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Acer to Acquire Gateway for $710 million
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Aug 27, 2007 11:28 AM
from the bargain-shopping dept.
from the bargain-shopping dept.
downix writes "On the way into work today, I heard about Acer buying Gateway. A bold move strategically, I wonder what consequences this will have for Gateway's employees and customers. As the purchase price was at $1.90 per share, those of us that purchased Gateway shares a few years ago are reminded just how far it has fallen."
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Man Sues Gateway Because He Can't Read EULA 666 comments
Scoopy writes "California resident Dennis Sheehan took Gateway to small claims court after he reportedly received a defective computer and little technical support from the PC manufacturer. Gateway responded with their own lawyer and a 2-inch thick stack of legal docs, and claimed that Sheehan violated the EULA, which requires that users give up their right to sue and settle these cases in private arbitration. Sheehan responded that he never read the EULA, which pops up when the user first starts the computer, because the graphics were scrambled — precisely the problem he had complained to tech support in the first place. A judge sided with Sheehan on May 24 and the case will proceed to small claims court. A lawyer is quoted as saying that Sheehan, a high school dropout who is arguing his own case, is in for a world of hurt: 'This poor guy now faces daunting reality of having to litigate this on appeal against Gateway...By winning, he's lost.'"
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Gateway Customer Sues to Get His PC Fixed 147 comments
prostoalex writes "The Sacramento Bee tells the story of an El Dorado resident who had to go to small claims court to get his Gateway PC fixed: 'Right out of the box, he says, the computer displayed scattered graphics and wouldn't work properly. He says he called a Gateway salesman five times and sent him an e-mail to get an authorization number to send the computer back, but his phone calls and message were never returned. Then, over the course of months, Sheehan said he called Gateway technical support dozens of times.' Gateway insists that by clicking 'Accept' on a customer service EULA when the computer was first booted, Mr. Sheehan has waived his rights to sue the computer manufacturer in United States courts. The Gateway EULA states that conflicts must be resolved via private arbitrage. Sheehan, though, argues that he never saw the EULA, because of the broken graphics. As such, he's not held to that agreement." Some connections between this and a discussion about a Second Life case we had yesterday.
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Customers? (Score:5, Funny)
Gateway has customers?!
Re:Customers? (Score:5, Funny)
So apparently their goal was to buy the shittiest computer company in existence, but they were stymied in that goal so they bought the second shittiest. Personally, I was surprised to see that both Packard Bell and Gateway still existed, but I guess when the CEO of Acer finds extra change in his couch cushions, he has to spend it on something.
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Re:Customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So maybe they've gotten better after all... just my 2c anyway.
Re:Customers? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
-jcr
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Customers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gateway before then had a good reputation for customer service. lifetime service and most of the reps you'd talk to would solve your problems, period. In fact if a Gateway Tech wanted to "Nuke" a system (format/reload), they had to get permission from a senior rep who would grill you on your troubleshooting thus far, approvals were only given to cases with merit. About that time (late 2001) Gateway owned and operated most of it's own call centers.
Fast forward 6 months and one of their last call centers (actually one of their best) was being closed down in favor of outsourcers who got paid almost half of what we did. We had already experienced the aftermath of these "outsourcers", they had no real formal PC support training, worked on multiple "accounts" (not just Gatway, and not just PC support), and were having customers Format Reload as if it were the *only* troubleshooting step.
Funny thing is a good percentage of our calls those last months were people calling back because they were told to Format Reload for an issue that didn't require it (say a defective soundcard/ speakers/ etc) and thus needed *more* support. Anyway, the main thing GW had going for it was it's good customer service, but that was done away with to "cut costs"....
In retrospect, aside from getting laid off (along with 400 or so other people in the same town), Gateway used to be a great company to work for. They cared for their employees (as well as their customers). Some of the best benefits I knew of for the time, very good pay (though not extravagant), and incredibly good training. I can say that when we were laid off we were taken care of, we were all given 2 months, 3 weeks pay as a minimum severance *and* GW hired some folks for 2 months to help us hone our interviewing skills and find jobs (even hosted a job fair in the old call center).
Sorry to be posted anonymously, but that big check at the end came with an NDA.
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Re:Customers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope. I find a store, ask if I can get a car adapter for my notebook, only to find out that Gateway stores don't actually carry anything, you can only order items from them. Not just power adapters (which I suppose aren't needed terribly often) - they don't stock anything. It was then that I realized Gateway was going to die - they spend all this money building stores all over the place, and then they don't even bother to stock them with a few useful items that their customers are likely to need. They basically just massively increased their costs without really offering any new or useful services. Brainy move!
I do still like that laptop, though.
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Re:Customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It had to do with the fact that suddenly they had retail stores that still required you to do mail order to get the stuff *and* you now had to pay sales-tax!
How that made any sense I'll never know. Back then, the reason for going to the mail order places was to avoid sales tax. Yeah, you took a hit on shipping but you got a near custom bu
Re:Customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
As early as 1997, they were known by computer support at my university as "Rapeway."
They had built a reputation for quality and service, but then decided to abandon both and ride that reputation into the ground, selling inferior, unreliable hardware at the prices their name commanded them before their fall.
Packard Bell did this, albeit with a stolen pseudo-reputation (along the lines of Rockwood or Kenford). Compaq did it. HP seems to be in the process of doing it, and Dell is flirting with it. The Big Three US automakers did it. It's a decades-long, proud tradition of failure.
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two wrongs don't make a right (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
-jcr
Re:two wrongs don't make a right (Score:4, Funny)
More than several years ago (24 years ago to be exact) I worked on a brand new IBM XT with an Intel 8088 running at 4.77MHz, 128KB of RAM and a 10MB hard drive. It ran IBM DOS 2.1. In modern terms that would be a 0.00477 GHz processor with 0.000128GB of RAM and a 0.010GB hard drive. When I think about it I don't laugh...I cry.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Lucky, you had floppies.
..and nothing of value was lost... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:..and nothing of value was lost... (Score:5, Informative)
I've never purchased a Gateway, but I do follow the trends in reliability, price, performance, and support from major vendors. Objectively, Gateway has not "always" made crappy computers. Instead they followed a common trend in computer manufacturing/sales. Within the first few years they made quality machines and had excellent support, both better than average for the price. Then, when they had a reputation and brand, the company executives cashed it in for quick profit by selling machines made more cheaply and poorly and counting on their reputation to get people to buy. The exact same thing happened with Alienware about a year before Dell bought them.
Sometimes at a later date a company can reverse course to some degree. Dell's laptops, for example, have gained in quality and reliability over the last few years and are no longer the cheapest junk they can assemble using whatever is inexpensive today. Usually, however, with enough customers pissed off and vowing never to buy crap from Brand X again, it makes more sense in business to simply start Brand Y and count on consumers do not do any homework or even look at consumer reports instead of the TV ad where the guy says its a good deal.
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Wonderful news (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wonderful news (Score:5, Informative)
The reason that Gateway and Lenovo are interested in Packard Bell is so they can capture some of the European market without having to go into it starting with nothing.
Parent
As a former Acer reseller (Score:4, Informative)
So [as a former Acer reseller / small business consultant who moved more into data engineering and away from hardware by choice, not necessity] I would have to say that "this figures". Why? Because I could always upgrade the Acer machines I bought/sold to my clients, and in all of the sites I ever sold to and supported I think I had one machine failure before "end of cycle", i.e., about 3 years later when the cost benefit ratio for a new machine becomes higher than the cost of maintaining an old one. Versus the Gateway, Packard Bell, or even Dell reputation for crap service.
Hmmm. I wonder if this might actually make Gateway stock worth *something* again....
Dinosaurs mating... (Score:5, Interesting)
Market Cap of some major US PC vendors:
HP 125.68B
Apple 115.8B
Dell 61.63B
Gateway 676.29M
See an interesting trend? Gateway would be pocket change to any of those bigger companies. Basically, they died in retail, were taken over from within by E-Machines (even though Gateway bought E-Machines, the execs from E-Machines wound up in charge - just like when NeXT was bought by Apple) and stabilized just enough to turn into the company into bait for Acer.
Goodbye, Gateway...
2 things (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gateway after sales service sucks (Score:5, Funny)
Ah yes, combining the prestige of a Taiwanese electronics OEM with the affordability and reliability of an Italian sports car manufacturer. It's a match made in heaven.
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