Adventures with Aorus Tech Support

Logging my experience with Aorus tech support.

Sent an email today (2/16) as well as called their USA number for Tech Support/Customer Service. Both extensions go direct to voicemail. Left a voicemail on Tech Support.

Maybe I'm too used to getting calls answered immediately, very rare to leave a voicemail at a manufacturer's office. We'll see.

 

you are getting just pure bad luck. lets not hope your luck deters you from the product in future because theres always one that shares that they get a bad experience and it seems like its you. hopefully they sort you a new unit sooner than later.

 

Serious >_> I just want a good, working laptop by the time I go on my cruise next month.

 

Called them back this morning at 11:03 AM and hit option 4 per the instructions on the Aorus website. Spoke to someone (keeping names redacted) who informed me I needed to talk to Tech Support even after emailing Aorus. The Aorus email is apparently not handled by the regional Gigabyte office and I had to explain the whole issue to Tech Support. I told him exactly what was happening. On cold boots the OS wouldn't load and it loads straight to the BIOS. Restarting via CTRL+ALT+Del boots straight to BIOS. If you turn it physically off and on it'll usually boot back up.

Made a Video here:


In any case, the guy kept telling me to get another brand of SSD to see if the issue occurs. I honestly don't believe it's the SSD. I told him I even reinstalled the OS and the issue persisted. Fast forward me explaining the same thing for 10-15 minutes. He finally understands that the Crucial M550's came with the machine. Then he says I can send it back if I want to which I said I did. Transfers me back to the CSR guy (first guy I talked to). He gives me info to RMA. After all this I have to go online to initialize the RMA. http://rma.gigabyte.us/ is the URL. He says to create an account and when I enter the serial number it will say warranty is invalid and to go ahead and ignore that (no synchronization between systems apparently). I filled out the RMA information and I got timed out the first time because their serial number lookup took too long. The second time it threw the same time out message but let me continue but it defaulted to declining the repair due to it being "out of warranty". The third time it worked. You have multiple options for return of the unit but default and included in the cost is UPS Ground. Now we play the waiting game.

 

Hope this works out for you, this experience will determine my future purchase.

 

how do you register the machine because i would of just thought that the supplier would of dealt with it since you have had it a month or less...havent you?

 

That's a different story altogether (not bad just don't want to talk about it, really long story). What do you mean register the machine? If you go to the Aorus website the front page has a link to a 90 day extension of your warranty.

 

well i just mean ownership of the laptop. so you just put your details in and when you ring up with warranty they know who it belongs to and where you live to collect it and drop it back or onsite. well thats how the business line works by what i mean by register.
so i have to go to aorus site to do this?

 

Yes. The guy at CS didn't mention needing to do that though. When you fill out the RMA information your name and stuff there.

 

yea that way is normal too. i just wne to tcheck i (and other gigabyte owners) have to go through the gigabyte website to register the warranty and not through aorus and we do NOT get a 90 day global warranty extension. all good though. wont be leaving out the country with it anyway.

 

I think the 90 day extension is specifically for Aorus not Gigabyte. I think they are separate companies but the "same" in terms of repair stuff. The Aorus X7 motherboard actually says gigabyte.

 

There is no Aorus. Their website belongs to Gigabyte which is a taiwanese company called "Giga-Byte Technology Co., Ltd.".
In the "Terms and Conditions" page[1] the name "AORUS Pte. Ltd." is mentioned and in the end of it you can read "Delaware, U.S.A.".
There's no such company registered in Delaware or in any other state of the US.
Basically you just doing business with an illegal company which is not allowed to operate in the USA and probably not in other countries as well.

[1] http://www.aorus.com/public/terms/global/

 

To find who's the manufacturer of your product enter it's FCCID in this page: fcc.gov/oet/ea/fccid/

 

I realize you have had issues with them but please keep this on topic -_-

 

Well I'm a bit peeved right now. Got a response back from Gigabyte.

"Dear customer,


The serial number provided seems to be invalid. Could you provide the original purchase invoice or the correct serial number of the unit for reference?"

It's definitely NOT invalid.


EDIT:

Called their number and let them know. He tried looking the serial number up as well and said it isn't pulling up but he issued an RMA anyway, over the phone.

 

Aorus tech support told me that they didn't even have a toll free number and that whatever number I found was fraudulent. LOL. Well, I guess we've both learned never to be conned by Gigabyte/Aorus ever again...

 

What'd you end up needing to call for?

 

Do you have to pay shipping to send back the laptop?

 

Well I ended up going with the 17r2 with graphics amplifier, hope this works out ok for you though.

 

Unfortunately, yes, they do not cover shipping to the facility.

 

Dang, I hope this works out for you. I ended getting the XoticPC warranty since I wasn't sure how good Gigabyte/Aorus was going to be with warranty.

I basically paid for peace of mind, but XoticPC does say that if there is a warranty issue with Gigabyte, they will deal with it.

I hope Gigabyte does end up being a good company to buy a laptop from in the long run.

 

So glad i found this was about to pull the trigeer on an x7.....back to Clevo....=)

 

Bummer, I have just bought a Gigabyte from GentechPC!

With my previous experiences with resellers (in Europe), if you had any problem with the product you could resend it to the reseller and they would deal with the manufacturer...
But it is my understanding that some resellers won't serve as an intermediary: if there is an issue, you have to contact Gigabyte/Sager/MSI/Asus yourself?

 

Most resellers. Depends on who you go with. As I made another thread I am not recommending HIDEvolution from here on simply because of their misinformative returns/refund process.

As for my Aorus. Boxed it up and mailing it out. $35 w/ $2200 insurance. $12 without. I'd rather not be liable for it getting lost/damaged. Really unheard of for notebook manufacturers to make you pay for return shipping.

 

Working in the warranty business, not as uncommon as you may think :\

 

Should I rephrase to high-end notebooks? Alienware has NBD and free shipping.

 

I dislike the direction they are going but you cannot argue with that type of service.

 

I lold

 

Did they tell you how long the RMA process is going to take?

 

~5 business days iirc.

 

They officially received it in last Thursday but "received" it in on Friday via email. I called yesterday for an update. Today is business day #3 and the response I got was "Currently its awaiting for further parts to repairs your laptop."

 

"further parts"??!?!?

Hi @LVNeptune,

I've been following your thread on the blade repasting saga but got lost somewhere in the middle, so what was the final outcome? I know you tried different paste right? Did you manage to lower down the temp with the spreader you bought from ebay? And by the way, thanks for all your posts, they are very informative and helpful

 

Yes, temperatures were lowered, I don't recommend a spreader.

 

So the final config is no spreader with ceramique 2? and that gives lower temps?

 

IC7. Ceramique 2 was worse.

 

So IC7 without spreader gives lower temps than stock paste that Blade uses? Well I think that's a success then, I'm really curious about the final outcome since MinLiang Tan singled you out on his post, so I guess repasting it is still the way to go

 

Snip

 

Any update on your Aorus RMA? it's been more than 5 business days now, just wanted to know how good aorus CS is before deciding to buy one.

 

Called Wednesday for an email back Wednesday night.


"
Dear Customer,


The parts supposed to come in this week or next week.


Thank you"

 

3/18

"Dear Valued Customer,

We appreciate you being patient with us.

We have finished testing your GIGABYTE product(s) and it is (they are) being returned back to you."

Officially took 21 days from receipt to get it back to me, or 14 business days.

 

So it seems to be fixed. It boots up properly each time. The work order is in Chinese. Waiting for someone on /r/Chinese to translate it for me.

 

Hi LVNeptune,

we seem to be buying the same laptops and then sending them to RMA! I recently had my Aorus x3 plus(last gen purchased late last year) RMA, was pretty standard issue. They fixed up some components did a stress test for 24 hours and I was able to collect my Aorus back in 5 working days.

I sold off my 2013 blade recently as the warranty was almost up(after the last RMA), what are you thoughts on the v3 and the new Razer blade?

 

They are both good. I still prefer the Blade's touch pad, but the 6GB vram in the V3 is winning too.

 

Went with Aorus last year since I wanted to try something new, also in has 16GB of ram, mini display port and 6GB of VRam on the GPU. Can't say I played any game that exceeded 3GB of Vram on my Aorus yet.

Am leaning more towards the blade. Love the build quality and design. Although I would have to give up on the mini display port and 6GB of Vram. Do you think the 970m could really make use of all these extra Vram?

 

Only 2 games so far that would benefit from more than 3GB of VRAM that I have noticed. 1) AC Unity uses about 5.1GB vram 2) Shadow of Mordor can use up to slightly above 4GB of vram with HD texture pack installed.

 

So there are Games that actually make use of the massive VRam. Interesting! Harder to decide now. Thanks for all the info LVNeptune. =)

 

Just to throw an update on the whole SSD issues I was having. Here we are 8 months later and it seems my SSD's are once again failing. PC locks up for minutes at a time and I have to reboot multiple times for it to boot up correctly. Not sure what is up with the SSD's they are including but they are (were) top of the line. Very odd.

 

So how long did they take to fix it this time?
From what I know they use LiteOn for their SSDs and they are not top of the line but I might be wrong.

 

I believe liteon ssds are one of the best you could find on laptops.