I bought an Acer Aspire One Netbook computer. A very good computer - until it broke after 3 months of using it. It just wouldn't boot up. So - I went to contact customer service. Now - NOTHING in Acer's materials that they supply when you buy the computer contains a phone number to reach them. NOTHING.in fact, if you go to there website for tech support online (which is also terrible) - you can't find a phone number there either! They purposely hide it! I'm not making this up either - it really can't be found. I found it by googling for it online - and it turns out that a PC Magazine reviewer had been so kind as to post it online after also finding it impossible to find. [It's 800-816-2237 by the way.]
When you call it's a good 5-10 minutes of getting through to someone through a maze of entering serial numbers for your machine. When I finally got through, indeed I had a problem that required sending the machine back. At first though, at my expense, I was told to go to Geek Squad or somewhere like that (cost me $65) because Acer would not save or get my data off my hard drive - once I sent the computer back it would likely come back with a reformatted hard drive. So I did that. And then I was told to ship the computer, at my own expense to their repair facility. I'll remind you again that this computer is under warranty and is 3 months old.
So I send it in, and they keep it for almost two weeks before it is sent back to me. During that time there is no way to know its status or when it might be returned to me.
And when it comes back - I turn it on - and again it doesn't boot up. Just doesn't work. So I call in AGAIN - and am told to send the computer back in AGAIN to them. This time ACER will spring for the cheapest possible (3 day ground Fed Ex Shipping) return shipping - BUT they make it very difficult because instead of providing a Fed Ex Billing number or a shipping label - they provide something called a "Fed Ex Drop Off #" which only authorized Kinko Fedex or actual Fed Ex branch people know what to do with. It's used so infrequently if you call Fed Ex (which I did) they don't know what it is either. AND the Acer reps on the phone don't tell you this - so if you go to a regular Fed Ex location (like a Mail Box etc.), which I did, everyone is confused until on my own I figure this out by calling into Acer support yet again. Oh - and Acer support is run by a separate company that won't identify itself - it's not even ACER. And if you send in your computer AGAIN as I did they don't even expedite the repair - you go into the same queue as first time repairs. So now my machine is on its 3-day return trip to Acer - and we'll see what happens when I get it back in another two weeks. I'm already out $65 $11 for my original shipping to them - and this is on a $380 machine. This is the worst customer experience I've had in my life and I would highly recommend that you do not buy the Acer Aspire One - unless you believe nothing will ever go wrong.
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