My Story

I got a scholarship to Canada, I couldn't bring my desktop PC so I bought an Aspire 3003WL.MI in October/2005. The laptop worked well in Canada except the noisy speakers. When I returned to Europe I experienced some strange things with my laptop battery, it stopped charging after 5-6% and the keyboard and touch-pad stopped responding. The operating system and programs have stopped responding after startup tasks were done. I plugged out the power cord, so the laptop turned off after a while. When I plugged back the power cord and turned it on, it worked well again, but if I turned on the laptop when its battery was recharged to 5-6%, the problem always came back.

I read my International Travelers Warranty and it says that if a problem occurs I have to contact the closest Acer Representative which was very close, I landed in Budapest, the capital of Hungary is displayed on the list of representatives. On acer.hu I found out the address of Rikvest company, the official Acer representative in Hungary.

I have shown the problem and gave my laptop to the attendants, they said they will check my proof of purchase and look after my warranty and see if it's ok. The speakers were noisy and probably I wasn't careful enough with the screen cleaning (some bright dots appeared on the corner of my screen and few cracks on the laptop's lid ) so I asked them if they could fix those problems too, if it cannot be fixed with the warranty, I would pay it. In the warranty passport its said that the repairing should be done in two days, I gave them some extra things to fix, other then the strange hardware fault so I accepted the longer time period for reparation.

The problems begun with the neglectful emails. They sent me an email that my warranty could not be accepted because the manufacturer denied to accept it. And that for more information I could contact acer.hu ( but no phone or email addresses were given) and the website has no forum or guestbook. Acer.hu asks the customers to contact Rikvest company in case of laptop/technical complaints. In the footnote of email they left their email discussion about my case in which they decided to not give warranty because I bought it in Canada (click here to see it, it's in hungarian). I find this strange and meaningless, I have read a lot about the ITW regulation on the Internet, but I still think I should rightfully get my warranty and they cheated, tricked me. But I needed my laptop and accepted their price offer. When I came back from Slovakia in about a month and wanted to download tons of pictures they said I have to wait two more weeks for the pieces they ordered.
I had to return to Romania and couldn't manage to visit Budapest within a reasonable time so I sent somebody to get the laptop for me. When I got my laptop back and turned it on I've seen that they didn't fix those bright dots, but changed the cover which wasn't my main demand, but well, ok.... I didn't had much time for testing, so I turned it off and in two hours I came back and turned the laptop on I was astounded. I had to realize that my laptop stopped responding and the same charging thing was the problem. They took about 50$ only for their work which surly doesn't worth so much... They replaced correctly the speakers and thats pretty much all what they did. I complained about their work and asked for the manufacturer's contact information but got no response and not even a reply email that they could not care less about their customers.