23 February 2011

Regular readers may remember my pre-Christmas rant about the warranty service from Carphone Warehouse. Well, guess what? I’ve got another bone to pick. This time it’s Acer computers.

A three-year, next business day, on-site warranty from Acer costs £55 (plus vat) and, based on my experiences, fails to deliver.

Yes, you can report a fault to the call centre in India but don’t expect an engineer to arrive next day or any kind of communication as to when the problem might be solved. Faced with a total lack of information, all you can do is keep chasing the call centre – a deeply frustrating and time consuming experience.

To be fair, when the engineer did arrive (after four working days) he fixed the problem within half an hour. It’s just shame that he failed to warn me he was coming so I had to cancel another meeting at short notice to be in the office to let him in.

My point, apart from just getting this off my chest, is this: if auto retailers treated their warranty customers like this, they’d be hounded by the consumer press and accused of all sorts of dubious practice. How come computer manufactures (and mobile phone sellers) can get away with it?

Rant over!

Rupert Saunders

Tags: Acer, warranty