"I have been extremely disappointed with the tech support and customer service provided by Gateway. My laptop has had a known issue with interference on the audio channel, but it has never been fixed. When I asked if there were any suggested solutions, the technician suggested I perform a system recovery, despite the fact that this problem has existed since the machine was first purchased. The only other suggestion from the technician was to pay nearly half the purchase price of the machine to send it in for repair.

I will choose a laptop from a company that provides better service in the future, even if the price is higher."

"I bought a used Gateway laptop recently for my birthday. It was low on memory, so I deleted a whole bunch of stuff and now it runs perfectly fine. Gateway is a good brand for school students. Yet, I have not spoken to Gateway tech support, so I wouldn't know whether they are friendly or not. But I personally would choose Gateway because it is a good brand, and there is nothing wrong with MY Gateway laptop. It works perfectly fine. And I would also personally would NOT choose HP because they are a bad and they don't work right. Gateway is also cheaper which helps people who have money issues. Even though Gateway laptops might run slowly at times, they are worth the wait because they don't stay slow for long. Gateway is a wonderful choice for all who need an affordable, efficient laptop."

"gateway and those who sell them are total scum. Bought 2 desktops, paid top dollar for 3 years of extended warantee, then the problems began. Somehow after 2 weeks on the phone, I had to pay to send them to somewhere in Austin. :"Fixed" says them, sent it back at further cost to me. Then returned with an infected harddrive, one that kept saying "your windows is not genuine". This was right out of the box from the so called repair. Next, they updated their system to accept calls from only customers that had an 11 digit SNID, and mine has a 10 digit serial number. Nifty way to screw your customers, cut them off from support, or even the ability to call for support after they spent over 300 dollars for support. 40 emails later to "steve" in India, they finally acknowledged my 10 number serial number will not work. The next email they started all over, "tell us your problem" etc. This went on for months, clearly they were not going to fix anything. Any one who sells this filth should be brought up on charges. "

"Gateway SUCKS big time! I paid $1700 for this gaming desktop FX6800-01E POS with the 3 year warranty, taxes, etc. It's been in repair twice in less than 2 years! After a year the Power Supply had to be replaced, 6 months later the Hard Drive and Video Card had to be replaced by Gateway. Inconvenient too because you bring it to Best Buy and they ship it out to the repair center in California! I just got it back after the 2nd repair and guess what? It STILL won't boot! I have the same error message it had when I brought it in for repair. Now they are saying I have to buy recovery disks for the unit...they didn't back up ANYTHING. THIS IS MY 1ST AND LAST GATEWAY, WHAT A POS!"

"Gateway is just a ripoff from the get go. If you want support from them ,you would be better off talking to a light pole!!"

"I have bought 5 computers from Gateway over 10 years. All arrive fine but some still needed Tech Support and 3 came with constant motherboard problems.
I had purchased "Extended-In Home" warrantys with every one.
They are worthless!!! These people scammed me out of over $500 for "pay to play" tech support when I had BNIB computer that came defective!!!! The support I had paid for "in-home" I had to repay for on-line and not only would GW NOT send out a tech, they coulnot even fi the RAID drive problem on line!! They are jerks!! and scammers.
They are a scam artist extrodinaire!!!

Get a good computer and go Puget Systems.
Never will recommend or buy another Gateway product!
As a business man I have removed ALL GW equipment and purchased Macs or Puget systems eqpt."

"I purchased a Gateway laptop on December 26,2009 from a local computer chain (the Order Number I provided is their invoice number). At the time of purchase I was informed that Gateway would provide a free upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista that was installed on the machine. I was told that when I visited the Gateway site and registered I could get the upgrade. My daughter has the computer and attends school several hundred miles away, so it was not until March 26th that I was able to register with Gateway and request the upgrade. I was then told that I would not be able to get the upgrade as the deadline for application for it was February 15th, and I had missed the deadline. At no time was I ever informed that there was any deadline to adhere to in order to get the upgrade. I argued the point, and spoke to several supervisors but was not provided the upgrade. This company has terrible customer service and can not be relied upon. Don't deal with them. I'm now one of their many dissatisfied customers - check their ratings here, which I should have done before. Stay away."

"You all will soon realize that Gateway is not customer service focused. After spending 1 hour and 13 minutes on the phone I reached the highest level for customer contact. You all will find, its the 3rd level. So after going through Steve(each customer service mail is a man of Indian decent named Steve) he finally passed me onto Benny. Benny was very helpful and quickly passed me onto Tim.

Tim was the the gentlemen at level 3. He told me that all he could do was provide shipping to thier repair center for my veryyy slow processor which was purchased less then 5 months ago. And as many of you all understand, going without a computer is not an option for work, even if it it to be repaired. After asking him what he would recommend I should do next time, he advised me to buy a small back-up computer for times like this. I was rather shocked that I was told to buy another computer to back up mine which was less then 6 months old. They will not provide a temporary, express service on repair, or a new unit.

After being on the phone for 1 hour 26 minutes, I was told there is no way to contact any other level and no way of assuring my complaint with the policy would be viewed. He simply told me that this was the only option and he then later disconnected our call a few minutes later.

Our family has always been a fan of Gateway products and their affordability. Unfortunately, when faced with a problem the customer service policy of Gateway is not to help re-occurring customers. After this we will unfortunately have to more to another product line such as Dell or Apple because for us it is not realistic to by an alternate computer to backup your existing/new Gateway.

Sorry Gateway but you just lost a lot of future products.

"

"I got my new laptop home (NV5214u), only to find that the keys on the keyboard typed the wrong letters ("z" and "y" keys typed the other letter). The gateway customer service rep was unable to assist, and I had to drive back to Best Buy to exchange the laptop."

"I don't think they train these people... A former co-worker of mine bought a Gateway PC last May. The hard drive developed bad sectors out of warranty this October. I told him to buy a new one and I would install it and restore his PC. Well the restore disc he had was damaged (scratched) sometime in the year he had it. I first attempted Gateways website to see if I could order a replacement online (Had to do that once before with a friends Sony PC-great exp there). Couldn't find it, but I did see a link to chat online with a tech.

After explaining the situation their online tech (Steve), he confirmed the PC was out of warranty and tried to sell me phone based support. I reminded him that I didn't want/need tech support as the problem was fixed, I just needed a replacement restore disc. He tells me they do not carry them and directs me to an outside company website to buy it. Well I looked on that website and most of what they listed were for older PC's running Windows98 and earlier. I only seen a few XP's and no Vista's. I found a phone number for the company and called, they confirmed they do not carry anything Vista. They specialize in older hardware no longer supported. They did recommend to call Gateway and ask for their parts department as tech support were "idiots", the discs should be in stock.

So I found their number and called their customer service line. I will say Gateway's hold times are better than most, only took about 5 minutes. The guys I talked to (Cody) said they do have the disc (really?), it was $10 for the disc + $10 for regular ground shipping. I explained the situation that my friend was going into the hospital for surgery Monday (11/3) and the needed the disc sooner. I asked if I could get it overnight shipped so I'd have it Friday (10/31). He tells me sure, but the next day shipping will be an additional $10. I said fine $30 is ok and asked to verify it was shipping the same day & also asked where was it shipping from. He said it would ship that day, and it would be coming from Texas.

So Friday passed and no disc, Saturday passed and no disc, finally Monday came and the disc arrives. The label shows "Deliver by 03Nov08", checking the tracking number online it shipped from Washington and it wasn't shipped until the next day. This portion of the blame should be shared by both Gateway (overnight orders shouldn't sit around an extra day) & FedEX (three business days to ship an overnight package?)

General incompetence all around... The first tech should have directed me to customer service to order the disc, the second should have been a little more forthcoming in the shipping. Lastly, FedEx...that's another review."

"I lied with the purchase date - it was Sept. 4th 2006 (not a drop-down option). However, I also purchased an extended warranty for 2 years, so it's still in force.

Last May it started spontaneously rebooting on occasion. I assumed it was software, and in June it got bad enough that I felt I must do something about it. In order to eliminate the possibility it was hardware (before I painfully started from scratch with the software) I asked them for a hardware diagnostic - especially a memory diagnostic since that was the error report. They never provided one even though I asked for it repeatedly over the period from then to last month (September). They questioned my extended warranty repeatedly (I even provided the number) and asked me to do a hard drive test (built in to their software). Passed. Then they said to restore to factory conditions. By this time I had found that by disabling external memory the problem became much less frequent, but they ignored that and insisted on the factory restore.

I did it, installed only my anti-virus (AVG) and firewall (Zone alarm) programs and the problem still occurred (on an anti-virus sweep - one never finished).

I was told they "escalated" the problem and from that point on there was no useful contact with them - each time I was told it had been escalated and they could do nothing - not even put me in touch with the escalation team. After further complaint the escalated it again, but still no contact from them. I tried a letter to headquarters and never got a reply.

A selection of emails in the exchange with their customer support people is at http://www.rgcle.com/Gateway/

I finally bought an HP desktop and have had NO trouble after loading all the operational software I had on the Gateway and then some.

My experience leads me to the conclusion that I should never buy Gateway again.

In regard to the restriction of transactions occurring within one year, i consider the exchange of emails with Gateway tech support as meeting that requirement."

"Gateway is no longer an honest company. They do no warrantee work themselfs, they sold out the business. I purchased a new battery for my laptop on April14,2008 with a 1 year warrantee from Gateway. It never worked well and completely failed in late Sept. 2008. The tech at Gateway said they wouldn't honor the warrantee for $129. plus tax and shipping so I spoke to a supervisor who said they would credit my credit card and gave me the email of a company I could purchase a new one from. The next day I called them and they said a manager said the supervisor made a mistake and they could do nothing for me. I guess the sales of laptop are going so bad and the economy is going down fast so they are going to keep any $$$ they get their hands on. Its too late to call my credit card company and put a stop on the payment so I just have to tell as many people as I can. Please don't buy from this dishonest company. This is my first expierence with a company that is so crooked. "

"Got a "Gateway Certified Refurbished Product" 24" monitor FHD2400 from tigerdirect.com. I called Gateway support because

1) 4 thumbscrews to hold monitor to stand was missing.
2) Inner bezel, outside painted bezel, and the stand has deep scrapes, scratches, and chips. This was well packed so these did not occur from shipping.
3) This was a sealed box that tigerdirect just ship out and didn't verify its contents.

Gateway refused to ship the thumbscrews and they refused to believe that their refurb quality control fails. So far there are no stuck or dead pixels. Beware that you might just get something like this and that Gateway just does not care. Unfortunately I have an Acer laptop whose LCD monitor just developed problems after 2 years."

"I posted over at the "main" thread of the FPD2485W at AVS. My monitor is just a bit over a year old and some faints spots which are right in the middle of the screen have become much worse. I called Gateway when the monitor was well within the support range, but couldn't get through to anyone.... I attributed it to normal LCD clouding, I work normally with dark Interfaced screens, Photoshop etc. so it never bothered me much,

So now that it's worse,
I called Gateway again, their support is beyond bad, they couldn't even find my monitor until after being put on hold 3 times. Then I was of course told that my monitor is a couple months out of warranty and couldnt be covered, I tried to explain to them that the spots have been there for awhile, but now the spots have worsened.... even had the person agree that burn-in spots couldn't happen overnight, but she didn't budge.. I of course won't be buying any Gateway products in the future, so tired of companies making products that break soon after the warranty expires... its all a conspiracy right??? hah

So a warning, for others whom may buy a similar Gateway product...

When I tried to call back in February, and couldn't even get past the first automated question which was enter your 10 digit Serial #... I bought mine at Best Buy so perhaps they use a different # for them? but it's a 13 digit Serial #.. When you didnt enter a serial # their computer recognizes, (i tried many different versions) it didn't send you to another menu..or an operator.. the automated person said sorry and hung up on you.. sounds like a good operation haha.

When I called this week they had the same opening automated Serial #.. couldn't get it to work, hangs up on you if you don't enter the proper serial #... that's at best devious, and at worst criminal. Being a little more diligent this time, and after some investigation through the web I found a phone # which again asked the serial # but somehow got it to work, only after being on hold for 30 minutes.

I wouldn't recommend Gateway for anything to be quite frank. And don't ever buy anything this expensive (comparatively) with only a year warranty, companies like Gateway use very low class screens and slap a one year warranty on them... They'll get you everytime..."

"Thank you for this website. I definately won't be buying a Gateway product."