Customer service - NOT!

Some of you might have been wondering why we haven't written any new blog posts in a while. The reason is that my laptop broke down just after Christmas. Suddenly when I tried to turn it on, the only signs of life emanating from it were the whirling sound of the fan and the power indicator turning green. Otherwise it was just about as alive and dynamic as a cold rock.

Now, after three weeks of battling with Acer Support, the laptop is up and running as normal again. No thanks to Acer's support service though; after my initial contact and their decision to have it picked up for service by a courier, I didn't hear anything from them for weeks. Last week followed by an angry enquiry by me wondering what the hell is happening, some support dude woke up and actually told me he'd look into it.

Yesterday when still no courier had contacted me I got tired of waiting and decided to do some googling. Turned out other people were having the same issue with their Aspire Ones too, and it wasn't a hardware malfunction as I had thought. Instructions on how to fix the problem were not hard to find, so after buying a USB memory stick and flashing the BIOS, the laptop worked like a charm again with all data intact!

The ironic thing is, that an hour later the courier (finally) appeared on my doorstep, ready to drive the unit to the airport to be shipped to Acer's repair facility in Sydney.

I'm glad I dodged that bullet.