Well I've had a lot of fun with my new desktop, not.
After a couple of weeks, the system started to fail. The screen would garble up after about 20 minutes and the system would freeze and when hard booted up, do the same again until the system had cooled down. It was a suspected blown graphics card and should have been a simple fix but it wasn't. What happened, I went through technical support via Acer online web support. This went on for a couple of weeks, being told to do things I had already done to see what the actual problem was, which involved a system restore, re-install graphics drivers, check graphics card and memory were seated properly and to try other monitors. Not of that fixed the problem. Though to be fair, the person replying was polite and did respond in a pretty reasonable time.
He was just unable to provide me a contact number or arrange any help there after. The contact number to arrange me sending in the machine at first was disconnected. Later in the week, it had a pre-recorded message to go online and hung up on you rather than putting you on hold to speak to a rep as instructed in the email support.
Fixmyacer.com is the website to go, which wasn't where I was pointed towards initially. Anyway, I arranged the repair and went to UPS for ship it back to them, out to Texas, which cost me $40. I really should have just bought myself a new graphics card, but that's beside the point, it was under warranty.
A month later, I get my system back, the repair report said they had re-seated the graphics card. Low and behold, twenty minutes after I booted my system, it failed again. It would seem that they ignored my repair report that the system fails after 20 minutes.
Email support got me no where, just told to send my machine back. I wasn't impressed, another $40 and a month for some knob shite to not fix it again? Just slightly pissed and unable to get anywhere.
I first found The Acer Guy who seems to want to help and has a great blog about what is happening with the company, but he's based in Europe. He did after I emailed him offer to try and help.
I also went to the Better Business Bureau and they were fantastic. I lodged my complaint, they contacted Acer, and within a half hour of that, someone from Acer called me up to arrange for a prioritised fix on my system, which is within 5-10 days rather than the 2-4 weeks. They also paid for Fed-Ex shipping, I just had to drop my machine off at the local Fedex store.
The system arrived yesterday and they did replace the faulty graphics card and so far, seems to be running well again.
The details you'll need to make the BBB complaint, to the company US headquarters, which is in California, so you would file at that BBB chapter -
Company details:
Complaint against : Acer America Corp
Acer America (USA only)
Acer America Corporation
333 West San Carlos Street
Suite 1500
San Jose, CA 95110
(408) 533-7700
Sorry to read about the flaming hoops you had to leap through in order to get your laptop fixed but I'm glad you published this.
ReplyDeleteSmall fish I may be, but I am a firm believer that as companies' actions become more transparent, the first thing they need to do is clean up their acts.
I know Acer keeps close tabs on their support performance, and after the acquisition of Gateway, this will become increasingly important as they build credibility in the group brands in the US.
In the meantime, don't stop visiting my site. I'm still trying my best to help out, even if I am stuck in Europe...
Fails after 20 minutes? Sounds like either a memory leak in your drivers or an overheating issue if the heatsink isn't set correctly on the graphics card.
ReplyDelete