Laptop Insurance?

jamtart6

thanks Ice will take a look! are acers good?

Ice_2

jamtart6 wrote: »

thanks Ice will take a look! are acers good?

I, think so,
all my family have them and no complaints so far and none gone wrong so far either.
and most of my friends have them too, thats why I went for them really as I had the heads up on them,

MattLFC

I had an Acer for 4 years. All in all it was a good machine, but had the following problems - I had Acer Advantage with accidental damage cover for £99:

- DVD Writer would not read or write CD's on arrival, was fine with DVD's. Didnt bother me much, but then the keyboard decided to stop working, I sent it in and they picked up on the DVD problem and replaced that.

- When the laptop was returned (about 2 weeks later may I add), the DVD Writer this time worked on CD's (although it would only burn certain brands) but not DVD's. I wasnt losing the laptop for 2 weeks so I gave up on it again.

- A few months later the HDD started making strange noises, sent it in for replacement and they picked up on the DVD Writer faults again. Fair enough, 2 weeks went by and I hadnt got it back (bear in mind the Acer Advantage thing states 5 working days turnaround), so phoned them up on their 50p per minute number, guy tells me that they were awaiting a new DVD Writer as they had none in stock. Another 2 weeks goes by, and yet it still wasnt back. I phone up again and get the same story. Anyway, I actually forgot about the laptop and moved house. I had informed them to send it to my fathers house when I phoned up as I knew I was moving. I had sent it in the beginning of September. Middle of December, get a phonecall from my father, "Hi Matt, a parcel has arrived in your name". Then I remembered the laptop lol. I had to travel down to Hereford to pick it up as thats where my dad lives, and amazingly, they had only fixed the thing 3 days previous. So they had it sitting there for the best part of 3 months or so.

- Anyway, all is well for another 6 months or so, then I travel to Holland, and it gets dropped on the way back. All data is backed up so not to worry. Hard Drive is dead. Send it in for a new one, no problems, got it back to me within 4 days with a new one. No actually, not a new one, a refurbished one. That was 2 years old. Within 2 weeks the stupid thing dies.

- So I send it back in, and they take 3 weeks to fix it, they send it back and its dead on arrival. Another refurb. So it goes back once again, and they sent it back on 3 days, impressive, had major problems with DHELL getting them to deliver it (they said they carded, they didnt, they said I have a white door, its brown the last time I checked). Not Acer's fault, but still a pain in the !!!!. After 4 days they finally deliver it.

- It works for about 2 days and the same thing happens, it dies. I take it out and again, I find its a "quality refurbished product" as it said on a label. !!!!!!, how many times are they going to use refurbished HDD's before they realise they are a waste of money. You can't put data on something you have no trust in. I can't be arsed sending it in again, so I go to PC World and buy my own 120GB drive. Works fine, to this day. Upgraded it to a 250GB, again, still working fine.

- Anyway, before the insurance ran out, I got them to replace the base (was looking a bit tatty) and hard drive. The new HDD is again a refurb so I don't trust it at all, and only ue it for third backups of important things. Its only a 60GB anyway. The last time I sent it in, the queues on the phone were as terrible as ever, 30 minutes at 50p per minute or something silly like that. They did seem to have better procedures looking at the paper work, but they marked the laptop down as in terrible condition, it was practically mint, for a 3 year laptop, it looked less than 6 months old. I suspect they did this incase they broke it however.

I have since sold the laptop, and it is still working fine with the 250GB hard drive in. Personally, although it was cheap and I had my monies worth in the Acer Advantage plan, I would'nt get an Acer with it if you need to use the laptop on a constant basis. Their turnaround times can be diabolical, and their support can be flakey at times. Not to mention you can pay upto £15 just to phone them. The only time to ring is at 9am on the dot just as they turn the switchboard on, otherwise you will pay 50p a minute to wait in a long long queue.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. As I say, they are decent enough laptops, but the after sales support, even though with Acer Advantage you are supposed to become a "priority" customer as they say in brochure, is terrible overall.

MattLFC

Oh and another thing, every occasion they replaced the HDD, the laptop came setup for the Acer Travelmate series as opposed to the Aspire series, and as a result, some of the features did not work, so every time, I had to install the correct version myself.

It was okay a I was installing from an image anyway, but thats hardly the point. The quality control must be shocking, you only have to go into Windows and see the Travelmate background, and then look at the bottom of the screen where it says Aspire 1620 to know its the wrong version of Windows they had put on...

And they also never partitioned the HDD and set it up so the HDD restore option was available; it was there and enabled in the BIOS (think you press F10 at boot) but it could not do anything.

Ice_2

Fn + F10 takes you into the Acer Recovery, so you can re-install your OS or set it back to factory settings.
:rolleyes:
the Bios is Fn + F2

MattLFC

You can't is they havent set the drive up properly. When I first got the laptop, I could, but when I had the HDD changed, they just used the CD's to do it. Fortunatly, in them days, they included the CD's with laptops regardless, so it never bothered me.

But it does show their incompetence when they can't even configure the drive so that it works how it is supposed to when it ships...

And fyi, on my model, you didnt need the Fn key to enter the BIOS or recovery mode, just F2 or F10.

Regardless, I have a new laptop now, not Acer, avoided them like the plague on the basis of their terrible customer support (as I say, the laptops are excellent value for money, just so long as you don't need their customer support).