Worst Customer Support Ever

Acer has the worst customer support.

This website:
http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/webpage.cfm?siteid=7293&areaid=7&website=AcerPanAm.com/us
does not even give you a contact phone number.

I called Acer Support after finding the number here and they said my product is not supported on the weekend.(!) The said they were level one support and level two support does not work on the weekend. The "supervisor" hung up on me when I asked him for his name. Really, he did. When I called back another support agent said he had a time limit for customers. When I told him the web cam driver THEY PROVIDE does not install because it says it is waiting for a USB camera to be plugged in he told me to do a full system install. Yes, replace my whole system because ONE DRIVER DOES NOT WORK!

I went to the support site for drivers and there is no listing for the Aspire One in the menu:
http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/fo...cerPanAm.com&siteid=7117&areaid=2&formid=3394

I do a search for the acer customer support and I find a DIFFERENT Acer Web Site!
http://us.acer.com/public/page3.do?...=en&ctx3=-1&ctx4=United+States&crc=2550921976
Which actually has the Aspire One listed on it. I click on Driver Download and it brings to to a page that does not have the Aspire One on it! In-freaking-credible.

And on top of that they want to charge me $29 (or $35, I was quoted two different prices) for the recovery CD!

You have been warned, if you buy this product you are largely on your own.

 

I didn't know any company did customer support anymore. My local store supports the 1 year warranty.

 

Damn looks like you are having some shit luck there just download xp from somewhere and use your key if possible this could really frustrate the new to computer users thats for sure

 

I knew Acer support was poor when I bought my One. My mate had a Acer laptop a year ago and swore he woulod never buy Acer again after owning laptop for a few months.

I Just hope I don't have to deal with CS in the future.

 

I have had good results with Acer support and my AA1 is my third Acer. My first was a desktop that had 286 processor and I am still using the case from it because it is such a good case. I also have an Acer Aspire 9300-5005 laptop that works great. I have contacted Acer support several time always with no problem.

 

Sorry to say but based on the way you posted your rant, I can imagine why you got hung up. Under certain circumstances, they are required to hang up.

Yes CS do have time limits (fixed or virtual) for each service call, for any manufacturer. Yes, different classes of products have different service levels. Just look at DELL's different product lines with different support levels (next day exchange, on site, depot..). The expensive lines have platinum service. Cheap $400 PC, no.

Being 1st level support, they are not allowed to provide "intelligent" advice, other then to read the script from their screen. A system restore is actually not that drastic for a simple netbook meant primarily for net surfing. It's certainly faster than a Windows re-install for you as a user.

>> I went to the support site for drivers and there is no listing for the Aspire One in the menu:

That menu certainly has an entry for Aspire One, right after model 9920G. But you were probably too upset to read clearly.

 

They are required to hang up when I ask for their name?

 

I understand how you feel... Same thing goes with mine, except I had to deal with ASUS, and they were so rude!
I can tell you one thing for sure, and why they are so bad is because they only want money, they don't give a god damn (sorry for my language!!) care about what you own, and they don't even care about the company. Acer should just fire all their customer support representatives, they just suck. Get new, better, improved people, qualified, friendly people. Just like apple, you know?

 

I am of the same opinion.

Call any consumer support line with a software/driver problem, and they will tell you to do a system restore. Standard operating procedure. It's what you should have done yourself in the first place anyway, since it would have solved the problem and saved you the phone call. That's if you couldn't fix it yourself with or without the help of the forums here. Personally I would have tried uninstalling the driver and rebooting, that usually works. Whatever.

The last time I called a support line was in late 1999 or 2000 I think, I had a problem with my Sony Clie PDA. It was using the old serial interface and I had managed to flub the driver installation on my w98 PC such that nothing - really nothing - could get it to connect properly. I wasn't prepared to re-install the OS, though I new that would fix it of course. So I make the call.

The polite Indian lady at Tier 1 gets me to reset the PDA the defaults using the little button the back, then gets me to step by step reinstall the sync software and drivers. Of course I'd done all that before I called and it didnt work, but hey, be patient. It took about 45 minutes. When it didn't work I got transferred over to Tier 2 which appeared to be US based. We did the reset and software/driver install thing again. Then we had some fun playing with the device manager in windows, uninstalling the driver and rebooting, and of course I'd done all that before I called and it didnt work, but hey, be patient. That was another 45 minutes. Then I got transferred to Tier 3.

"Hello?"

"Hi, I have a problem with my PDA, I install the software and driver but I can never connect to my PC, it gives me this serial error "....."

"Ok, I want you do do exactly what I tell you. Are you in front of your PC?"

"Yeah."

"We're going to edit your registry keys, alright?"

"Yeah, sure..."

He quickly leads me to this obscure, obscure part of the registry I would never find in a million years and gets me to delete a single key. Reboot and all is well. He quickly ends the call with the air of a man with more pressing things on his mind. I spent less than 3 minutes of his time. Sony wasted over 90 minutes of mine. But a problem I couldn't fix by myself after days of frigging around was fixed.

To this day I remain in awe of that Tier 3 support guy.

I digress. I have four points to make about telephone support, which I would have though were self-evident but apparently some people have yet to learn:

• Don't use it except as a means of last resort.
  Be polite and patient.
  Do exactly what they tell you to do.
  Never argue.