Bad service, bad product quality

On the lookout for a decent laptop early in 2018, I happened upon an Acer ES1-433-54XN (i5) on sale at the Montegeau Makro branch, Cape Town. The laptop's specifications were impressive and seemed to make for a good deal, so I bought it. However, standard, it came with only a 6 month warranty, which, I was informed by Makro, could be upgraded to a year's warranty for an additional R1000. This says quite a bit about Acer's own faith in this particular model, and I should have reconsidered right away. Unfortunately, my misplaced trust in Acer lulled me into thinking that everything would be fine. Alas...

From the moment I switched the laptop on, it performed poorly - taking an inordinate amount of time to start up, even with no additional software installed. Under the plastic exterior, I could hear the processor laboring and struggling with even basic installed software such as MS office and anti-virus. The laptop would often stall upon opening programmes and had a hard time of running firefox. This should not be the case with an i5 processor.

As I didn't have the time immediately to address the problem, I struggled onward with the substandard machine. Soon, however, the laptop started to switch off randomly on its own. I lost much work because of this, and had to spend many hours redoing things because of this.

As I work as a lecturer, I had a window in January 2019 during which I could go without a computer and so decided to hand in the machine for assessment and what I had thought would be replacement of the machine by Acer. After some weeks, I received the same machine, supposedly fitted with new parts and running smoothly. This, however, was not the case. Although the random powerings-down had been sorted out, the machine still took forever during start-up and the opening of basic programmes, often stalling altogether.

I am quite busy and only now got around to contacting Acer about this. I explained the situation to them, and requested that I be given a new machine of a different model, my argument being that my current laptop has cost me countless hours in work and admin and, for the bad quality and inconvenience, that it should thus be replaced (as it should have the first time around).

Now, however, Acer is stating that the warranty has expired. One would imagine that the warranty would be renewed after a repair, especially as some of the hardware was replaced (or does Acer have so little faith in their own products that they can't even give a warranty on the repair job?).

I feel as though a reputable company should be trying to ensure customer satisfaction. Instead, it seems that they don't care much for this these days - Acer included.

I hope that Acer will prove me wrong and am awaiting their response, here, on hellopeter.