Acer laptop, hard drive interface

acer refuses categorically to replace a machine, they'd rather fix it n times until the guarantee runs out, then if repair number n lasts one week, they'll tell you too bad, the guarantee is over.

I just noticed that after 5 motherboards, that the screws were loose. When they put them together the first time, they put locktite on every screw. But when they change the motherboard 4 times, they never put more on. I just tightened them all and it works a lot better than before. I've been using the external drive, even that stopped working well until I tightened the screws. There are even some screws that dropped out. I'm going to replace them from a screw supplier rather than talk to the acer monkeys again. I believe their efforts to make a think laptop that's inexpensive has left them with a product that is too mechanically flimsy. Maybe some new loctite will change things. I'm going to retry the ide interface now that the screws are tight.

to vmhreha:

Have you looked around to see that there aren't as many complaints on dell and toshiba? I think there are. I think your comment is why they all get away with this. They calculate that it's cheaper to screw a percentage of the clients than to satisfy them, that some people will never be satisfied anyway, and that the ones who insist on complaining and are justified to do so will be seen by the blogging community as hysterical.

We know nothing of their internal structure (these annoying big companies), we can only guess if in Taiwan they really mean to satisfy the customer. There may be a problem of the Taiwan companies having to defend themselves from their own local partners in each country. If this is the case, neither party wants it known. Acer in France is pretty far removed from the day to day operations of Acer Taiwan.

I'd written to Paris and to Taiwan. Maybe the mistake I made was in never sending a certified letter to Taiwan. I wrote 10 emails to them but only got a response the first time. I think they tried to kick some **** there, but that only made the incompetent non-repairs come back to me quicker.

I have the impression that it's possible that when Acer takes out a motherboard and tells you that it was bad and that they put another one in, that both of those motherboards may have already been in several peoples' laptops and that they're either just killing time till the guarantee runs out or honestly think there's a good chance that mbA that didn't work in laptopA may work fine in laptop B.

As for proposing to sell me a 60gig ide drive for 182 euros while mine is still under guarantee, forcing me either to respond yes or no or wait two more weeks (I waited 2 more weeks), it's very difficult to find other ways to see that than, let's say, "theft by deception" or things similar.

Our problem here is that all of these giant companies have seen that it's cheaper to screw us than to satisfy us, because we're not good at getting satisfaction. Unfortunately this shortcoming has caused us to become good at getting screwed.

Our legislators constantly find ways to help these big boys by changing the business environment in a way that helps them avoid competition from us.

Our only solution:

If you can't beat them, join them. If all of the disgruntled laptop user (there may be millions of us, up till now we have no way to count, and should start a site for that) put 100 dollars into a fund, we'd have enough money to start a (hopefully) non-profit company to make our own laptops. We don't need a new model every month like they offer. I want a good laptop and I'll be able to use it for four or five years no problem. I think many of us are the same.

If there's 100,000 unhappy laptop users putting in 100 dollars, I think we could go to India and make a pretty darn good product.

What I'd like to see would be a bigger case with a modular design that holds off the shelf motherboards and has a screen with a vga connector. Like a brief case. It could even have space in there to hold your papers between the keyboard and the screen, so would actually function like a brief case.

And there'd be no part in there you couldn't replace yourself in five minutes, even the noobs.

The non-profit part is to keep us from becoming like them and also because we can avoid the slanted tax system that favors the big ones over us.

Are you all ready?