Don't buy Acer for Customer Service

My Acer Aspire was part of the massive recall for a potentially hazardous wiring problem. The company did not notify me. I contacted them and arranged to ship it back. Despite this not being my fault, they used FedEx Ground, instead of overnight, thus taking my laptop out of service for a week.

The company sent me three pages of generic shipping and repair information that was poorly organized. The company failed to verify my preferred shipping address and sent it to my home instead of my work. I couldn't be home because I was at work. I tried to get the address changed, but the company representative didn't understand the terms of their contract, wasting more valuable time. I couldn't pick it up from FedEx because the nearest Ground distribution center is two hours drive away.

Lucky, FedEx has terrific customer service and was able to get it re-routed to me.

Then I opened the box to find my computer bouncing around in inadequate packaging. They had my original manufacturer's box, but apparently that was too much trouble for them to repack it in and they threw it away. After a number of complaints to corporate management, the sales rep called me back, said I'd simply failed to understand the instructions sent to me, and the laptop was packed loosely and that they intentionally packed it so that it would bounce around.

Two weeks ago, I would have encouraged anyone to buy an Acer computer. It seems to have very good battery life, and I hadn't had any problems with it. Now, I would discourage the purchase of an Acer product, because they don't offer good customer support when things go wrong, even if it's their own shoddy workmanship that caused the problem in the first place.

I re-wrote their repair information sheet for them, too. I wanted them to see how their convoluted instruction sheet could be made simpler. They have not responded, which only reinforces that they really don't care about making things easier for their customers. They just want to blame them when it's their communications strategy that's at fault.