The Acer Laptop Returns

(To catch up on the Acer saga, please check the Acer Nightmare tag. First post is here, second is here, and third is here. The laptop in question is an Acer Aspire 5100 series, which had a loose screen hinge, faulty touch pad, chronic overheating, whining fan, and would occasionally freeze up with blue and white vertical stripes on the screen, which I was told that was the video card going out.)

So, Acer sent the laptop back to me, completely and utterly untouched and unfixed. Even the problems that would NOT even be close to being caused by this mysterious liquid – loose hinge for the screen, bad touchpad – they didn’t even bother fixing. Thanks, Acer.

They sent it back in a box that I had sent it in, and the box was wearing thin and breaking in spots.

A couple shots of the box.

Same packaging, everything, and no paperwork – so I have no idea if they even opened it, what they *might* have done to it, nothing. If something would have happened to the box since it was so flimsy anyways, there would be no identifiable info about the laptop itself.

Here are a couple of pics of the outside of the laptop – the touchpad, the lose hinge, etc.

This is the back hinge. The white residue you see is from duct tape.. I had to use duct tape to keep it from wobbling. I took it off before I sent it back.

This is the touchpad, and this is the wear from only a year and a half worth of use. The buttons want to fall out, the color is actually wearing down, you can see scratches on the laptop. The laptop has spent most of it’s time on my desk. The touchpad itself was faulty.

It’s just made from cheap plastic, as you can see. Hasn’t held up well.

This is the bottom of the laptop. I have no idea what this white powder is, but it is covering a lot – I just thought it was worth noting.

I have to admit, I am defeated. I think the main thing that broke me was the constant jerking and pulling from the customer service at Acer. Insisting they want to make me happy, paying for FedEx shipping back, offering to correct the wrongs that they made and then deciding against it. Telling me that they wouldn’t touch it, and if they did, it would be $449. Naming a mysterious liquid as the problem, making even outer fixes like the touchpad and hinge un-doable. Assuming that I accused the repair reps of spilling a drink in the laptop when it had never even crossed my mind.

But even though I am defeated when it comes to this laptop, I can honestly say I will do absolutely everything in my power to make sure everyone knows the lack of quality and horrible Acer customer support offers. I will make sure that everyone I know, speak to, pass on the street, run across on blogs, forums, social networks, anyone that is looking for anything computer related will know what hideous treatment they give their customers, and that they have no problems promising something then deciding differently. I would have taken them very little to make me happy, but instead they give excuses and false promises.

I don’t want anything from Acer anymore. But what I do want is for people to know how Acer treats the people that buys their products. I have filed a report at RipoffReport.com, I will be filing with the BBB, and I will be contacting the consumer media watchdogs. Yelp is probably a good idea, too.

If anyone needs the contact info for the top 5 executives at Acer, here you go:

These are the person business emails of some of the Acer Pan America Executive Team

Rudi_Schmidleithner@acer.com, President
Mark_Hill@acer.com, General Manager, Acer America
Mark_Groveunder@acer.com, Vice President, Customer Service
Clarence_Worthington@acer.com, Senior Director, Sales Operations and Fulfillment
Joe_Castillo@acer.com, Director, U.S. Retail Sales

Am I in a standoff with Acer?

If you need to catch up on this saga, first post is here, second is here. Check out the Acer Nightmare tag to see all Acer related posts.

So, I sent out my laptop 1/6. I got an email saying it had arrived to the Temple, TX location on 1/10. I got a call on 1/13 that they would not fix my laptop, and that they would hold it until 1/20, and then ship it back, unrepaired. I’ve not heard anything from
Acer, and no sign of a laptop.

I’m not quite sure what to do here – I know I should probably call them, but I have a feeling that I would get a poorAcer representative on the line and then bust out crying. This is stressing me out, and Acer’s not doing a damn thing to help. It’s been all up hill.

The amount of money I have invested in this is huge. I spent $800 on the laptop, and an extra $100 a year later for an extended warranty. I just laid in bed last night, thinking. That’s $900. That would cover a beater car, that would cover health insurance for 9 months, that would cover my last class I need to take to graduate. Instead I’m sitting here, carless, uninsured, and ungraduated (..I had to quit with one class to go.)

I know the money is spent, and I spent it at the time when school was paid for, I had great insurance, and a car. And I know that I walked in there willingly, handed over $800, and paid for the laptop. But I suppose I had trust in the company, especially with (what seemed like) a really good warranty, that I would at least have a working and functional laptop for a while. Not something I can barely use and has this mythical liquid spilled in it (that was sarcasm, Acer. No liquid has ever been around the laptop. Especially mythical liquid, that shit is rough.)

And I suppose that I put faith in a company when they wanted to make things better, that they wanted to prove to me that their repair service isn’t full of bad excuses and bad repairs. They told me it would be fixed, and they would pay for shipping both ways to help me out. They wanted to make things better to the point of calling me and telling me that would happen.

And then once it got to Temple, TX, they changed their minds. They weren’t going to help me, no, they were going to leave me up a creek without a laptop. And now I have no idea where anything stands.

I’ve had a lot of hits for stuff like “acer, mark_hill”. It says he is the U.S. sales exec for Acer. I wonder if other people are also having big problems with Acer repair services? Who is looking for Mark Hill?

Acer and Ripoffreport.com

Wow, look what I found concerning Acer at Ripoffreport.com! I’m gonna go through and see how many have the same “liquid” excuse that Acer (their Temple, TX location) gave me!

Wow, they have an F rating with the BBB!

Boooo, Acer!

So here’s the story.

About 2 years ago, I bought a laptop. An Acer Aspire 5100 series laptop.

Af first the laptop was fine. It did great, oh, for about two months. The screen went out on it, and I had to send it back for repairs.

I was impressed. They got it, fixed it within 48 hours, and shipped it back. I thought it was a little odd that I had to pay to ship the laptop back in the first place, most companies cover shipping. But it was $25, and I got my laptop back quickly, so I didn’t complain.

But after a few months other stuff started going bad. The network card would drop out randomly, the screen would go to white and blue vertical stripes, the touchpad was wonky. I researched my problems and found out that Acer repair, more than not, is pretty touch and go. Most complaints I have read say that the laptop came back to the owner in worse shape than it was sent out.

So, I tried to deal with the problems. Never mind the fact I pair $800 for a laptop that was nothing short of a drama queen. I was able to check my email and use basic programs, so I was Ok.

One day I just got fed up. It’s an $800 product, and on top of that I paid an extra $100 for an extended guarantee. I went to the Consumerist to see if there were any other complaints, and my god, there were.

I was looking around on the Consumerist when I found instructions on how to create your own Executive Email Carpet Bomb. You find the PR reps address, and then the list of executives of the company. You look at the format of the email, and try to reconstruct the email addresses of the people you want to contact – namely, the higher ups.

So I did this. I sent out an email explaining how disappointed I was in Acer, etc.,etc. I honestly didn’t expect to hear anything from them. But none of the emails bounced, so I knew the emails had to go somewhere.

A week or so later I got a phone call. It was Acer, from their offices in Temple, TX. They offered to ship my laptop back, free of charge, and fix all the problems I had complained about.

I was ecstatic. Insanely happy. They had listened! The consumer would get good customer service! I packed up my laptop and sent it out as soon as I could. My sweet little laptop was going to go straight to a fancy senior tech and all my problems would be fixed!

But today I got a phone call. That they won’t be fixing my laptop, and they are shipping it back untouched.

Because of “water damage”. And the screen problem is caused by said liquid (which, let’s say, this problem has been going on for a year now. If it WAS liquid, I would think the problem would either escalate or go away, depending on what type of liquid it was)

Ok, I admit I clicked over into bitch mode. But I had my reasons.

I DON’T HAVE LIQUIDS AROUND MY LAPTOP. At all. And when I told her this she said (pretty snotty) that they “have pictures” and that “their employees don’t have liquids around the computer, so it wasn’t them.”

NO SHIT. She automatically assumes that I was blaming them, which I have huge troubles with, because at that point I was more than surprised, and blaming them wasn’t even in the realm of realistic. This actually offended me, and a lot.

Secondly, they NEVER SAID that this was work had to be covered by the warranty . I assumed that they were doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, because I had a horrible laptop and they had the resources and ability to right a situation that was wrong, so they were doing this. I guess I was really out of line there.

This pisses me off beyond all belief. Water? WTF? I have heard this excuse being used on a huge amount of people that send their laptops back into Acer. I almost choked on my drink (but don’t worry! I wasn’t around the computer) when she said “water damage”, because 1) there is no liquid in the computer and 2) this line from them is getting very, very old. I’ve heard it before, and I bet I’ll hear it again.

So now, I’m awaiting a call from “Travis”. I am seriously not going to be quiet on this one – if they right the situation, I will apologize and let people know that Acer actually listens to their customers. But if they try to send that laptop back to me with the line that it was “liquid” in the laptop, I swear to god I will be emailing and calling everyone within my power. I was promised that a senior tech would fix my laptop, and now I am being told that they aren’t going to touch it. I was told, in the original phone call, that they wanted to make me happy. And accusing me of doing something that I have no clue what actually happened is not scoring too high on the “happy” factor.

Do you know someone who has been treated badly by Acer?