Acer Laptop died, less than 2yrs old

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elphesadente

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As the title says....my laptop died the other day and whilst most of the data was backed up, I did get a friend who works in the business to see if he could retrieve any data and see why it happened?

Data was able to transfer to a nother hard drive and he sai it looks like the motherboard has malfunctioned.

He mentioned that whilst consumers 'believe' they have 12 months warranty for most items bought from a shop (bought from Curry's by the way), he says that with electrical equipment, there is a 6 year warranty in place. Does anyone else know this?

He said the 1st course of action would be to go back to the shop. It will be a bit of a fight, but he said that's probably the best avenue. Then, look at insurance.

I'm about to start looking myself on the the web, but does any kind folk out there have any tips / pointers etc before I go in asking for the manager, armed with valuable 'sale of goos act' information?

Thank you for any help.

p.s. am I likely to come against some invalidation of warranty now that my friend has opened the laptop up, bearing in mind I needed that data NOW, rather than 1 month down the line...thanks.
 
Pretty much screwed your warranty claim by opening the box of tricks as they will claim you caused the damage when you did that.
 
simonw said:
Pretty much screwed your warranty claim by opening the box of tricks as they will claim you caused the damage when you did that.
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Really? That bad?

No leg to stand on saying I needed the data asap? Thanks for coming back
 
elphesadente said:
Really? That bad?

No leg to stand on saying I needed the data asap? Thanks for coming back
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Well you can try but I think you have made the fight tougher for yourself. Depends how much time and effort you want to put into it and how visible the signs are that you took it apart..
 
When you say "opened it up" do you just mean he took the hard drive out or did he actually take the back off?
 
Flash In The Pan said:
When you say "opened it up" do you just mean he took the hard drive out or did he actually take the back off?
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He's more than a friend...he owns an IT Support Company and this is bread and butter for him. It's not some spotty kid in a back bedroom!

Anyway, he took the back off so I could see all the components / fan / electronics / some copper wiring and the hard drive. I don't think he could have got to the hard drive without performing this action.
 
I would be very surprised if you got any joy from the supplier in the circumstances, I would have thought more understanding from Acer UK.
 
You should have contacted acer support/ the retailer first. Think you have no chance now as there is no way of proving that your computing friend didn't cause the motherboard failure.

You could have stressed to them the need to get at the data but then again why wasn't all of it backed up if it was so vitally important?? If you have to have access to it then all of it needs backing up so you only lose a day's worth for example.

Just pay for him to repair it and see if acer might contribute as a gesture of good will. Think that might be the best you can hope for under the circumstances.

The length of time something should last depends a lot on what the price was paid and how it compares to others. If it was the cheapest one going and it was having full on daily business use then 2 years might be considered on the edge of reasonable. If it were a top range expensive laptop then you'd expect more than 2 years use.. It's not straightforward.
 
incidentally the manufacturer wont care about your data. if you send a machine off for warranty work theyll always have a clause about backing up your data first as theyll generally replace and/or reinstall.
 
elphesadente said:
He's more than a friend...he owns an IT Support Company and this is bread and butter for him. It's not some spotty kid in a back bedroom!

Anyway, he took the back off so I could see all the components / fan / electronics / some copper wiring and the hard drive. I don't think he could have got to the hard drive without performing this action.
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You don't need to take the back off to remove a hard drive, it's under a separate cover. When one of my Acer laptops went back under warranty I swapped the drive over with the smaller one from another one and they didn't say anything about it.
 
A friend of mine had his Acer laptop fail after 18 months and it turned out to be the mother board, Acer didn't want to know and charged him over £250 for the repair.

He got the money back by going to a small claims court stating that it would be expected to last a lot longer than 18months, this took a few months to resolve though.
 
gramps said:
I would be very surprised if you got any joy from the supplier in the circumstances, I would have thought more understanding from Acer UK.
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Thanks. On Acer UK website, it says any notebook bought from PC World, Currys, Dixons, then it's the store where you bought it from that 'supports' any problems.
 
elphesadente said:
He's more than a friend...he owns an IT Support Company and this is bread and butter for him. It's not some spotty kid in a back bedroom!

Anyway, he took the back off so I could see all the components / fan / electronics / some copper wiring and the hard drive. I don't think he could have got to the hard drive without performing this action.
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moral of the story is don't buy acer......they are unreliable ,was the advice given by my computer savvy friend
 
Carlos68 said:
A friend of mine had his Acer laptop fail after 18 months and it turned out to be the mother board, Acer didn't want to know and charged him over £250 for the repair.

He got the money back by going to a small claims court stating that it would be expected to last a lot longer than 18months, this took a few months to resolve though.
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Thanks. I'll bear that in mind.
 
bobtee said:
moral of the story is don't buy acer......they are unreliable ,was the advice given by my computer savvy friend
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Yeah my 3 Acer laptops that have been running flawlessly for the last 2-5 years are a right PITA.
:wave:
 
Acer has been brilliant for me.
 
bobtee said:
moral of the story is don't buy acer......they are unreliable ,was the advice given by my computer savvy friend
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You could say that about any brand, theres always good and bad units. My dads Acer has been chugging along for 3-4 years without any hassle.

My friend has had 3 Sony Vaios, all had issues within a year.
 
I have some toshiba lap tops that we still use running dos software and they are 20 years old
 
Acer was appalling for me too. Failed at 15 months and they did not want to know at all !!

Amongst the worst customer service operatives I've ever encountered !

Thankfully Tesco stepped up to the plate and sorted it.
 
elphesadente said:
He mentioned that whilst consumers 'believe' they have 12 months warranty for most items bought from a shop (bought from Curry's by the way), he says that with electrical equipment, there is a 6 year warranty in place. Does anyone else know this?
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Can you question him further on this, I've been in the IT Support and repair business for the last 9 years and never have heard anything remotely similar to this claim.

As far as Acer being unreliable, I work with the evidence only. Whilst there are many thousands of happy Acer users, the pile of failed BER (Beyond Economical Repair) Acer laptops in my shop is substantially higher than any other brand.

The brand which fail the least appears to be ASUS.

Good luck with your out of warranty support.
 
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