Acer Support gives ridiculous answers to TravelMate P2 questions + will not let me speak to a human

OrsonCart
OrsonCart Member Posts: 1 New User
edited November 2023 in 2020 Archives
About a couple of months ago I purchased a new TravelMate P2 which came loaded with Windows 10 Pro. After I loaded it with my applications and started using it I noticed a couple of problems:
  1. It was preloaded with an application called Acer Control Center which I've never come across before but I assumed it was something to do with managing my laptop. It started up and seemed to be doing something to my laptop. I left it and moved on to other things and later started it up again but then it came up with a message saying:
    Acer Control Center is still initialising. Please try it again later. (see image 1 below)
    So I stopped it and tried again the following day but it gave me the same message. Ever since then I've been trying it daily for the last 2 months or so but it always gives me the same error message.
    Therefore I raised a ticket with Acer support and a few days later I got an unexpected and strange response telling me nothing but just giving instructions for uninstalling Acer Control Center. Finding this bizarre I responded saying I am well aware of how to uninstall a Windows 10 application but asking why it needed to be uninstalled. Why was this app pre-installed if the only thing users have to do with it is to uninstal it? I received no reply.

  2. I have been using Windows 10 and its predecessors for many years. It has Power & sleep settings for turning off power to display or Sleep after non-use for a user defined time (see image 2 below). I have been using similar settings for years on earlier PCs without any problems. However in using these settings on my TravelMate I found to my consternation that after the screen was turned off in line with my settings the PC would go into Sleep, but, unlike all my many other Windows PCs before I was unable to wake the TravelMate up and continue with the applications I was using. Whatever key I depressed or mouse movement I gave, the laptop refused to wake up and acted as if it had died. The only way I could use the TravelMate again was to do an "emergency power off" by pressing and holding the POWER button and rebooting the laptop. The big downside being that I would lose all the work being done by apps running at the time in the background.
    So as Power & sleep are clearly not working correctly on my TravelMate I raised another support ticket. A few days later I once again received an unexpected and strange response telling me to set all the Power & sleep settings to "never" so as to keep full power and display on always. This totally negates the Window 10 Power and Sleep functionality and appears to me to be a serious fault in my TraveMate. I again responded querying this very strange answer since, having used Windows for many many years on other PCs, the Power & sleep functions had worked correctly on all other PCs. As with my other support ticket this received no reply.
Being very unhappy with what seemed unacceptable and ridiculous answers to my support tickets I raised further support tickets which received responses telling me to call the UK support line on 0371 760 1000. Upon calling this number I was confronted by an automated robot mumbling in a Non-English accent and demanding I key in some form of code. As I found the robot's mumbling very hard to translate into standard English I had no idea what code I need to key in. I tried some part of numbers on my TravelMate label but the robot rejected them and abruptly and rudely slammed the phone down. I tried ringing several times but each time the robot abruptly slammed the phone down after rejecting me.
What kind of support is that from Acer: first giving me ridiculous answers to my support tickets and then forcing me into the realm of a mumbling telephone robot who slammed the phone down? I've tried raising further tickets asking if I could speak to a human being rather than a mumbling phone-slamming robot but with no success so far. Can anyone suggest if there is some way of speaking to a human being at Acer UK?