Acer service is just poor

Bought my Acer Travelmater 3280 in 2006, warranty period of 3 years, ending in March 2009.

Starting 2007, I keep having problem whenever I tried to play games. The screen just freezes in the middle of the games and I have to shut down and restart. The windows would then report possible corruption in the HDD and I have to wait for it to finish scanning unless I skip it. It does not happen when I do browsing and other stuff, just with games. I went to fix and voila, they change the fans on the spot (this is a good time where such service is still there). Unfortunately, I never played games for soooo long that I thought it's fine.

In 2008, I played RTK IX and I realized that the same problem re occur. The screen will freeze and same old issues. Went back to them, luckily still warranty. Given them the laptop and waited for nearly a week for it to be fixed. Thought it's a display card problem and they replaced.... the motherboard. Stupidly, I never played the game anymore so I can't test the repair, can I?

Now... recently I started playing Star Trek Armada II and Star Trek Legacy. Guess what... same old issues. But now I realize the problem.. for Star Trek Legacy, when I set the setting to 800 x 600 screen resolution and 2 x aliasing, I have 1 in 10 chances of freezing. Any better setting = 100% chance of freezing. Amazing thing is that Armada is from 2001. So, there is in no way normal ATI Radeon X1400 can fail to perform. Not in my case though. Sadly, I thought I should just stop playing, after all it's beyond warranty. But then, the screen starts blanking off (fading) for few seconds and then returning to normal... and two nights ago, I can't start the laptop. Perfect.... the warranty is off in March. They really count and probably create the high probability of laptop dead after warranty. What irates me simply is that the main issues is the same old issues they NEVER manage to fix it for me. They told me I have to bring it back within a MONTH to get the claim. Guess what, the terms in the letter I sign actually says 90 days, so the service guy does not even say the same thing as the letter! And in my case, it's a random happening and only when I play games. How the heck such a 90 days term will work in my case? I forces myself to play games for 90 days? Yeah right....

The basic issue is still the same and no matter what I would think a reasonable manufacturer would consider that into their costing and warranty. But for ACER, at least in Singapore, it just doesn't work. Worse is the fact that the system does OVERHEAT all the times. It's well known with ACER laptop and it's really my fault not to read the reviews before buying it.

I decided that it is just not worth it. After this repair, provided it's not so expensive, I won't return for the next repair. And I am very sure I WILL NOT BUY ANY MORE ACER.

Acer just does not seem to be keen in cultivating good customer experience, provide crappy service and you just have to be without your computer for few days (or a week) for them to repair. Unless of course, you like being without it or abstaining from computer.