ASUS RMA Rant

Since ASUS will not provide me with any other medium to do so, I have come here to vent about the USA ASUS Notebook RMA process. As I can only speak to my experience in the USA, I can only hope that it is not the same in other countries.

Upfront, I apologise for the length of this post. Even if no one reads it, perhaps there will be some sort of therapeutic benefits in it for me.

Second, I would like to state that I was extremely happy with my W90 purchase and think that the build quality of the machine was significantly higher than any of its competitors trying to offer comparable performance at the time. I will also mention that I am not necessarily upset that my machine needed to be sent in for RMA as I understand that with brand new and higher performance technology unforeseen issues can arise. I will also mention that every person that I talked to from ASUS support was seemingly courteous. It is my conclusion that the problems are not with their phone support personal but rather their lack in overall process and communication.

With all of that said, here goes my rant...

Early last December my LCD screen went out. I went through the steps of sending it in via their RMA instructions. Sending the notebook in was a simple and straight forward process.

After 5 business days past the delivery date to ASUS, I called to ask for a status of my notebook (20 minute wait). To my surprise the only information they could give me was that it was in "waiting" status and that I would have to wait until I received the machine back in order to know what had been done to it. I was also told that it shouldn't take much longer and typically people have their machines back within a week. I thought that having to wait until I get my machine back to see what was done to it was a bit of an odd answer, but I didn't push back and decided to wait.

After the second week I called back (20 minute wait time) . I was again told that my notebook was in "waiting" status. I asked to speak to a supervisor. After another 20 minute wait a supervisor told me that there was no way of them to know what was going on with my machine until they contacted the repair facility. I was told she would send an email to the technical dept in Indiana and get back to me within 24 hours.

Three days past with no contact from ASUS support. I called back (15 minutes). Having the name and phone extension of the supervisor I had previously talked to I asked that I be connected with them. After a 20 minute wait I was connected with a supervisor who explained that the previous supervisor that I had been working with was on vacation since the day after I had last called. I asked if there was any way they could find out what was going on with my machine. The second supervisor said they would escalate and get back to me within the day.

Two days past with no contact from ASUS. I called back (20 minutes). Having the name and extension I asked to speak with the last supervisor that had promised a call back within the same day. After a 20 minute wait I was connected with a different supervisor. They said the last supervisor I had talked to had the day off. I asked if they had any information pertaining to my laptop. I was told that it was in "waiting" status and that they actually had no way to communicate with the Indiana facility to get any information. I then asked what the escalation process was, and how I could go down that path. I was promptly told that there was no escalation process past them and I could not be transferred anywhere else. This supervisor told me that they would "see what they could do" and promised to get back to me within the day. I also asked if I could talk to a manager, if there was a customer service number or email address, any other method of contacting or escalating . Was there any where that I could escalate my concerns? I was told there was no escalation point past them.

Two days later (over 3 business weeks in total) I was notified via email that my machine had shipped. Not once did I ever receive any call, email, or any update from ASUS support.

After receiving my machine back I was happy to see that the lcd panel was indeed fixed. I then began decrypting the repair sheet that was sent back with my notebook (a single printout of gob-ably goo). Post decryption, it appears as though they replaced the LCD panel, both video cards, and the CPU. Personally I believe the issue was just with the LCD panel back light so I am not certain why everything else was replaced, but that is not my area of expertise so I won't question it any further.

Since the OS had been recovered, I started the long process of setting up the machine again. After that, and finally installing my brand new and much anticipated Dirt 2 game, I plugged in the headphones.

No Sound.

5 business days since my second RMA and no contact from ASUS...

 

I feel for you man. We have all had to deal with customer service nightmares before, but this one is tough. My boss at work had a Dell laptop that kept getting sent back with the same problem. He demanded to be escalated, was patronized by supervisers etc... The ONLY way he received any satisfaction was a hand written letter to Dell head-quarters in Texas addressed to Michael Dell (no joke). He was refunded the full price of the laptop plus shipping and they just kept it since it was back there again for repairs.

Don't underestimate the power of a written (typed) letter signed by you explaining the situation as briefly as you can. Make sure you are very firm and discuss your options as far as attorneys, BBB, etc...

If it worked for him with Dell, I am hoping it can work with you as well. I know you don't want your money back and want to keep the laptop, but there is some satisfaction you should get out of all the hassle.

 

i wish i was coming into this thread to offer some advice - unfortunately, im only here to echo some of the same sentiment

i purchased a g1s a little over a year ago and, just like you, i was EXTREMELY happy with every aspect of it - the build quality, the performance, heck, even the aesthetic of the thing made me happy - then, something went wrong

to make a long story short - my gpu failed - and as is VERY well known on these forums and to nvidia and asus, this is a defect that can only be remedied by replacing the gpu - which means replacing the mb of the laptop (or replacing the laptop altogether) - heres how my rma process went:

- after a $30 shipping fee - they "repaired" my gpu (which is basically a bandaid remedy) and sent it back - with a corrupt windows install - i had to send it back because i couldnt even conduct a fresh install on my own - thats how messed up the computer was
- after another $30 shipping fee, i received my computer functioning and with windows installed - the catch? windows was installed in french - so after spending the money to ship it back to them, i had to re-install windows myself anyway - in the correct language

the computer worked well for about a month then - guess what? the bandaid finally gave way - and the gpu failed AGAIN (as would be expected with a half-assed repair)
- i just spent another $30 to ship the computer back out to asus and am awaiting the next "repair"

right now - im left with no computer - and im currently over $90 in the hole just in shipping fees alone - i cant even calculate how much time ive wasted trying to get this computer fixed - if you count the times ive had to remove the hd to back it up, reinstall windows and all of my other programs, i figure ive spent over 15 hours of my own time just trying to get this computer to work

bottom line - asus customer service is right up there with dells - meaning its amongst the WORST in the industry...

 

Thanks for the advice. If I get the laptop back in working order I guess I will just leave it at that. Although, If anything else happens I will try the letter.

I wouldn't be nearly as upset if they simply communicated what was going on. Instead seems fairly obvious that they are just trying to get me off the phone.

 

I am sorry to hear about your support issues as well. I don't understand why they charged you $30 to ship it each time. Both times I brought mine in everything was paid for, even the packaging to ship it in...

 

I'm going through a bit of customer service hell too. Not fun.

 

Look it is very simple
if they have the parts they will repair real quick
dealing with their repair center often and hundreds of times i can tell you a few things
1. they are very much like the rest
2. if they dont have the part all you can do is sit and wait
3. if they had to yank the mainboard or any other major components that needs screws removed i would always double check their work because they have more inexperienced techs then experienced ones. they always miss something can be minor or major.
something minor may be a screw, a keboard ribbon, a clip, a button
something major may be a thermalpad or poor worksmanship. this is not unique to asus. most repair techs are inexperienced and can care less. I try to avoid their repair center as much as i can. This is one reason I stopped selling their refurbs (the ones that needed service atleast)

 

The Saga continues (see my first post on thread)...

After no contact via phone or email from ASUS for my second RMA, my machine showed up today. According to the RMA sheet it appears as though this round the MB was replaced. On first boot the machine seemed to be acting up a bit so I decided to do a system recovery from the partition and just start from scratch. I should have thought this through first though. What were the chances that when they replaced the MB my ASUS Vista license would no longer be valid (due to the MB change). Sure enough I now have an invalid Vista Key.

ASUS wants me to send the machine back again so that they make a change to the MB to match the current license.? As far as I can tell the machine itself appears to be working well, but there is no way I want to send it back again just for this. As you can imagine, every time I send it in it comes back more beat up and takes at least three weeks.

Maybe I just go buy Windows 7. Does anyone have any ideas on a work around for this? I wonder if it is simply some sort of utility that they use or something...

 

Can't you just re-activate within Windows? If that doesn't work, you can activate by phone (an automated system, so you don't have to wait on hold or talk to anyone at Microsoft), which has never failed me.

 

I have a solution for you.
Download RW-Everything
After that access the program.
Then Click on ACPI and copy and paste the SLIC Tab info here.
SLIC is the Windows Licensing Code.
Just be quick about it going offline soon.

 

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I was getting errors when trying to re-enter the Vista Key. After looking into what the actual error was the error was not related to different hardware but actually a date/time synch error. I reset the system clock (it was set to the year 2002) and it then successfully activated. WT?

All that I can say for now is whew! I think I will now continue to test out my machine (with my fingers crossed).

 

Ok that was another issue I thought they had replace the BIOS of another licensing.
So you can ignore my older post.

 

That site has a virus.

 

I'm glad you finally got this sorted.

I had my boss have two of his Toshiba notebooks in repair. One took a few weeks as they needed a new screen to be shipped from Taiwan. The other took almost 6 months. I don't know why it took so long but he finally got it back and it worked fine since. He was lucky he had two notebooks at the time, as he was able to utilise the other while one was in repair. At the time he was pretty annoyed but he was too nice to make a big song and dance about it - so he ended up just contacting them each month until it was fixed.

I guess no matter what brand, there is always the possibility for disappointment when it comes to support/warranty and repairs. It's good though that you now have everything back up and running.