During the past couple weeks I’ve been trying to contact Gateway Customer Support to fix my computer as it heats up to temperatures of around 50-60 Celsius. The thing is, the product’s out of warranty, but I complained about the issue to them during the warranty period, and they did nothing to fix it. Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?
In around March 2010, I went to their website and contacted their support chat line. I told them of the overheating problem, and all they had instructed me to do was to update the system BIOS. Of course that didn’t change anything, as I had expected. I had returned to them and they still didn’t do anything, so I just put up with the heat for the next while. I contacted them again, sometime in 2011 when the warranty had expired. I was asked for my details and was told that someone would call me in the next couple of days, and they had provided me with a case ID to keep. I asked them to forward me the transcripts, which they’re supposed to do anyway.
They assured me that they’d so, but of course they did not, so when I did not get a phone call and returned to them they had no records of my report and were insisting that all records are kept under your serial number. After I had persisted a few days later, I was told that I was called twice, and wasn’t given the option to leave a message. I had two issues with that, one, I owned an answering machine, and two they had only called once when I specifically said not to call. I had arranged so they’d call the next day, in the afternoon, but somehow that translates to them calling me at 7:00 in the morning. Of course I ignored the call and then they called again in the afternoon, like I had asked. The person who answered was rather unhelpful, they talked like Eeyore (very unenthusiastically) and said that if my computer’s not deemed a safety issue they will charge me $199 to fix it. Well, wait a minute… if the fan’s faulty then I could just buy a new one for $40, right from this website.
However, I’ve done a bit of research on this problem and according to this thread the problem is probably the thermal paste that Gateway/Acer used when manufacturing the product. They used a very cheap paste and it apparently wears down around the time that the warranty expires, screwing people over. I had been quite unsatisfied with the person who called me, so I went to contact their phone support line, problem is, they only provide the number to those with warranties, and I wasn’t one of them. I had to do a bit of research, (Google is your friend) and I found a website which listed one of their support numbers. I had to call around three different numbers before I finally got to the right place. I talked with a guy, he sent me to his supervisor and the supervisor said he had placed me on a list to get a call from Corporate Customer Care, he was actually quite surprised that my computer had been reaching temperatures of 85C and said that in his position he really didn’t have any power to waive the charges, although he would’ve if he had the power.
I was told that they’d call within the next 24 hours, but I still have not received a call. I contacted their phone line and was directed to their corporate support after 30 minutes. The support person denied having any records of the support chat and that the first report came in on June 29th, 2012. However I do have records of a report on February 2011 in an e-mail which I will keep as evidence that their record-keeping is not up to scratch. Stay tuned for more!
Support Numbers
Gateway Corporate Support (Frances): 254-298-4483
Gateway Corporate Support : 949-471-7000
Gateway Customer Service/Tech Support: 800-846-2301
Gateway Canada Support: 604-639-0979