Acer Rant Chapter 1

I know that I have been remiss in writing on my blog!  But now I have something I need to write down so I have it recorded and I may as well share it here....

My IBM Thinkpad is pooching out.  No worries we bought a used replacement.  Didn't realize that the company that we had relied on for so long was actuallyclosing a week or so after we bought it.  They unloaded a Dell on us thta did not have enough memory.  I   I was ready to scrap it if memory would cost to much but C went ahead.  Well the computer worked like a dream with the new memory - though the overall design is pretty cheap compared to the Thinkpad.

Well - it just pooched out less than a week later.  The hard drive has crashed and I don't think there is any point in even doing more diagnostics then what I have done.  So we are going to try to at least recover the price of the memory from the tech - we have given him enough business in the past.  In the meantime I see an ACER netbook on sale at Best Buy online.

Now I usually walk away from these deals because I figure they are loss leaders - they won't have any and they will try to upsell me.  But it looked like a good deal and I checked around the Internet and the overall feedback was generally good.  We need easy access to email and Internet and something to take notes on.  Then we can reinvest in getting the old desktop up to snuff.

It comes today and C plugs it in.

It automatically goes into something called eRecovery.  This doesn't make sense to me but I'm not too up on these things.  An hour later it is stuck on a file and not doing anything.  I reboot - same thing again.

I go online on the rickety desktop and manage to register the netbook so I can call customer service and see what is up.  You know where this is going -

The customer service voice mail is infuriating.  "She" keeps asking me for a Serial Number that is located on the "label".  I keep giving it to her but she doesn't like it.  Its only supposed to be 11 numbers and mine is much longer.  I repeat "Operator" in varying tones of anger but "she" refuses.  She will not let me talk to an operator as there is a charge to speak to customer service if I do not have a SN.  I can call the other 1-800 line and speak to a service representative for a fee.  Yah, right.  I call her a bitch - pissed that I'm calling a computer anything and hang up.

After taking the battery out of the netbook I find a SNID number which I can also use.  I call "her" back.  She recognizes my phone number and does away with the small talk except to ask me for the SN/SNID.  Finally!  I am put through to a customer service agent.