Well 4 months in on my P34G and support is baaaaaaaaaad

So long story short I pretty much got the "lemon" of the P34G. After waiting all summer to get this guy I had issues from the very beginning.

Day one the keyboard was practically falling out and had so much flex that it would not work on half of the strokes. I was able to fix that issue.

Within the first week I noticed that the system was overheating badly with anything that pushed the CPU. To the point that it was throttling 40-50% just to keep it under 100c. That was without the video card being pushed! So I decided that I better get it to support.

That is where the honeymood ended with the laptop. I started working with support to get an RMA and get the process started. I told them that I use this system for business and that I have had it for less that 2 weeks. It took 3-4 days just to get through all the discussion with the tech support. Very slow to respond and then once I go it approved it took forever for them to get me a UPS sticker issued.

I wish that was the bad part. It then took them almost 2 weeks to finally get my system going and that was after a week of shipping and receiving. By the time I got the system back it was just over a month.

So I have my system for 2 weeks and then a month of support before I got it back.

So not long after I get the system back it starts to randomly power off. I mean extremely random. I could not force it to power off if I wanted to. However each time it was preceded with a click. Since I need this system for business I tried to see if I could live with it for a little while, but it was just too random and happened in the middle of a business meeting. By this time it was the holiday season, so I decided to wait until after the holidays.

So on to round to with support.

Obviously I am not happy at this point that I have not had a fully functional system since day one. I had hoped that they would be willing to help me out with an obvious lemon of a system. I once again called support and at least this time they knew a bit more about the system. I again pleaded that this is a business system and that I need to try and get this back asap. I even requested a cross ship where they take my credit card number as security. They responded that they do not do that with laptops. They did however assure me that they would expedite it.

Well their idea of expedite is not quite the same as mine.

I sent my laptop out via UPS once again. They sent me a noticed that they received it. That was the last thing I heard from them in almost 2 weeks, at the time of this post. I constantly contacted them trying to get an update. I tried going through Xotic PC to get them to find out more detail or push, to no avail. I've posted on their Facebook pages, twitter, and anywhere I could try to get their attention. The only response I get back from them is through Facebook saying they are sorry and will look into it.

You know if they would at very least tell me what is going on and get some estimates I would at least know something and would calm me down a bit. However they can't even do that.

This is not a cheap laptop! This is not a $300 laptop where I expect slower support. I have used Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, Asus, and several others and have never had this bad of support.

Remember Dell Hell? Yeah well this is my GigaHell.

I am sorry to vent, but I have never experienced such poor support fr something they are positioning as a premium product.

 

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. I think that since Gigabyte is relatively new at notebooks (from what I gather) perhaps they have not sorted their support side out yet. I have only known them as (very good/top line) motherboard manufacturers and was hesitant at buying my P25W initially due to having noticed online that their forums were not raving with satisfied customers (thou it wasn't the opposite either).

I have to say that the community does not do itself a favour either. I have posted on this and the official Gigabyte forums regarding a suitable laptop sleeve and also whether changing the installed hardware would invalidate the warranty but even after 133 and 43 people have viewed my post (at least on the Official forums) have I gotten 1 reply. Surely someone else is using a sleeve with their laptop and others are curious about swapping components - such BASIC questions...Unfortunately, I ended up buying a sleeve which was rated for up to 16" but it is just a little too tight on the corners and I am scared it will rub away the silver trim so am having to place it in the thin fabric sleeve that came in the box.

Basically, forget anyone helping u, you are on your own if you buy a Gigabyte laptop and it seems most people who buy one are just plain ignorant and don't have any desire to help others. This is the WORST community I have every come across for any product, ever!

 

I was with you there until the last paragraph. I am pretty sure the number of Gigabyte notebook owners is quite small and you're asking a very specific subset (P25W owners) to weigh in.

Personally, I've found the P34G community somewhat active (the P34G thread is now at 208 pages so there is that).

 

I think I've answered most points in the P25W main thread.

There seems little or no point to start threads unnecessarily in the hope that they get a response faster than if the query was lodged in the correct post.

 

To follow up on my venting...

I did finally get my laptop back and it did end up taking a bit over a month again. They ended up replacing all the guts and I have noticed any problems that I had before. Unfortunately I have a new problem, the keyboard back light no longer works. Tried all of the settings and it just wont come on. I think it may be that the plug came loose. Hopefully I can take care of that myself without voiding the warranty. I don't want to be without my laptop for a month for just a back light.

Anyway, while I understand that I probably got a lemon of a system and that happens, the lack of a decent process and serious lack of communication is what really got to me. I went through ever channel to get a reply and ironically the only ones that would actually give me information was one the Facebook page. I called, emailed, and even went through Xotic to get answers and there none to be given. The Xotic guys were great, but they could not get anything but vague answers from the Gigabyte support.

I really like the idea of this laptop, but unfortunately the support will keep me from buying another one.