My Acer experience - help please!

[kizkiz]

A pretty long story this one...

I bought an Acer Aspire laptop almost 2 years ago now. It worked perfectly until about a month ago when something in the computer (a computer literate friend informed me it was probably the fan) began to make a loud whirring/grinding noise on and off. This increased in frequency and loudness over the next week or so then the computer began to freeze and crash. Eventually it got to the point I would turn on the computer, it would immediately make the noise, begin to start up for about 20 secs then bluescreen and crash with some very scary error messages eg. 'fatal error' etc. So it was completely unusable. Typical luck, this was in the middle of my university exams!

Have a 3 year warranty, so phoned Acer, sent it away to them. Got it back within a week, which I thought at the time was fantastic. However I had some doubts when the repair report just said that the computer had powered on fine, and that the engineer had just cleaned the fan and then sent it back.

Turned on the laptop and immediately I heard the noise again - fainter, yes, but there. The computer seemed to work ok though at the time. However, it is now 2 weeks later and the computer has begun to do the exact same thing again, but with worse error messages eg.' SMART disk error, your hard disk is about to fail, immediately back up all your data' etc. It is once again completely unusable!

So I phoned Acer up again, told them I needed to send it back and said that they hadn't fixed it properly the first time. At this point the guy on the other end of the phone became very rude and told me that the first time I had send it to them there had been nothing wrong with my laptop (!), and that if I send it to them again with nothing wrong with it they would charge me!!

My first problem is obviously that there was most DEFINITELY something wrong with my laptop the first time around. I had taken it to a computer shop to get an opinion before I send it off and they stated that the fan was almost certainly malfunctioning. However, I didn't get this in writing I would think that any computer that bluescreens repeatedly with no warning isn't exactly normal. I had also told Acer in the problem description that the computer was bluescreening and shutting down - and I definitely got the feeling from the guy on the other side of the phone that he thought I had just been making the whole thing up.

I asked the guy on the phone if I could send in a letter from a computer engineer stating that there WAS a problem and what it most likely was - and he just told me flat out that 'We only listen to our own engineers, it wouldn't be worth anything.' Well obviously their own engineers are idiots.

I am almost scared to send back the machine to them again - what if once again they 'find nothing wrong with it?' and demand payment? Can they do that under warranty? (maybe they could if it was a frivolous claim but my computer was unusable - hardly a frivolous claim!)

Needless to say I am not going to pay if that happens, so what course of action would be open to me in that case? I am obviously going to gather letters from computer experts before I send it off again so I can take action against them if need be.

So I now have zero confidence in Acer - I suggest anyone out there who is considering buying one of their machines stays WELL AWAY.

Anyone out there with a similar experience? How did you resolve the situation? Any help would be greatly appreciated, many thanks.

- An Impoverished Student

[old_andrew2007]

bump

[BankFodder]

You will have to get an independent report. Write to Acer recorded, give a succinct chronological account of everything that has happened so far including your contacts with them and what has been said by each party. Don't refer to rudeness etc. Try to keep it objective and non-accusing. Put them on notice that you are about to get the report. Give them 10 days to object and tell them that if the report says that there is a fault that you will expect Acer to pay for the report as well.

A good idea would be to video the computer demonstrating the fault and making sure that the noise is audible on the film.

Get the report and an estimate for repairs - or an opinion that the computer is beyond repair.



Send a copy to Acer with 14 days to respond or you will take legal action. If they don't respond then send them the Good News. that will probably make them leap into action and start taking you seriously.

let us kow how it goes.

[BankFodder]

By the way, I use an Acer laptop when I am away and I have a very good experience of it. However, I agree that the company are not great to deal with

[Bookworm]

If Acer refuses to deal with it under warranty, surely OP should be able to seek redress under SOGA through Comet?