So guys, some advice/insights here would be invaluable. I bought an budget Acer laptop (i3) for £360 before Christmas. Within 2 months the harddrive failed and I sent it to be repaired by warranty, but due to the floods in Thailand, the repair has been delayed indefinitely. After waiting for 2 months and no ETA from Acer, I negotiated a refund with Play.com where I bought it. However upon demanding my borked laptop back, Acer has authorised a replacement. So here I am with two options. While a replacement is the simplest solution, two months before failure doesn't fill me with optimism, so I am leaning towards a refund which will take longer and more posting of parcels. Any opinions? I swore to avoid Acer in all future purchases....
I'd personally go for the refund, unless you can get Acer to confirm precicely what you'll be sent in replacement - then weigh up what's more valuable.
2 months? what a joke get a refund and don't touch Acer with a barge pole if thats how they deal with rma's! bet they had plenty of hard drives to make new lappies!
Thanks folks. I've been thinking refund over an identical replacement too, so it's nice to have affirmation. For one of the largest sellers of laptops, I am certainly disappointed. HP and Asus laptop from here on methinks.
Just to give a converse opinion : now I agree with the bit re: 2 months, is a bit mickey taking, but yes there is a slight mitigating circumstance. But to blame Acer solely for something made by another company is also a bit mickey taking too, namely the hard drive. I've been using Acer laptops for 6-7+ years, both my fiancee and me, I've had no problems at all save for having to replace a single hard drive that was 3+ years old out of the half dozen or so laptops I've bought from them. With that hard drive I understood that hard drives can die if not treated properly, i.e. my fiancee not always being careful who came near it, i.e. exuberant niece and nephew, and cooking the thing by leaving it on 24/7 with no cooler under it, in fact it wasn't dead when removed, just clicking slightly, so headed the problem off before it died. Unfortunately sometimes things fail, but my 2p worth is that Acer make good laptops, and unfortunately you had a lemon. I would suggest from my experience that if you get a replacement, ideally NEW, and look after it it'll last a sufficient amount of time. HTH Uerseya
Unprovoked failure at just 2 months isn't great on the spectrum of reliability though. I'm not expecting a budget laptop to survive being dropped (though my HP laptop has done so multiple times to my amazement) but that laptop hadn't even had to contend with bicuit crumbs (Bios options weren't great either). So yes, I agree that Acer isn't entirely at fault by fitting a lemon of a drive, but after being screwed around by their repair centre; first being told it was out of warranty, multiple irate phone calls to the repair centre, I've had enough. Once bitten, twice shy, and it'll take some convincing for me to buy another Acer laptop.
Hey, at least it wasn't a Toshiba. They lost a whole UPS consignment of laptops on their way back from the repair centre in the EU when a depot / van caught fire! Our thinking is it was to do with either a laptop having been left on standby during shipping which resumed to enter Hibernate but overheated, or someone had an old Sony cell based battery pack that wasn't replaced under the battery replacement program. Still, atleast Tosh had a darn good reason for not returning those notebooks to customers... Acer don't really in this instance. Guess it's a refund then. Good luck OP!
i still have an acer that is over five years old, and still going strong, i also have a new acer which is now a yr old, and working fine. like everything that is mass produced, you get a couple of lemons, you have been unlucky and got a lemon, there is no saying that the replacement wont last for 2 months, or 5 years. give them a chance to redeem themselves.
Its not the fact he got a lemon that is the problem its the fact he has to wait 2 months for a simple hard drive repair. All the while his laptop depreciates. That's shocking tbh.
Well, it's on its way back to me (unfixed) and I'm going to return it for a refund. Oddly enough, the repair center is only 30 miles away... but UPS sent it to the depot in Dublin ¬_¬. I may have been a bit hasty to tar all Acer laptops with the same brush and I will wait before exalting budget machines from other manufacturers... but this chapter of the saga will hopefully end soon with a bright new beginning with another laptop. Thanks again for all the input folks
given that there is a shortage of harddrives 2 months isn't all that bad, but they should have made this clear, or offered a replacement machine,or refund, you can insist on this with the reseller anyway under the sales of goods act.
