My Sad Story

I bought an Acer 1694 WLMi in July Last year. Good specs, Better price. I wouldnt have traded it in for a Sony if i had to.

Cut to 3rd Feb. I come back from uni and I see a BSOD. I think ‘oh crap’ but a reboot should hopefully fix it. So off we go to do what windows users do more than clicking the Start button. But we have another surprise waiting for us, another and this time persistant BSOD ‘ Unmountable Boot volume’ , googling up which gave us probably a corrupt MBR or bad sectors. 2 days and chkdsk, fdisk , HDD regenerator, and various other tools/commands later, i conclude that the hard disk cannot be fixed. The MBR cannot be written to and therfore even formatting wont help. So we use lovely SLAX, and backup our first partition since thats whats givin the error. The 2nd partition is too heavy to be backed up anyway , i dont have an external hard disk and plus Acers probably going to give me a new hard disk and send back my old hard disk. Cant see why they wont, since there’s no use for this old not-working hard disk.

So i call Acer, they give me a case ID, an account number and the number of their couriers who i am to call and book a collection. After a lot but minor inconviniences, the laptop gets picked up and sent to Acer. 2 days later i get an email from Acer they want me to pay 183£ (320$) for repairs. Which I am not willing to pay because it’s under warranty. So I call them up and as usual im waiting for like 15-20minutes on a premium number and when i finally get to speak to ‘support’, they tell me I have to pay that to get my old hard disk back and the new one is free. So what do you do? You could buy a 100GB 5200RPM hard disk for 100£ and fix it yourself or pay 183£ for a 80GB 4200RPM hard disk. Hmm Toughie.

After much contemplation (yeah right), I tell Mr. Support to send back my laptop unrepaired. He says ok, laptop should be with you in the next 2 days. But it’s not. Wait it gets better. After 96 hours, (yes iv started counting time in hours) I call them and voila, its undergoing repair. I said i dont want it to be repaired, and Mr.Support tells me ‘Yes Sir, thats what you’re form says’. I tell him I am aware of what my form says and I want my laptop back. He tells me he cannot contact the Repair dept right now but he will send an email from my side and let me know as soon as he gets a reply. The next day I get a mail from Acer saying my laptop has been repaired (wtf) and has been dispatched and should be with me in the next 2 days.

But it’s not. Deja Vu. After a couple (read a million) calls to Acer and the courier company, seems like they had my address incomplete and i FINALLY get my laptop back, but no old hard disk. As soon as i have my laptop set, I drop them an email telling them how ridiculous it was to repair my laptop when I asked them not to (which i still have no idea why they didnt) and i desperately need my old hard disk back. So it’s a jolly good friday with life back on track. Little did i know what life (or Acer) had in store for me next morning.

Laptops stuck again. The whole story all over again. Bad Sectors, Blue Screens, No use of the ‘recovery’ CDs. What did i end up with. A laptop with a bad hard disk and a bunchload of information ( read photos, school projects, photoshop projects, university projects collected over 6 years) in a hard disk at Acer whcih they are not willing to return.

Would I have traded my laptop for an Sony? No. Should i have? Hell Yeah.

Acer. This is Case ID 297101N. And I am telling you, I am never buying an Acer Product Again.

For the rest of you, Acer products may be cheap and good specs, but the bad support JUST isnt worth it.
If my story isnt convincing enough, here are a couple of more links.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-5667-2.php

http://www.winpe.com/acer

http://www.driverzone.com/viewcomment.php?company=Acer&masterid=18

http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/hardware/acer.html

Or Simply: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Acer+sucks

And if you are’nt bored reading this yet. Here’s a list of ‘Minor’ Inconviniences.

Acer’s courier company, City Link’s national number is _always_ busy. Mr Support tells you its a matter of perseverance. Calling constantly for one hour, after that perseverance is out of the question really. It’s a matter of ridicule.

Acer couldnt find my post code, everyone else did, but Acer couldnt. So i give them a post code of a place which is a 2minute walk from my place, ask them to instruct the driver to give me a call when he’s there.He does , and i ask him to wait for 2 minutes to bring the parcel to him, but guess what, he’s not ther.

While gettin the laptop back, Acer misses my flat number on the address, which is why I dont get the laptop back for like 2 moredays.

Conclusion: Acer’s courier company, City Link, is a cheap , shoddy company which is _hardly_ reliable. Acer, seriously, take a little more money out of you’re full pockets and use a decent courier company like Parcelforce or DHL

Email Acer and tell them how much you love them: euro_mail@acer-euro.com

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