Emachines, Gateway eMachines Paid $244 for repairs, computer still dead. Won't honor warranty, bad customer service, horrible repair practices. Ripoff Irvine California

I had an overheating problem (like most other emachines notebook owners). My computer was out of warranty and my motherboard completely fried. I paid $244 for emachines to install a new motherboard. When I got my computer back, it was functional, but not completely: the firewire connection on the computer was not functional.

Emachines offers a three month warranty on repairs, so I was able to send my computer back, and they repaired the firewire issue free of charge.

When I got my computer back the second time, I immediately started having hard drive issues. The computer would not boot up sometimes, and eventually it would not boot up at all. I removed my hard drive and re-seated it. My computer worked one more time before completely breaking (Operating system not found). This is well within three months of getting it back with the firewire issue.

Emachines says this problem is unrelated to the original problem, and they can't help me. I would have to pay for another out of warranty repair to get it fixed. One conflict is they say the second repair was also for overheating issues. That is what their computer says, and I think they had to report it that way so the repair was covered.

They say they swapped out the motherboard and hard drive when it was in the shop, yet they say my problem is not related to that repair (even though my hard drive is now toast.)

The root of the problem is, the second time they sent my computer back to me, it was in worse shape than when I sent it to them, and now I have a $1400 (+$244 in repairs) paperweight that is useless to me unless I shell out money for a hard drive.

Emachines botched my repair, and now I am left significantly poorer and computerless.

Pamela
Winthrop Harbor, Illinois
U.S.A.