I ordered a laptop from Gateway in August. I recieved my laptop in September.in October I contacted Gateway to let them know that the pre-installed software for Microsoft was not working. They advised me to contact Microsoft. I have been working with Microsoft since October of last year and they were not able to solve the problem at that time. The other day I was on the laptop registering for school when it cut off. At first I said to myself maybe the battery is loose. When I checked it, it was in tact. I cut the computer back on. The first thing I saw was the Gateway sreen. It never moved off. Five minutes later the Realtek boot screen came up telling me "no operating system found." I contacted Gateway to let them know what the problem was. Like most companies now a days they to have out-sourced employees. Their center is located in India. I talked to four associates in India who kept trying to tell me it was a software issue and kept trying to get me to send my computer to Texas where "it would take 18 days for them to figure out what was wrong or I could purchase a service agreement for $59.99, $129.99, and $199.99" for a software issue that did not exist. At this point I contacted Microsoft via chat online. The representative was more than helpful. She even did a confernce call to Gateway for me. The Gateway rep did not want to hear what the Microsoft rep or I was trying to tell him. After I raised my voice a couple of times he decided to give me what he thought was help. He said, "since your computer is under warranty I can put in a request to send you a new hard drive at no charge to you, but you pay for shipping and handling. You send us your hard drive, and once we get it we will send you a new one." "The second option we will charge your credit card, send you a new hard drive, and remove the charge once we get the faulty one back." I did not understand why I should have to pay for anything when a total of nine representatives from Gateway, including a supervisor and an escalation team member told me it was not my fault it was "faulty hardware" which was covered under warranty. Also why it took Microsoft 2 hours and 29 minutes to tell me what was wrong with my laptop and why Gateway could not figure it out and did not want to believe the rep from Microsoft in a day and a half. I could see if I owed Gateway some money, but the laptop was paid for. They were not willing to come out of their pockets for anything even though it was the companies fault. They were rude, impatient, inconsistant, not to mention their representatives in India were not knowlegable on the companies products or technical support. Basically I have a $900.00 laptop, that is 7 months old, that I have to fix out of my own pocket. I may not even have it by the time I start school. I would not recommend Gateway to anyone based on their warranty agreement, their faulty products, their lack of technical support, or their lack of customer service. I believe that if your going to take jobs from the US and place them in other countries because of cheap labor the least your company can do is make sure the employees you hire have the proper training. I do hope that anyone who has delt with this company or is currently dealing with does not have the same experience I did.
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