Very, VERY poor build quality...?

OffshoreAdvice

Hi,

Our household are owners of a few Acer laptop products including 1 SWIFT series SF314-54G and a Spin 3 SP314-51 (both bought in Malaysia about a year ago) and then 2 x Nitro 5 AN515-52 Gaming laptops which we bought in Thailand when we lived there almost 2 years ago. The wife and I are pretty satisfied with our SWIFT models, but I am VERY disappointed with the plasticky and flimsy build quality of the Nitro 5's . We actually had the one Nitro 5 repaired under travel warranty in Malaysia because the screen lid literally cracked out of the hinges. As a very technical person with an engineering background, I could very quickly see that the actual hinges were WAAAY too stiff and tight on this model laptop and the pressure and stress exerted at that particular hinge point would lead to fatigue and I was not surprised that the lid did not last. And once it cracks out of the little clips that is supposed to keep in together, you can never get it to seal again properly.

Now a few months later, and conveniently outside the warranty period, my 13yr old son's Nitro did the same...so much so that it totally broke the plastic at the hinge and damaged the LCD screen as well. My son is DEVASTATED because they both look after their equipment very, VERY carefully...in fact it's mostly stationary on their desks and you won't find a SCRATCH on their laptops.

I really feel a bit ripped off, for a lack of a better expression. Although I had to replace the keyboard on my own SWIFT 3 SF314-54G after only a year, I could still live with it as it's my business laptop and $80 on Ebay for a replacement keyboard (although I could only find a silver shell for my blue laptop) , it didn't kill me.  Was quite tricky to replace on the SWIFT as you almost have to strip the whole laptop and remove all ribbons and drives and SSD's to get to the keyboard. I also really look after my gear with much care, so I was quite surprised at the quick wear as it as only a few keys that suddenly stopped working. My wife's SPIN 3 SP314-51 seems to be all good so far.

Anyway, my sons checked online and there seems to be quite a few complaints about this very same build quality issue on the Nitro 5's especially. Now, it could perhaps just be a bad batch, I don't know, but we're now in Panama for the foreseeable future and I can't help but feel Acer needs to own up to what I would very definitively categorize as a factory problem. We are FAR from Asia and the repair centers there, and here in Boquete Panama we're also quite far from any local ACER repair centers...even though I feel we shouldn't have to pay for this. Serial number is: NHQ3LST001XXXXXXXXXXXX  We had a musical instrument imports and retail business in South Africa for 2years, and if any of my clients came back with an amplifier or a guitar or other instrument that clearly had a defect, I would replace it at my own cost..or find a suitable replacement if the exact model was no longer available. It's just good business and goes a long way towards brand support.

"If only the Nitro 5 didn’t have such an abominable screen, which also has a worrying amount of flex while we’re on the subject of build quality." as reviewed at https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/07/05/acer-nitro-5-review/  This concern points to the exact issue that resulted in cracks in both of the units we have. 

Now don't get me wrong, I can appreciate reasonable wear and tear, but a properly designed unit with reasonable torque on the hinges...it should last for YEARS. My SWIFT is perfect...you can just feel when something feels right and there's no straining to close a lid.  This is a very obvious latent defect in the Nitro 5 and for me to spend additional money googling replacement lids AND LCD's including shipping to Panama from the US via myus.com for example...it gets quite expensive !

I would like to know what ACER's comments are and if someone will have the guts to make this right somehow. My kids do distance homeschooling online, so their machines mean the world to them and as mentioned, they treat it like GOLD and it hardly gets moved around and never leaves the house apart from when we moved from Asia to Panama.

Any ideas where I can get to some real decision makers that can pull a rabbit out of a hat, short of locating Chen Chun-Sheng himself and get him to intervene? Its a principle issue for me, and I simply won't be brushed off on the NITRO 5 issue.

Kids talk and complain around the world with their gaming and Xbox headsets and 1000's listen and share about positive AND negative experiences. Just a thought... Luc needs his PC sorted, its really not fair on the young chap to be stuck with this defective product that we paid good money for.

Thank you kindly, and I look forward to some answers that will hopefully lead to some progressive action to right this wrong.

 
[Publicación editada para eliminar contenido inapropiado o personal]

aphanic

Hi, I just read finished reading your post and I'll try to address some things giving my honest opinion.

First of all, about the hinges, I don't really know how common that is, but you're not alone. I remember seeing not long ago in another thread (I'll try to find it) someone from the UK that also had a model in which the hinge assembly had wreaked havoc breaking part of the palmrest and, if I recall correctly, the screen bezel as well.

I think it wasn't a Nitro model, but the description was rather similar to what you have described for it to be unrelated. I was thinking design flaw at the time, or a quality control issue (because we just see here reports about problems really, most of the owners that never have a problem don't drop by the community); now I don't really know what to think.

EDIT: Found the thread: https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/609622/acer-aspire-3-right-hinge

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About the keyboard repair, awesome job, I hope never to have to undergo that in my A515-54G because here the keyboard is "welded", for lack of a better word, with plastic rivets to the plamrest you I'd need to find a whole assembly or go mad doing the replacement.

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Warranty and the like, that I'm afraid falls into the legal realm, and it can be crazy. I detailed in that other thread what happens in the EU thanks to a directive we had in '99 that's by now integrated in the laws of each of the countries, but you'll have to check with the local laws on customer protection and see what applies and what doesn't.

Common sense, in me, agrees with yours. If it is a design problem, or the result of a bad batch, i.e. anything to do with the way the pieces were manufactured or assembled; you aren't liable for it, the company is.

And if there is no servicing center nearby, the unit would have to be shipped to the closes one for repairs, but that's it, labor and cost of the pieces shouldn't be passed onto the consumer. Depending on the place of the world, neither should postage.

It would be a different thing if you went with a sledgehammer against it for example, that would clearly have been your fault; but that's not the case.

The tough part is that common sense, contracts and laws don't always go hand to hand and things become frustrating.

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About Acer's commenting on the issue... that's complicated. I mean complicated over here at least because this is a community forum, mostly populated for people like us, unrelated to the company and helping each other in a peer to peer kind of setting.

There are Acer employees in here, but to my knowledge they're mostly in monitoring positions or moderating for example. I'm afraid the Community is not an official channel for tech support, unlike phoning them for example but explaining something like this to them could proof challenging.

It's a realistic approach if the machines were in warranty, calling them and stating what happened to get the device fixed. If they're outside of the warranty terms like your son's, it is more complicated, because we're delving into the legal realm again. Who gets the burden of proof? In other words, who has to show that the damage was related to the design and not its usage? It's... thick milky, depends on laws, jurisdiction, all sorts of things.

The whole affair certainly leaves a bad aftertaste, because you're stuck. You can't take any sort of legal action because a) it's expensive, and b) you don't know how many units are affected, so class action suits are out of the question.

Maybe... just maybe, you could get in touch with Acer and agree on a price for them to ship you replacement parts for you to make the swap. And that's a big MAYBE, because it could prove difficult depending on where you live as well. Getting them to admit it is a design flaw would be unlikely as it would mean recalls of certain units and that's means more costs.

I'm tagging @Acer-Manny, in case he's able to look over this, give you some guidance or help in any way, all I can do is talk about it, which is pretty much nothing.