Since writing this post, people have been telling me about their experiences with Acer.

A woman in Vancouver told me recently that she liked the light weight of her Acer Aspire and carried it with her constantly, but was getting the run around trying to get it fixed under the one year warranty.

In Dec. 2009, with almost two months left under the warranty, she told Gary at Anitec Computers on Kingsway in Vancouver that the Acer she had bought there had died. When she bought her Acer, she had been told by the Anitec salesman that if there was ever any problem with it, she could take it to Richmond (a suburb of Vancouver) to get it repaired under the warranty. When her Acer stopped working and she asked for the Richmond address, Anitec told her that Richmond is only for minor problems, that her computer would have to be sent to Ontario and that she would have to pay $35 for Anitec to process the forms and send it out…or she could do it herself. “I wish they’d told me that when they were selling it to me”, she said.

As a “courtesy”, Gary at Anitec contacted the Acer repair place in Ontario for her for free and was told that her warranty had expired. Gary said Acer was going by the manufacturer’s date. He checked the invoice; her warranty had not expired. After delays, Gary said he had straightened everything out with Acer and all she had to do was send the Acer to Ontario. He sent her an email to this effect dated Feb. 9, 2010.

When she later emailed Gary to ask him for the Ontario address, he didn’t give her one but instead emailed her with instructions to call Acer first and get a repair request#. He gave her a 1-408-432-6200 number which she called twice, but a recording said it had been disconnected (although it had at one time been an Acer #, a fact she verified on the internet.) She found a 1-800 # on the Acer.ca website and called that and was given another telephone number which she called and an automated female voice instructed her to type her netbook serial number into her telephone; when she did, the computerized voice politely told her the warranty had expired and hung up. “I was screaming at the walls,” she says.

She called Gary at Anitec and told him that it had been her understanding that he had established contact with Acer in Ontario and her warranty claim had been enacted. He said he had established contact but that she had been required to do the work of activating the warranty before Feb. 20, which had now passed. That was news to her.

Gary was of the opinion that if she contacted Acer and told them that he had been in contact with them well before her warranty expired, they might still respect the warranty.

She found an email address on the Acer.ca website where people can ask questions. She emailed Acer and they responded by informing her that her warranty had expired and asked her a few key questions about what was wrong with the net book. Due to the nature of the email responses, she got the impression that she was communicating with a machine that was simply picking up key words and giving stock answers. But there may have been actual human beings at the other end as well, since each email had a different person’s name at the top of it. Judging from the names, it is possible that the email address was outside North America.

She was informed that ‘failure to boot’ was the problem with her net book and that she could have it repaired for $199. She was also told that if this was not a satisfactory resolution to her case, she could have the decision reviewed. But she saw no email address to use for this appeal. So she used the same email address and told her entire story. Acer then gave her a Service Repair number and told her to send her Acer to 7676 Winston St. in Burnaby, BC (a suburb of Vancouver) for repair.

She took the Skytrain and then a bus to get out to that Burnaby address. The name on the door at 7676 Winston was “Big Tech Inc.”, and under the name was a list of computers they repair: Acer, Gateway, etc. A thirty-something Asian man took her net book. “He was friendly,” she said, “He told me I didn’t have to pick it up; they send it back free of charge.”

When she got home, she found an automated email from Big Tech confirming that her Acer netbook with Service Repair number s 1-65AWH7 had been received for repair. The next day, she got another automated email from Big Tech announcing that her Acer was on it’s way back to her by courier.

When FedEx delivered the Acer to her home, she was delighted to find it had been repaired. Inside the box was a letter notifying her that the keyboard had been replaced as well as the Main board. She was also informed in the letter that as a result of the repairs, the warranty had been extended by three more months.