Awful Experience with Acer

It all started out when I saw a deal on Amazon for an Aspire S 13. An ultrabook with an Intel Core i7, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 1080p IPS Touchscreen LCD for only $699 was practically too good to be true, and I’m not kidding, it really was.The first two months went really smooth. That was until the IPS Panel on the model started to develop a defect, in which glitched gray lines would spew all over the LCD along with the occasional flicker. I suspected the T-CON chip on the display was at fault as the panel itself took no damage as far as I knew. Luckily, Acer and their repair center fixed the issue for me relatively quickly, so I was satisfied.There was a little grief to this story too. I was charging the laptop one night since the laptop was still partially usable. At around 3AM, I felt a sharp pain on my right arm, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a mass of electrical sparks spewing out of the charging port. I jolted up, panicked, and yanked the power cord out of the laptop. It broke as a result. However, Acer sent me a new AC Adapter upon knowing this, and even though I didn’t get any apology, I was still happy with this.However, after a few weeks, I noticed that half of the screws were missing on the bottom of the laptop. Needless to say, I was pretty shocked. I contacted Acer again via their live chat system, and the rep told me to ship the laptop to the service center again to replace the screws. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to pay shipping just so I could have my screws replaced, so I declined the offer. Eventually, screws kept falling out, suspected that the repair center didn’t fasten the screws properly. Something to note is that the bottom padding on the laptop loosened and fell out as well, smearing what looked like some cheap Elmer’s School Glue all over the bottom of the laptop.Fast forward to a month later, while I was carrying the laptop, the back cover detached from the system, and both pieces fell to the ground, resulting in damage.I contacted Acer again on this matter, in which the repair agent told me that they’d fix my laptop under the standard warranty agreement. I proceeded.Fast forward to a week after shipping the device, I get absolutely no new information on what was going on with my laptop. I check the status of my repair, and to my surprise, it displayed “Waiting for Customer Approval”, which was weird that they’d need a last confirmation to continue. Therefore, contacting Acer again, I asked what was going on, and they had informed me that the repair wasn’t covered under warranty, and that I had to pay $389 USD (which is around $500 CAD) to repair it, which would add up to nearly $570 if you include tax. That much to repair a few dents and scratches. Way to go Acer!So I cancelled the repair and had my laptop sent back to me.Now about a month later, my laptop freezes while I’m replying to a post on Twitter. Since I couldn’t get any response from the device, I decided to force shut the laptop. When I tried to power the system back on, I was greeted (or should I say not greeted) to a completely black screen (not even the backlight was illuminating). I tried a battery pinhole reset, connecting to an external monitor, attempt boot to the BIOS, but nothing worked.I contacted Acer again on this matter, and all jokes aside, told me to do a refresh. A refresh when I couldn’t even reach POST on my laptop. I informed the rep that I couldn’t even start up the device, so he scheduled another repair case for me.Before I sent the device to the service center, I examined the system in an attempt to diagnose the issue myself. I examined the behavior of the laptop when I attempted to power the device on, which seemed to cycle like this. Device powers on, Power LED illuminates blue color, fan gradually gets louder to a point where it actually freaks you out that this hell machine might explode. I examined the mainboard, and although I can’t confirm this, I came to a conclusion that the soldering that connected the CPU to the mainboard was damaged, since the mainboard did show signs of life, just not functionality. After sending the model to the service center, they repaired the system for me free of charge. Shoutout to Acer chat assistant ‘Oscar C.’ for helping me on the way.Fast forward to not even a week after receiving the device, while I was closing the lid of the laptop, I heard a crack, in which I found out the top cover of the laptop was cracked due to the hinge. Worst part was at the time, Acer would do nothing for me since it was “physical damage caused by abuse” as Acer likes to word it.Now, scheduling a repair case with Acer, I explained pretty much explained everything I wrote in this blog, literally crying. I usually don’t even cry about materialistic things like this, but I needed the laptop for school work, and I invested way too much money on this laptop to be able to afford another one. Needless to say, I opened a repair case, and rage-wrote a… let’s call it a letter to Acer. I probably sounded really stupid as I wasn’t in the right state of mind.A day later, I check the repair case again, only to find out that they rejected and closed the case.That was the last straw for me.At the moment, am I angry? No. Am I sad? A little. I’m mostly just disappointed. I’m disappointed at the quality of my laptop, and the kind of support I am receiving from Acer. Unless they can make it up to me regarding this issue, I’m avoiding their products like the plague when I get my next laptop.Update: I was told I could remove the stickers on the laptop. I really was. I contacted Acer asking if I could remove the stickers on the top and bottom of the laptop containing the labels of the features of the device, and the ones that contained the model and serial numbers. Now I’m being told that I just voided the warranty. I am so done… I am DONE!Update: I am currently being contacted by someone at Acer, but I wasn’t able to get in touch with them just yet as I wasn’t home. I will update when I do. I hope this will turn out for the better. via /r/technology http://ift.tt/2sFGwnC