Acer
reviews and complaints

Acer Australia and their wonderfully effective repair company
Highpoint Australia
Unit 7 & 8
145 Arthur st
Flemington
NSW 2140 Australia

Why not stop by and say Hi from me!

Grab a cuppa and read all about my long painful saga detailing my worst experience of customer “service” I have experienced in 17 years of being a consumer:

19/4/2005 Acer PD113P Data projector Unit purchased from Officeworks Fyshwick for $999.00 on 19/4/2005.

12/5/2005 Unit failure #1 (powers up briefly then back to standby mode). Returned to Officeworks. Unit exchanged. Bulb exchanged.

4/4/2007 unit failure #2 (same problem). Returned to Officeworks. Officeworks staff advised to take to Acer repair centre. Unit taken directly to TechFlex, Fyshwick who sent the unit to Acer’s repair centre - Highpoint in Sydney.

16/4/2007 Contacted by Highpoint Sydney. Fax received advising bulb was blown out of warranty and requires replacement. I approved and paid for a new bulb for $231.34.

16/5/2007 After many phone calls to Highpoint and Acer Sydney and two visits to Acer Deakin the unit was returned to Highpoint Deakin for me to pick up. No phone calls received to advise of the whereabouts of my projector or that it had arrived. Repaired unit picked up from highpoint Deakin.

18/5/2007 Unit failure #3 with same problem. Returned to Highpoint Deakin. Sent to Highpoint Sydney. No contact from any highpoint or Acer store. Several calls to Acer support FINALLY got someone who knew what they were doing and sent it repaired overnight to me at Canberra.

1/6/2007 Repaired unit Received.

6/6/2007 Unit failure #4 (same problem).

7/6/2007 Sent email with ridiculous amount of problems to acer customer support.

9/6/2007 Email received from /Name removed/ (Highpoint Customer “Service”) offering me to send my projector back for a fourth time to have the same thing addressed (or not)... again. He reminded me of the warranty terms of my projector and also advised Acer were not interested in honoring their warranty to sell me a projector of merchantable quality and I should pursue the issue with the ACCC (Australian Consumer Complaints Commission) or send the unit back for them to have another go.

12/6/2007 I agreed to have the unit picked up to go back for another round.

14/6/2007 unit is picked up from my work address.

25/06/07 After no contact from Acer or highpoint 11 days after it was sent an email is sent to Acer Customer “service” asking for an update. Email received from Acer customer support saying the bulb is dead after only 36 hours use and they require authorization for a repair cost of $231.34. I replied advising I had already paid for one bulb which died again shortly after and was not paying a cent more and to return he unit as is. ACCC Complaint lodged online.

29/06/07 Email received from Patricia at ACCC Infocentre. No liaison with Acer since last email and projector is still in their possession.

10/07/07 email sent to highpoint asking where my projector is.
Email sent to ACCC asking if there is anything else they can do.
Email received from Patricia – ACCC Infocentre advising to contact ACT Fair Trading

11/07/07 email from /Name removed/– Highpoint advising it was sent via Couriers Please. Couriers Please online tracking for the parcel shows it was picked up from the Canberra Depot on the 26 Jun by Truc Linh & Anne Dam. Called couriers please and waited 20 mins to speak to an operator who advised it was a missed delivery. Driver will retry delivery tomorrow (12/7). email sent to ACT Fair Trading regarding the matter.

12/7/07 Call from Highpoint Sydney saying my projector had been returned to them by the courier. I advised the courier had never rang, left voicemail or a calling card of any sort. Highpoint will send it again to me. This contradicts what the operator at Courier’s Please advised yesterday that the driver had visited and would try again today.

13/7/07 Projector received via courier. LED Blue status light no longer even flashes when plugged in. Probably the simplest most non confusing example of a problem which is not SIMPLY A BLOWN BULB.

Total time with a non working projector = 93 days as @ 13/7/07... and climbing. I’m shopping for a new projector now... needless to say it definitely won’t be an Acer!

I want to state u that my cousin has gifted me a acer notebook and he have purchased it from malaysia near about 2 months have passed for this note book, but when i start using it, it shows some sort of problem n automatically their is blue screen displayed in it when some program is running on, but i m 4rm India n i want to make it repair the problem is due to hard disk in it and it is still under international travelers warranty.

I have all the documents except the bill that have been misplaced some where else. Had the service center's r not accepting my notebook due to this reason only, but i have bought a genuine product from Acer and might be if the bill is not their Acer have all the data bases in our computer and Acer can view it so, why all this going on i trusted with Acer product on Acer company is not accepting my notebook without BILL.

I am writing to complain about Acer America . I purchased this laptop from Tiger Direct 3 months ago and as you can see from the following letters what it took to get the machine fixed. It is finally working. Yesterday, March 8th, I received a call from Mark at Acer in Texas (he was not rude at least) telling me that they simple could not reimburse me for all the out of pocket expenses I have incurred because of this lemon?. However they have just NOW located my original hard drive (admitting that the one they sent to me was NOT mine) and would I like any data retrieved from it? Just about 2 months too late. Already lost one client and paid to get data retrieved from my business 1400 miles away.

I have still never heard a word from Acer Headquarters or Tiger Direct regarding any of this.

They are still not offering to reimburse me for all the cash I had to spend to get this thing fixed.

Any suggestions on how I can get this spread around the world so that others do not buy Acer products and get into a problem like this?

February 8, 2007

Acer America
2641 Orchard Parkway
San Jose, CA 95134

Attn: Customer Service

Re: SR 1-2NL4IP
S/N: LXAB10J005629039062500

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to express my great dismay at the service that I have been provided (or not) by your company. I purchased my Acer from Tiger Direct on December 11, 2006. I loaded all my business programs and my client data onto the machine and took my business off to Florida for four months. Upon arrival, I opened my machine and readied myself to make an image backup of the drive (standard monthly procedure for me). The machine opened windows. I walked away to retrieve my True Image software and when I returned the machine had frozen. I waited a respectable amount of time to see if it would recover itself then shut it down manually. When I tried to reboot it just cycled the hard drive again and again. Even the Acer recover disk that I made at initial setup did not boot.

I called repair. The technician was sympathetic and helpful, explained my options as to the hard drive with the data on it and read me an agreement (copy enclosed) which he had me disagree to. The disagreement, he informed me, would mean that I wanted to recover the data ion the hard drive and that if the problem was in fact a faulty drive I would be shipped back my old drive, which I would then take to a local person to have the data recovered. Okay, I unhappily packed, insured and shipped the laptop to Texas for the warranty repair. I was worried but he had assured me that I probably could get this accomplished. Bad hard drives do happen and Acer is a reputable company.

Now, it got a bit ugly. The machine returned almost 2 weeks later with a new blank hard drive in it. No old hard drive was in the box. I called immediately and held for another 20 minutes. Then I was put on hold by Sherman for 10-20 minutes while he “found” the tech who had worked on my machine and located my hard drive. He came back on the line and said he was having trouble “finding” the tech and would call me back in 10 minutes. He never called. I waited an hour and called back. I talked to Dusty. He said quickly that “Oh yes, of course they had located my hard drive”. I was a bit irritated by this time and he Dusty was mocking and rude telling me it was NOT Acer policy…I had been given bad information…not HIS fault…he didn’t HAVE to send the drive, the agreement I declined was NOT as stated, and just for my guru was actually pronounced Gooru, etc. etc. Lovely attitude.

I gave him my credit card number and he assured me the drive would be delivered on Monday or Tuesday morning at the latest. The new drive finally arrived about 1:00 on Wednesday. I opened the box and looked at the package. Right away I noticed the package had a different SR number on it…NOT MY SR number. But I took it to my computer tech anyway. When we took the drive out of the bag we noticed that the drive itself says “Certified Repaired HDD”. Well now, either this if NOT my original hard drive…or Acer sold me a brand new machine with a certified hard drive in it. The tech is very suspicious and shocked at Acer. We of course tried to find data on the drive but, not surprisingly, the drive was completely empty.

I purchased an Acer because of the companies reputation. Acer was supposedly one of the best. I am extremely unhappy at this point and very disappointed in Acer. I have lost weeks of client work due to the brand new machine’s malfunction and quite possible lost one client. I have paid my local tech and I paid postage on the original repair shipment (copies enclosed). I feel that the least Acer could do would be to refund these expenses that I had to incur from the failure of this brand new system. I will be expecting a reply to this complaint.

Sincerely,
Bethany B. Bomar

Bethany B. Bomar
60 Englewood Heights Road
Englewood, FL 34223
[protected]
[protected]@aol.com

cc: Acer America Repairs
Tiger Direct Customer Service

Letter #2

February 25, 2007

Acer America
2641 Orchard Parkway
San Jose, CA 95134

Attn: Customer Service

Re: SR 1-2NL4IP
S/N: LXAB10J005629039062500

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to yet another letter concerning the problems with my Acer laptop. I am attaching a copy of my February 8, 2007 letter which explains the problems that occurred with my brand new laptop. Since that time, I have had more problems. I went through another week of trying to retrieve my work documents from my company 1400 miles away so that I could get back to work. However, my brand new refurbished laptop simply would not run properly. It was slow and sounded like a croaking toad when I opened it. I called in my local computer tech once again. He spent time running some more tests and found that the memory was bad. HE contacted Acer (and was treated quite efficiently) and procured some new memory for the machine. He then spent more time and got me up and running.

I purchased an Acer because of the company’s reputation. Acer was supposedly one of the best. I am extremely unhappy at this point and very disappointed in Acer. I have lost weeks of client work due to the brand new machine’s malfunction and quite possibly lost one client. I have paid my local tech more and I paid postage on the original repair shipment and am enclosing copies of all my receipts.

Original hard drive return shipping 30.12
Englewood Technology #2647 60.00
Englewood Technology #2696 80.00
$170.12

In light of all that has happened to me with this brand new Acer Inspire laptop I feel that Acer should at least offer to refund me the costs I have incurred in trying to repair this machine. I will be expecting a reply to this complaint.

Sincerely,

Bethany B. Bomar

Bethany B. Bomar
60 Englewood Heights Road
Englewood, FL 34223
[protected]
[protected]@aol.com
cc: Acer America Repairs
Tiger Direct Customer Service

To the manager of Acer,

I’m writing this letter to make a formal complaint about a business named Lake Macquarie Computer Services work on my acer Aspire 3630 on 15th to 22nd November 2006 to debug a virus which I thought was a small problem. My father took my laptop which he bought for me from Retravision Belmont which he purchased on 2nd August 2006 to Lake Macquarie Computer Services to get the virus out of the laptop while I was interstate working. This Lake Macquarie computer services roger, had my acer laptop for 7 days to fix this problem which I thought should only take 2 days at the most to fix.

When I received my laptop it seemed to be in good working order as I don’t use my laptop to do much work on It seem to be o.k. but as time went on, I’m spending a lot more time on my laptop its seems to be very slow and noisy making shutting noises from keyboard and disc drive seems to open up all the time automatically.

So I decided to look at the systems hardware and found that I only have 256mb ram which I thought I should have 512 mb ram. I’m not sure what is missing and what I should have on this system. I believe the work done by this computer consultant is effectively ruining the reputation of acer by leaving my laptop in this working condition. It makes you wonder how many computers that are left in this condition. Being a professional outfit, do you think you could take the appropriate action in relation to this matter. I would greatly appreciate if we could fix this problem.

Yours sincerely,

Belinda McCann
Contact information:
My home phone: [protected]
Mobile no: [protected]

Today i am completed to lodge a complaint against the acer staff in Australia for not responding to my problem responsibly since i bought Acer 3627 in march 2006 from office work in Townsville. Within two months, i bought into notice the problem with my laptop to the customer care service staff of acer in Brisbane. i told them that there is some heating problem with my laptop and it is shutting down by itself because of which i lost lot of unsaved valuable data many times. i asked for the refund of my 1299 $ or a change of laptop. They advised me to deposit my laptop to some local computer repairing centre in Townsville. Even ofice works members did not replied to my problem with responsibility. They told me that they are not concerned with the defects in laptop. It is company who is responsible for it.

The local repairing centre returned my laptop in about 15 days during which i suffered a lot (being a university student, i do most of my work on laptop). I thought that mine problem has been solved but with in a month the problem again reappeared. i again called the Acer customer care service staff and they gave me the address of some other repairing centre in Townsville. But after keeping my laptop for about a week, they told me that there is no problem with laptop. This shows what kind of service acer is giving to customers. when that problem aggravated, i called brisbane office again and they asked me to send my laptop to brisbane repair centre. i did the same and they returned my laptop in a week. initially for a month it worked normally but now since last wo days, it is shutting down again. and i am now completely frustrated with the acer and acer services. i have spent 1299 $ but all in vain. i have never seen such a irresponsible behavior with any other company before. I suppose, Acer is selling defected pieces on the name of warranty. Once warranty is over, its customer who has to suffer. Acer got 1299 $ for 0 $ product. How smart are acer management people?

Gaurav Singhal

Bought an Acer model Aspire 9500 laptop PC fully loaded for more than $1950.00USD in March of 2006. Came with 1 year warranty.

With better than 50% battery the unit died while I was using it on a recent plane flight, I had an isle seat, no one in seat next to me, unit was being used as per the Acer intended use instructions. Sent the laptop to repair facility. Received voice message on cell today by Acer 12/21/2006 that a gooey substance was found inside and I must pay $449.00USD for repair by tomorrow or else.

After many attempts and failures to reach Acer tech repair by phone, (their phone system is a real wonder), I had to call the selling dealer to report the complaint.

Finally Acer called and insisted I pay or else. I made 1 statement: "There was no gooey substance around when the unit failed." and 1 question: "Was there an engineer or something tangible Acer had that proved said gooey substance caused the failure and that this same unidentified substance they found got into the damaged unit before the failure?". This proved too much for the Acer rep. I was placed on hold for 10 minutes, presumably for them to get an answer to my question, but was promptly disconnected after the 10 minutes. Later today Acer calls once again demands money or else all the while completely oblivious to their earlier conversation with me, my response was they fix my laptop as their warranty requires.

Thank you,
Russell Divvens

I bought an aspire 9500 from circuit city for $840 with tax in march of this year. I has worked fine for what I paid for it. Until recently that is. I am now getting a line down the middle of the screen. When I called acer they said to send it in and it take 10 days for the repair. No loaners no nothing. I repair dells, gateways, Toshiba for a living and never had to repair an acer, now I know why. Only their desktops are techs allowed to go on site. They will not allow anyone outside the company to become certified or repair their laptops but they will for their desktops. So until it gets really bad I am dealing with it. Have the time I don't see it anyway.

After much stress over many months now i am still yet to receive a replacement on my acer 19" widescreen monitor.

To cut an increasingly long story short, after a few weeks of using my new Acer monitor it failed to switch on. I gave Acer uk support a phone call, and after trying all things requested during the phone conversation the monitor was booked in for return to repair center.

Once the monitor was collected i was told that acer would call me after they had inspected the fault and then issue me with a new unit.

After 3-4 weeks still no call,i decided to phone them.

After waiting 20 minutes on the phone i finally managed to speak to someone human,they informed me that there was no monitor from me booked in for repair/replacement,as i was asking them who i could contact because there must be some mistake the phone line went dead.

I tryed calling back but was again left frustrated.

Then i decided to email Acer uk and was informed that they would be sending me a replacement as soon as they could find the monitor in there warehouse,and did i remember the courier who collected my unit...
All this from a company who took my monitor,lost my monitor,and 12 emails and 3 phone calls later have not replaced it.
It has been many months now that i have been working on an old 15 crt...Thanks Acer.

I have decided to register my frustrations with the BBC Watchdog programme and i would advise any other unhappy Acer customer to do likewise.

I will also be taking this matter up with the county court this week.

Never have i had so much trouble before with a company when replacing faulty units,

I would advise anyone to be very careful when purchasing anything from Acer and it`s clueless customer serviceless.