Recent experiences with Acer Technical Support – resolved!

UPDATE - 20TH FEBRUARY 2009

I am delighted to report that I today received a phone call from Acer Escalations Department. I received an apology from a very nice lady, a goodwill refund for the purchase price of the external DVD drive I needed to buy to do the system restore on tthe A0110 16GB SSD to factory default, and they are looking into the issues I raised with them - so a happy ending! Thank you, Acer!

So most of this (below) in now irrelevant:

At about the same time, I bought an Acer Aspire One A110 (Windows XP® Home, 1GB RAM, 16GB SSD, LU.S020B.008), and an HP 114 iPAQ Classic PDA. The Aspire One cost £239.43 from Simply Acer, while the little HP iPAQ PDA was £165.53 from TotalPDA.
One might guess that the support for a full Windows XP Acer netbook would be better than for a PDA, in view of the difference in price.

Both machines went wrong almost at once and had to be restored to the factory defaults.

The first problem I encountered with the Acer Aspire One A110 was that it came with the wrong user manual. The manual that was supplied referred to the HDD versions only. It said: (p 11): ‘While the Acer Logo is showing, press <Alt> + <F10> at the same time to enter the recovery process.’
This didn’t work – I tried several times, and also tried while the Acer Tech Support person was on the phone, and he agreed with me that these were the wrong instructions as regards Acer eRecovery for this (16 SSD NAND) machine, as the next line (p. 12) of the user guide says: ‘Important! This feature occupies 15 GB in a hidden partition on your hard disk.’ As the machine only has a 16GB SSD drive – this is obviously the user guide that applies to Aspire Ones with conventional 120 GB or 160 GB HDDs – so this machine had definitely come with the wrong user guide.

It was also supplied with 2 recovery DVDs - Acer System DVD and a Windows XP DVD. These were impossible to use without buying or borrowing an external DVD drive.

The Acer Tech Support person on the phone tried to talk me through copying the recovery programs onto a 4GB memory stick – but it did not work. He then said that the 16GB machine was new to him as well, and the only thing he could suggest was to buy an external DVD drive or write to the Acer Escalations Dept. in Plymouth.

At this point I had had the Aspire One A110 for less than a week.

I wrote to the Acer Escalations Dept. ‘Infoteam’ in Plymouth, and had to wait another week before I got a reply – in writing – nobody bothered to phone me to discuss the problems I was having.

The letter I received from the Acer ‘Escalations Case Officer’ said as follows: ‘...the only way to perform a recovery is by purchasing or lending (sic – she meant ‘borrowing’) an external DVD drive. As a warranty repair we can only offer you to have the product returned to our repair centre to have a recovery but there is a charge of £64.48p.’

So, let’s get this straight – I paid £239.43 for an Acer Aspire One which supposedly has a one year manufacturers’ warranty. The unit went wrong immediately, the first time I switched it on out of the box, and I needed to do a system recovery to factory default settings. I was unable to do this, because the machine was sent with the wrong user manual and with recovery DVDs which couldn’t be copied onto a memory stick and therefore the onus was on me, the customer, to buy an external DVD drive or send it back to Acer, where they would deign to perform a recovery, at the cost of £64.48 to myself, the poor customer.

What I actually did was to buy an external DVD drive for £34.74, and then boot the system off the recovery DVD to perform a system recovery to default factory settings. After the first time I did this, the machine was still hanging for minutes on end, so I performed a second recovery to factory defaults. The A110 now seems to be okay for the time being, but I have completely lost faith in the 16GB SSD version. I suggested to Acer that I would prefer to exchange the A110 for an AOA 150 with a conventional HDD, and offered to pay the difference in price. No dice. The best they would do was charge me £64.48 and send back my A110, if it was repairable. A few days ago, determined not to be put off the Aspire One by the response of one 'bad egg' in the Escalations Department, I purchased a new 160GB, 1GB RAM version (AOA 150) of the Acer Aspire One for myself, and I am so far very pleased with it.

As far as I am concerned, the A110 as supplied to me, with the wrong user manual and no way of recovering the system (without buying an external DVD drive) was ‘not fit for purpose’. Why don’t Acer supply the eRecovery program on a memory stick, to go with the SSD drive version? A suitable memory stick would cost about £10. What is the point of supplying the recovery DVDs when they cannot be used without an additional purchase of an external DVD drive?

As for the attitude of my ‘Escalations Case Officer’, she deserves to be kicked all round the ‘Infoteam’ Escalations office by Acer UK’s senior management.

And what about Hewlett-Packard and my HP iPAQ 114? When I telephoned them and said it was impossible to launch a new document in Word Mobile or to do a system recovery, they sent a UPS van the next day to collect the unit – at NO COST to myself – compare that with Acer’s £64.48 charge to perform a system recovery on an Acer Aspire One which was only a week old!

Even the retailer, Simply Acer, would have done better than this - they agreed to have the A110 back and exchange it for an A0150 if I paid for the collection, a £35 re-stocking fee, and the difference in price between the two units.

(This concludes my original posting,which may still be of interest. I have now done the system restore as described above with the external DVD drive I bought, and the A0110 is okay now.)

 

Re: Recent experiences with Acer Technical Support – abysmal!

You never mentioned or described the problem with your AAO110 netbook that lead to a need to "recover" and restore factory default settings.

As for "copying files to a 4 GB USB drive from the DVD", that should work. All you have to do is insert the DVD into your DVD drive on a desktop, open the CD, and copy all of the contents to a FAT32 formatted 4 GB USB flash drive. Then insert the flash drive into your netbook, reboot/start up the machine, and press F12 repeatedly until the boot selection menu comes up. Then select the USB drive and boot from it. The rest is pretty self-explanatory.

 

Re: Recent experiences with Acer Technical Support – abysmal!

Hi Acreo,

On taking the A110 out of the box, it hung immediately on switching on and first boot-up, when it began installing the Acer programs/files. It hung on the first item. I am talking about 10 or 15 MINUTES - even for a 16GB SSD that can't be normal. It then hung again when I tried to switch it off.

The unit was then very (VERY) slow, until I had done two system restores, after which it seems okay.

It was NOT possible to get the system restore software onto a 4 GB memory stick. The Acer tech. support person talked me through this, and we did it carefully - it simply doesn't work with this unit. Do you have experience of the A110 with the 16GB SSD and 1 GB of RAM? It is impossible to put the recovery program on a memory stick. The Acer Tech guy agreed with me on this - and he told me that I only had two choices - 1) buy an external DVD drive to run the DVD recovery disk from, or b) contact the Acer Escalations Dept.

Initially I did the latter - they were completely useless and hopeless, and I think it is ridiculous that the Escalations Dept. can only be contacted by snail mail, not by telephone or email. They also only reply by post. Their replies were useless and unhelpful. They have made no attempt to contact me to discuss any of this by telephone or email, even after I faxed them and asked for the name and postal address of the Acer UK C.E.O. (which they still haven't provided).

I have experience of Dell, HP and Samsung Customer Support and Technical Support, and ALL have been more helpful than Acer. Acer's after-sales support & technical support are simply a disgrace.

Fortunately I managed to sort out my A110 for myself, by buying an external DVD drive, performing two system restores, and deleting all the bloatware. It cost me £34 to buy the external DVD drive.

The best that the Acer Escalations Dept. could offer was to say that they would charge me £64 to restore the unit to the factory defaults. This was when the A110 was ONE WEEK old. The so-called 'one year warranty' from Acer is not worth the paper it is written on.

I also have an Aspire One A150 with 160 GB HDD and 1 GB RAM, and this is generally a much better unit, apart from the noisy fan.

Even wih this unit I have had to perform a system restore to factory defaults, as the fan would not shut down and continued running after putting the unit into 'system standby' or 'hibernation' modes - it was necessary to hold down the on/off switch for five seconds to shut it down.

Thus, wih both the Aspire One 110 with the 16GB SSD drive and the A150 with 160GB HDD I have had to do system restores to factory settings within ONE WEEK of the units arriving.

I have used many different desktop and laptop computers over 25 years as a professional in the ICT business, and I have NEVER had to do system restores on any previous PCs. (Perhaps I have just been lucky!) They were mainly Dells and Samsungs. This is my first and last experience of Acer, as I would never buy another Acer PC.

Both my two Aspire Ones are running okay now - no thanks to Acer Tech. Support. I sorted them out myself. God help me if anything serious went wrong with them while they are under the one year (completely useless) warranty - as clearly I could expect no help or support from Acer.

When I was looking at netbooks, I nearly bought a Samsung NC10 - I wish I'd done so now.

Ironically, I actually DO like the Aspire One, and I think basically it is a good little netbook - but my goodness, Acer need a major shake-up of their Customer Service, Technical Support, Escalations and Complaints Departments. My advice is buy a Samsung NC10 until Acer sort themselves out.