the basic warrenty repairs but behind DOAs and Acer Advantage extended warrenty repairs. Usually after it arrives to us the engineers won't look at it for around 2-3 days, a 5 working day turn around is actually quite realistic if the parts are readily available. But since the Esplex building hasn't got much of a warehouse we often need to source from further up the country, so add a minimum of 1-2 days for shipping if the part is actively in the warehouse and not on-site.

Acer/Esplex has no qualified technitians
While it might be nice for us in the callcenter to say that the engineers are actually trained chimps the truth is actually more scary. They're usually students! Arghhhh!! *Ahem* But yes, some have official qualifications some don't. The same goes for us Agents, some of us have IT qualifications and some of us don't. One guy in the agent pool actually didn't know anything about PCs when he joined and basically blagged his way through, but now hes got enough experience to be teaching IT to private students in his spare time. Myself? No official qualifications. But tons of actual practcail experience. Sometimes that gives me the edge over people who learnt from textbooks. But put simply, Esplex hires based on what someone actually knows, not based on the details of their CV. They're very careful to test us from what I can tell, they've had too many incidents will people claiming they can field strip a desktop in 2 minutes when infact the person can bearly operate a toaster. So now they're cautious.

Acer/Esplex filters their calls
Oddly enough our phones do show the number of the person who is calling or the details if they're using a boardband or ISDN line. However thats it. We get no automatic data from the phonecall so putting in 141 before you dial won't change anything. When I showed colleagues the conspiriocy theories about stuff like that we had a good laugh. It reminds me of something I learn way way back when I first started doin customer services... customers a re never wrong, but they can be very very mistaken.

Acer Sucks. Always
This boils down to common sense. If a company was totally horrible with their service they'd go broke. *cough*Tiny*cough*Time*cough* and thats a fact. I deal with at least 80 calls a day, in the course of a week I'll get maybe 5 or 6 people who are unhappy with the service. But usually I try to at least help them understand the situation and so far I've only ever had one 'screamer' in my time there.

Its the weekend tomorrow. (Hoorayy!!!) I'll be busy but I'll come on to check this topic. Feel free to give me direct questions in reguards to what you can do if you feel you've been hard done by. I'll try to see if I can find you some clause or loophole to use thats within the warrenty but bear in mind that this in unofficial advice and since I don't have access to case history it can make it hard to me to give you any good answers to your problems. Also feel free to ask any general questions about how Esplex operates or whatever, don't drag me into anything like Trading Stardards and stuff because I just don't know and most things like that don't apply anyway.

Have a good evening.

Wow... it was actually refreshing to read through all your stuff.... I too work in a call center.. and we are a third party entity for a VERY VERY popular Electronics store/InHome repair. Though I have to say I'm not inclined to openly disclose who I work for... I can tell you that I have posted a link.. and my company shows a funny movie that ends with " That will be $100.00 ma'am"

Some things are true and some false.. I myself have no degrees or certificates about pc's but I know enough to run my own little business..I can build a pc blindfolded.. and I can walk someone through several basic trouble shooting steps while playing video games( or anything else but looking at my script) I'm surrounded by pcs ALL day... its my passion... work all day and play all night.. basically the only time i'm not infront of a pc is because I'm driving to/from work or taking time with freinds(which is maybe twice a week)

But there are several people around me who have degrees.. A+ N+ CCNA, MCSE... but this is a secure job.. no chance of going under.. and its steady pay.. just about everyone here does their own side work... Myself I like to specialize in Wireless networks. I/O device installs, Opt drives and anythin that has to do with media conversion and burning, I do some modes for people.. got my 80mm hole drill bit and a cordless 18v drill ... plus every day I'm asking questions here and other places about new types of media that I play with. And if you read my sig ... I go above and beyond to convert files to do anything I want.

But I'm glad we have someone here to explain what is going on behind the scenes... who understands ques... and that if your on hold its because we are supporting other people and that we will be with you as soon as possible. Though our que rarely grows to more than 20-25 and my boss is always screaming at us with a que update. But we have hundreds of operators here.. 24-7 in/out/lunch we always keep the available agent # cosntant to the days predicted amount based on the previous 5 years. Some days we are bogged down and some days its light. Any way... good see your comments

Its always nice to see others within the industry appreciate the effort I'm going to, thanks for your kind words. One thing I did miss in reguards to the myths about Acer support is that we don't use scripts of any kind. Theres no flow charts to diagnose issues over the phone and we're never told to say a certain sequence of phrases during out training. Thats why when you call up the helpline you'll get greetings ranging from "Good Morning, this is the Acer technical support line can I take your serial number please?" to the very basic, "Hi your through to Acer, my name is <name> how can I help you?"

I do know that some callcentres basically hire people with no technical knowledge to simply diagnose using flow charts but frankly I find that to actually cause more problem than it solves. Someone with experience would instantly know what the problem is the second they hear the symptoms or at least have an idea what kind of problem they are dealing with.

But I'll keep watching this topic, see if anyone else has an issue I might be able to shed some light on in the future.

Were you ever able to find a replacement screen from a source OTHER than Acer? The LCD screen on my Aspire 2010 broke too and I wasn't willing to pay the $649 to have them replace it.

Hello all.

I just wanted to share my experiences with Acer / Esplex repair service. I'll set it out in individual steps so I can easily outline any issues I had along the way, and make it easier to read.

PROBLEM / INITIAL CONTACT:

My Acer laptop developed a crack near the hinge on it's lid. Fortunately I took out 3 year extended warranty when I purchased the laptop. Getting through to Acer on the phone, and acquiring the Case ID, was really quite simple. I was on hold for no longer than around 5 minutes. The man on the phone was exceptionally polite, and even said he would even book me in as a priority (I expect this is due to the fact that I took out the extended warranty?).

ARRANGING COLLECTION OF LAPTOP:

This is the only part of the whole process where I experienced any issues at all - and the issue was with CityLink (the courier), not with Esplex. I could never get through to CityLink on the phone. When I tried to call, it would either keep on ringing and there would be no answer, or it'd be busy. I even made use of the ringback service sowhen their line became available I was alerted, and could ring back immediatley. However, I still had no luck getting through.

In the end, I decided to email CityLink via their feedback form on their website explaining the problems I was having geting through to them. To my surprise I received a reply early the next morning (it might've been the same day except I emailed them on a Sunday). A kind lady at CityLink explained that she was very sorry for the issues I was having getting through to them via the phone, and admitted they were having issues keeping up with the vastly increased number of phone calls they had been receiving recently, for parcel collections. She assured me if I provided her with a reference number (the Case ID which Acer had assigned to me), she would arrange to have my laptop collected the very next day. I did as she asked, and the very next day my parcel was collected.

RECEIVING THE LAPTOP BACK:

Early this morning CityLink delivered my laptop back to me. Upon opening the box I had received an engineers report which explained what had been done to the laptop. They had replaced the entire outer casing of my laptops lid (which is exactly what I had hoped for). I also received a form to fill out, and return (in a prepaid envelope) to the Explex quality co-ordinator, to let them know how happy I had been with their repair service.

I have tested the laptop, and everything appears to be in order.

The only (and very minor) gripe I have with the repair is that the enginner had left the little rubber bits off , which cover up the screws on the laptops lid. However, he had stuck them next to the holes, so it was just a case of me removing them and sticking them back in the right place. It took me all of about 15 seconds to do all 4 of them. I expect he simply forgot. This did not bother me in the slightest.

CONCLUSION:

The laptop was returned, fully repaired, exactly one week from the date of collection. The enginners report clearly states that they had received the laptop on the 26th (one day after it had been collected), and they had carried out the repair on the 28th. In my opinion, the repair was carried out very promptly.

The reason for me explaining all of this is because I had read this thread before sending off my laptop, and due to all the complains I had heared of, I was slightly worried I might've had a similar experience. I am happy to report this was not the case, and I have received first class service from both Acer and Esplex, their repair centre.

I do not doubt that some of you may have received less than satisfactory service from Acer/Esplex, but I think it's important that anyone reading this should be aware that not everyone is receiving bad service.

Hopefully I will have no more issues with my laptop, but if I do, and it happens within the warranty period, I will not hesitate to send my laptop to Esplex for another repair. I would also not hesitate to purchase another Acer laptop, or indeed any of their other products, in the future.

I do in fact also have a 19" Acer TFT monitor, which I have no issues with as yet (touch wood).

Thank you all for reading.

I have to admit that Citylink's main number is a little tough to get through too. If you have any issues making contact with them and you have a courier reference number of either 902338 or 902357 then you can alternatively call back to Acer/Esplex and see if the agent is able to book your parcel online. Its not something we're encouraged to do because it ties up the phoneline but it can be done. Alternatively you can try contacting the Plymouth branch of Citylink as they hold all the Esplex account information and are able to book jobs however they can be equally busy at times and its really not something they're contracted to do, but if its quiet they're happy to help sometimes. The agents typically won't know that the plymouth CL branch can book collections however so don't be surprized if they don't offer it as an alternative unless you call back.