Acer warranty repairs anyone?

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

I had an Acer laptop come in this week which was DOA (power on but no POST ... no display activity at all) and still under warranty. Sent it to TX to the repair center, but having no experience with Acer warranty support, I don't know what to expect so I Googl'd and Bing'd.



I was surprised to find very few (relatively speaking) legitimate tirades about how lousy they were, which is encouraging. What I did find was a bunch of whining crybabies (aka. American consumers) feeling that they were entitled to, nay OWED, every consideration, plus compensation for the hassle. Most of what I found came under these few misconceptions:

1. It's not out of warranty, I bought it less than a year ago!

Okay, but you never registered the damn thing with the manufacturer. You knew there is a reason for those nag screens on a new machine. If they don't have a purchase date on record, then they go from the date of manufacture. Screaming and waiving a receipt around doesn't negate your laziness. Oh, and FYI, they are not required by law, morality or good judgment to "take your word for it," even if you do go to church every Sunday.

2. I have to pay for shipping it to you? RIPOFF!

A warranty is not a service contract. If you are smart enough to use a computer, you are smart enough to understand this. If you bought it from a brick and mortar store, then they have a responsibility to replace defective merchandise or refund you the purchase price ... wait for it ... within the timeframe of their own store policy or the minimum allowed by the laws of their jurisdiction. They don't owe you anything for your time or data, just the hardware. After that it is the manufacturer's responsibility to cover their warranty. If they don't have a local (to the customer) service facility, it must be shipped. It's not their fault you live in Montana.

3. You want a credit card to ship a replacement part?

Well, yeah. Your church-going entitled word only goes so far, even if you aren't lying. A battery fried from an internal short and from you dropping it in hot oil are two different issues. If it's the former and you are exonerated by shipping the faulty part back, then you get brownie points for being honest. If it's the latter, bon appetit.

4. Why do I have to *BUY* tech support?

Because the manufacturing defect was not from our factory. Did your parents' obstetrician give them a warranty? You might want to explore that manufacturing defect.

5. You destroyed 5 years of work.

Um ... warranty repair here. If the laptop is less than a year old … can I borrow your time machine? I'd like to buy some Apple stock in 2001. BTW, a hard disk replacement usually won't come with *your* data on it, that's why backups are not just for getting out of the handicapped parking space at Wal-Mart.

6. How can a Month-old laptop die?

If you knew anything at all about computers, electronics or machinery in general, if something is going to cause it to fail from the manufacturing process, it’s going to happen pretty early. That’s why there are warranties. The reason why the high end stuff fails less isn’t because they build it better, but because they are so over-spec’ed that the systems are never really stressed (that’s why they cost so much more, BTW.)

7. But I don’t have the original disks …

You are not supposed to. You are provided the opportunity to burn a set (and nagged until you do, or dismiss it as unnecessary – see: idiot, n.) and provided a restore partition which you probably deleted to recover a few precious gigs for your porn library. Now you gotta pay. Perhaps night courses at the local community college would be a better investment.

8. I registered for my free Windows 7 upgrade, but never got the disk.

Call Microsoft, that’s their deal. BTW, you might have to wait a week or two (or six). Just sayin’.

I feel sorry for them now and wish I would have put a cigar and a fifth of Bourbon in the box, too.



Anybody have any real experiences with Acer? Just want to know what to expect. I’ve dealt with Dell (Business side, excellent, consumer side, not so good), HP (never had a laptop repair, but their business class printer service is stellar) Toshiba (marginal but acceptable), Sony (nightmare that would send Freddy Kruger into therapy) and Apple (pretentious ‘geniuses’ but at least they admit it.)

Comments

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

My old shop is an Acer partner and we always had really good luck with them. That started right after I left so I personally don't have that experience, but all of my old co-workers are pleased with it.

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Thanks.

[chipb0i.livejournal.com]

Quick turnaround on repairs for both laptops and the 1 LCD that we had problems with. No complaints here.

[daddykatt.livejournal.com]

I have nothing but bad to say about Acer personally.

I got one of their netbooks, brand new, and it would not charge at all. Registered everything, submitted a ticket online because that is the only way to do so through their site. Their support refused to even look at it. I was willing to pay for them to look at it and they refused.

I took it to an acer-partnered repair shop, the board was COVERED in solder drops right around the power-port.

Finally after the shop called them and chewed some ass for me, they replaced the board.

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

Shoddy Chinese sweatshop labor? Is the netbook repair center different from the laptop/desktop service center?

[tanamiya.livejournal.com]

I work for a major computer retailer in Canada. We don't get to do many laptop repairs under warranty...

If it's an Acer under warranty, we aren't even allowed to touch it. All we can do is give the customer Acer's phone number and send them on their way. (We're allowed to ship out eMachines and Gateway laptops, though, even though Acer owns them, thanks to agreements between the companies prior to their buyouts.) Having said that, I've heard good things about Acer warranty repairs -- usually a week turnaround time.

HP/COMPAQ are really damn good. They automate letting us ship everything to them, or ordering parts as needed. Any problems? We have an HP rep we can email to help fix any issues. Usual turnaround time is 7~10 days.

Dell ships us laptop parts overnight for stuff we -can- repair, like hard drives, RAM, keyboards. Anything major, though, we need to ship out to our laptop repair depot, which usually means a 3-4 week turnaround. The only issue here is that Dell will not provide customers with ANY support for laptops bought from $retailer -- the customer has to come back to $retailer for everything.

All Toshiba laptops have to go to the same repair depot for ANY hardware failure. AC Adapter needs to be replaced? Gotta ship the whole laptop out. At least the customer has the option of dealing with Toshiba directly if they'd like. Same with Apple computers.

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

Dell business is a little different from their retail arm. I had a laptop that wouldn't hold a charge for longer than 45 minutes. They sent a prepaid DHL box the next day and had the machine back to me in three with a new motherboard, battery and AC adapter.

Dealing with Toshiba directly is probably the same as dealing with them through a third party ... frustrating but eventually successful.

[jecook]

It also depends on what level of support you've purchased from Dell.

CompleteCare is the "oh crap, I just dropped a glass of [whatever] on the laptop" coverage, and with the prepaid box with return label on it. Turn around is also generally 1 week as well. It's also the most expensive options, because it covers accidental damage.

Gold support (which is what most places I've worked for get, including the current employer) is next business day for parts or on site for the duration of the warranty. If your company has an in-house IT group? they can get under the warranty parts direct program (for another annual fee, of course!) and forgo the troubleshooting bad parts with level 1.

Consumer grade? that's another ball o wax, at least as far as having to deal with level 1 support.

[curmudgn]

Um, New Terminology Alert!

"Gold" no longer exists, as such. Nor do Bronze, Silver, and Platinum on the enterprise side of the house. The current equivalent of all the "metals" is "Pro Support"--either for the end user or for the enterprise, depending on what sort of hardware we're talking about and which business segment you bought it from.

By and large it's the same animal as before, but continuing to use the metal terminology will peg you as Behind the Times.

[jecook]

*insert snarky comment about evicting juveniles from my decorative vegetation patch on my premise*

[curmudgn]

OK, you don't wanna hear about it from the guy who spent five years as an L1 and L2 in Gold/Pro, suit y'self . . . but don't get offended when we point and snigger.

(And "juvenile"? Bubba, I 'spect I'm old enough to be yer daddy.)

[jecook]

Quite possibly.

Normally when I'm talking to support, the level of our contract usually don't care- I'm calling on a server that's either DOA, or slightly brane-damaged.

[random-c.livejournal.com]

I have never yet managed to convince Acer that there is actually anything wrong with a machine of mine, they're always insistent that it's software. Even when the problem persists (albeit in a slightly different form) under a different OS. When I was having an issue with 3d graphics - ie the machine crapped itself HARD as soon as it tried to do any - I did the requested restore, didn't let it on the net to update anything, and rather than installing a game, just put 3d mark on it from a USB key. They said they wouldn't support issues with anything that didn't come with the machine... when I asked them how, exactly, they would suggest I test the 3D graphics with only apps they'd supplied with the machine, they said they ONLY supported the machine exactly as it came out of the box. So, basically, Acer's warranty doesn't actually allow you to use the machine.
I had some other issue, I can't remember what, but I ended up going round in circles answering the same questions over and over again, never talking to the same person twice, until my warranty had run out.
Not POSTing might be a bit easier to convince them of, though.

[hel]

I had an acer laptop, and had ok experiences with their support. The power port died, and I sent it to them, and they fixed it and sent it back. Sadly, they didn't put new thermal pads on the CPU&GPU (just reused the old ones), so it constantly overheated thereafter until I put new thermal pads in myself. I did however manage to talk one of their techs into sending me a replacement keyboard when mine died, instead of making me send the laptop back to them just for a keyboard swap.

[alexanderc.livejournal.com]

While registering a machine with the manufacturer is useful for a variety of reasons, Acer is legally bound to adhere to the date of sale on the proof of purchase if one is available. If the customer can produce a dated receipt for the machine then Acer has no choice in the matter. The receipt is the legally binding contract since it is what indicates transfer of ownership from the retailer to the end user.

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

While this is true, the complaint almost always comes before that proof is verified. Without the registration that includes the date of sale, what other option does Acer have (or any manufacturer, for that matter) than to use the date of manufacture?

And, there generally was an accusation that if they didn't press the matter, Acer would not have fulfilled their responsibility. In every case, the date of sale was honored, but the complaint still stood.

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

That's crazy. I just had to send in an Acer Travelmate, but getting Acer to repair an out-of-warranty unit was a bitch (http://community.livejournal.com/techsupport/2090769.html).