Acer - very poor support

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It does say that an Admin may be able to help make contact. Any chance of a quick reminder to Robbie B to ask him to come and check out my post?

TIA
 
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Well, finally have an update! Had to call, late response to my email. Apparently my laptop is beyond repair and I'm being issued with another one. As mine has been discontinued (1714SMI) they assure me the new laptop will have same specs or better. I checked on this point three times, mentioning I want same HDD size, at least the same GFX as these are all important and I was assured I would get same or better, however they dont seem able to give me a make and model on what I'll get!

Why I doubt them I dont know! But I guess I will have to wait and see what is delivered, and I will check every spec, and if its not what they've assured me I will kick up a fuss, this has taken a very very long time!
 

muckshifter

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Encouraging update Yazooo ...

Hope you don't have to wait another month before it arrives. ;)
 
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Well still no laptop. What's worse, they can't even give me an ETA. I called them on Monday, I was told my details had been passed to the person who handles replacements, and I would receive a call back with more info on how long I would have to wait for my replacement. Surprise surprise, by Wednesday, no call, or news, so I called back, and I didn't get any info either, just that it's on the replacement list without an ETA!!!!!

Apparently my details have been 'escalated' to the complaints dept I think, and I shall receive a call back within 24 hrs! Wont hold my breath on that one!

Once again, I have to re-iterate what others have said, but my experience with Acer support has been poor, very poor. The only + side is they seem to be nice and friendly enough on the phone, but aside from that, they don't seem to be able to carry out what I paid for in the Acer Advantage warantee. I expected my machine to be repaired or replaced within 5 working days, that's what I paid extra for, and it is now turning into a joke I'm not finding funny!

I just want a laptop so I can do my bloody work, and an ETA so I can make some alternative arrangements! Keep you informed!
 
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Esplex do not phone back. "ever" not their policy, they write if your very lucky.
I have just written to head office, usually get a response..
 
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Surprise surprise I didn't get my call back, I'm on hold now waiting to speak to them, this is seriously starting to take the p***. If I don't get a satisfactory response today, I'll take the advice and send off a letter to head office. Acer Advantage my ass!
 
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I've never had dealings with such a woeful, sub-standard, incompetent technical support team. Don't get me wrong, I will restate my previous point so you know I'm not attacking the individuals, as indivdually each one of the support team I have spoken to has conducted themself well, and are generally friendly and pleasant to speak to if it weren't for their lack of information and inability to handle my case.

Apparently no one in the team can give me an ETA or a dispatch date on my machine. Even the person who actually handles the replacements doesn't seem to know, how that is possible I have no idea! So I'm expected to wait indefinitely, for something I have no idea of the specs (I have stopped asking them that question! I just want something now!).

I can't state this clearly enough for people who are considering buying Acer, I'm not just going to say don't, but you have been given reasons. I'll reiterate, DO NOT EXPECT THEM TO HOLD TO THE TERMS THEY PUT FORWARD IN THEIR WARANTEE AND EXTEDNDED WARANTEE OFFER! Perhaps they attempt to, but in my case, they have fallen well short, with no end in sight!

As ever, I will keep you informed, in the meantime, I'm writing a letter.
 
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More confirmation of Acer's poor service.

My daughter had a Acer laptop, which she thought would last for at least the duration of her degree. Not an unreasonable assumtion. She had problems during the warranty with a faulty floppy disk drive, then when it was just outside the 2 year warranty period the screen stopped working.

I emailed Acer on my daughters behalf several times and did not even get an acknowledgement. I finally decided to take the laptop to a local PC service centre, who after much difficulty (several calls being cut off after a 20 minute wait, as already reported in this thread) were told by Acer that the screen needed replacing and this was going to cost £250 including labour. This meant the laptop was beyond economical repair after just two years! We had the unit back and my daughter tried to use it with an external monitor, but this did not work either. A further diagnosis revealed there was a problem with the motherboard, which was estimated would cost up to £300 to fix, but if it needed a new one Acer had no replacements in stock and could not provide a price or availability. Acer told my service that the laptop was at the "end of it's service life" after 2 years!!!!!

My daughter, who like all students was already in much debt after 2 years at university, was now faced with the expense of purchasing a new laptop. I complained on her behalf to the UK Managing Director of Acer, but apart from an initial response via a phone call from one of his team, which did not offer any sympathy or support, my subsequent faxes were ignored. I gave up and my daughter bought a Toshiba laptop for around £500, which was a £300 cheaper than her original Acer. I am sure this will give her many years of reliable service. I have a Toshiba P3 laptop, which I purchased second hand from ebay. This was an ex company machine, so it probably had a lot of use before I bought it. Despite this, it has (touch wood!) given me trouble free service and I know that if I had problems, this manufacturer would have provided me with good service. I know this from my experience of Toshiba Audio Visual products.

It is obvious from the responses to this thread that my and that of the service company I used, that our experience of poor service was not an isolated incidence. In fact the service company, who also sells hardware, stopped dealing with Acer for this reason. They told me the story of a school that had a supply of Acer computers and had many quality issues with them.

......and finally, my daughter sold her Acer laptop on ebay as there was a big demand for parts from non working Acer's. I wonder why! What was interesting was the fact that the buyer told me that there was nothing wrong with the screen. It was put into another lap top and worked perfectly. All of the problems were down to a faulty motherboard. Anyway, none of my family will ever buy Acer products again, no matter hoe attractive their range my look or be priced. I also warn anyone thinking of purchasing a laptop, so that other can learn from my daughters, and by the length of this thread, many other consumers mistakes. Buyers beware.

Steve.
 
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Yes, as I assume I'll actually get a replacement at some point, I'm thankful for taking out the extended warranty. While I never actually thought it would completely die on me so soon, it could have been a very frustrating and costly repair. The build quality just doesn't seem to be there.

I can safely say I'll be shopping elsewhere for my products.
 
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Thanks.

bapiow said:
Welcome to the Acer hate club! your not alone.

Thanks. The club does seem to be growing, which is an indication that Acer are not heeding the criticism. Let's hope that one day there will be justice and they will go out of business. I am a Quality Manager myself and there is no room in this world for bad suppliers like them. I wonder if they are ISO 9001:2000 certified. If they are, I should make an officail complaint against them!

Steve.
 
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Oh my good god alive! Acer support have sunk to new lows! I received a package today from Acer, was really excited, as it was unexpected, opening it up to look at my new laptop and to my shock and horror, they have sent me a bloody 17in tft monitor instead, no laptop!!!!

How STUPID are these people, useless, useless, NEVER BUY ACER, they are so unbelievably STUPID! This is now watchdog time, I cannot believe this.
 
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If not acer, then who??

Hello, well i'm one of the Mesh victims from another thread here at pcreview and finding out Acer are as bad as Mesh is i bit of a shock. My sister has an acer laptop thats works great, in fact she's thinking of buying another one more powerfull.
In a few lines what is so bad about them, the reason i ask is i have a friend who is a real Mr Fussy and he only seems to buy the best made products and he thinks their great, in fact he tells everyone to buy them!

If i advise my sister not to go with Acer, any views on others she could buy instead?
 
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I've had an Acer laptop for six months now. I've been really happy with it. I do think they are prone to scratches on the outer casing though.

This little laptop is quite lucky, it rarely leaves my desk! So maybe I'm not the best person to ask about how good Acer laptops are!

One thing I will say about Acer support. They are indeed usless. They refused outright to give me any information on how to do a memory upgrade, insisting that it's not a user servicable. When I eventually worked it all out, I couldn't believe how seriously simple it is.
 
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Over 7 weeks after Acer received my laptop, my case for support has finally been resolved. Just to sum up, they initially said it would be replaced by a newer model, they botched that sending me a tft monitor instead by mistake.

Finally agreed to fully refund the purchase price of the laptop, but refused to refund the Advantage warantee I bought. The cheque was suppose to have taken 7 days, but took more like 20!

Anyway, I've bought a new laptop now, surprisingly not Acer, and so far am very happy with it. The letter I got with the cheque was a pathetic apology, not going over how long it has taken them to sort all this out and the effect its had on my work not having a machine for so long.

A letter of complaint is on its way to Acer head office, lets see what they say about all this.
 

muckshifter

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oh dear, I do hope my nephew does not have to deal with Acer over his laptop ... mind you, he did buy it from Tesco, so we should try them first if anything goes wrong. :D


Thanks for the update ... :thumb:
 
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Acer's UK Repair Centre is Pretty Good!

The power pin on my Acer laptop broke off during the Easter holidays (a fairly common problem with most laptops). Although it was still under warranty, having read this thread, I was convinced that it would never get fixed....or that I would have to pay a fortune for it to work again.

I rang Acer support, expecting a long holding time, and was connected in less than 5 minutes (pretty good in comparison to most telephone customer support hotlines). The man who answered the phone was extremely helpful and polite. He quickly took my details, issued a support number and told me how to arrange collection of my laptop by a courier company. The courier company were similarly easy to contact. They promised to pick my parcel up before 1pm the next day.....and did!

3 weeks later my laptop was returned to me. The mainboard had been replaced (without charge) and it is working fine again.

I really cannot fault Acer's repair services....perhaps I was just lucky, but they seem ok to me.
 
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Or maybe, just maybe they are starting to take a hint.

After all most of the comments we get in this thread are from people searching the net. Myabe they found it too? ;)

PR is a very damaging thing if gone about the wrong way
 
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Acer Corporate

Im in a very strong position to talk about the quality of Acers products and services.
I work in IT in Plymouth and we have approx 100+ Acer laptops.

Acers products are not very good, proven to the point that we decided to not buy Acers anymore and started buying Toshiba and HP which, only after a few months, we have noticed the amazing difference in the quality of the product and the services they offer with them.
Most Acer laptops have manufacturing defects. For example, the TM240s CDrom drive sticks out a few mm and eventually windows stops detecting it. TM290LCi's have a fault with the wireless switch where it breaks off the mainboard inside after a while. I have sent back nearly every laptop here with one of those two faults. Also i have had many many problems with the LCD suddenly and un-expectedly getting multi-coloured lines down or across it.
Compared to Toshiba and HP laptops which we use now, the quality of Acers notebooks is very poor.

And as for the warranty service?? That sucks too im afraid!! Im actually experiencing this now.
About 2years 9months ago we bought a batch of TM244XC's along with 3 Year extended warranty for each of them. A man called Martin Shaw told us that he could register all our warranties for us which we liked the sound of (hey, less work!!) so we left him to it.
Now for the past 2yrs and 9 months i have had loads of problems trying to book in said laptops. Nearly every time it would be a warranty problem of some sort so we speak to a man called Rashid who was educational channel manager at the time, he said he'll sort everything out for us (Much like Martin Shaw said).
Anyways..... These laptops warranty runs out in like 2 months, so i wanna get anything broken repaired while they are still under warranty! So i phone up to book in a few laptops, the response was - "Im sorry, that laptop doesnt seem to have a warranty registered against it"
Actually, none of the laptops seemed to be under warranty. I was shocked that even though the warrantys had been registered TWICE, over 3 years they have still managed to "loose", "misplace", or "f*ck up" our warranties.

So..... not in a very good mood i phone a woman called Marnie (think surname is Shilson??) She said that she will email me a corporate registration form to put all the serial numbers on to register our warranties (for the 3rd time in 3 years) BUt after a few days waiting i never got this email with this form. So i phone back and speak to someone else who tells me Marnie is on holiday (How convinient) and that SHE will send me the form instead. (wait a few more days) NO FORM!!! So i phone Marnies phone, now its constantly engaged (I thought she was on holiday???) So i phone somewhere else, it happend to be customer relations i got through to an office!!! And she is the 3rd person that has said she will email this form. Im still waiting!!

Quick advice - if Esplex Plymouth tell you they are "Waiting for Parts" to fix your latop its bull****!! They have a massive store of old laptops used for parts in the warehouse, and about 5 minuites away is a massive store of parts. Nice to know that you pay all that money for a warranty and they use SECOND HAND PARTS to repair your laptop!!

I think all we can do to make these people change is keep complaining!! Point them to places like this! I wonder if the UK manager of Acer has seen websites like this??? Ive heard people talk of writing to Watchdog and similar!!!

Well anyways - I have a HP Compaq laptop now and Im NEVER going to buy ANY acer product ever.
While surfing around the net looking at various Acer stories i have found that lots of people think that Andrew Parsonage is the manager of the call centre. I can confirm that ANDREW PARSONAGE no longer works at Esplex in Plymouth.
I can sympathise with anyone thats had this type of problems. So, if you think i can help or if you have any questions please email me.

These numbers might help.

01752 243847 - Marnie
01752 243924 - Complaints
01752 243752 - Head of Call Centre??
 
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I find this all a bit strange, the 2 people i know with Acer think their great. In fact my sister can't fault her's at all & has been really happy with the support she has had from Acer.

Whats the 1 thing thats bad with them?
 
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