Consumer Warning regarding XMeld and MSI

Unfortunately, I purchased an MSI-1034 system from XMeld a couple months age. From the information found on this board, I was reassured of the quality of the MSI product, and it appeared XMeld was a reputable company.

After spending $1800 on my new laptop, it was still brand new when the hinge assembly began giving my trouble, this with no damage to the laptop. This appears to be either a manufacturing defect, or poor construction, as the screws on the hinge are connected to very thin plastic which appears likely to give way during norma use and require repair. The failure of this hinge causes the screen to pull apart if opened, rending the laptop nearly useless as a laptop, even though there is no electronic failure.

Well, the whole thing is under warranty, I reasoned, so being as XMeld was a recommended dealer on MSI's website, I was very confident when I attempted to contact XMeld, which apparently is run by a David P. Cothran out of Layton, Utah.

Well, the phone number for XMeld is now disconnected. In addition, XMeld does not answer any emails (although their credit card processing on their website appears to be more than functional.) It looks like this small company went completely scammer. So, I am stuck with a bum laptop and no support.

So, being as this was a recommended dealer by MSI, I contacted MSI. MSI Confirms that the laptop is indeed under warranty, as the serial number is listed. They, however, are telling me that they will NOT fulfill their warranty except with the original wholesale purchaser, XMeld. Explaining that XMeld was unreachable, they told me I was out of luck. At this point, I was regretting heavily both doing business with XMeld and not purchasing an ASUS.

So, desperate, I took the machine into a local laptop specialist. The attempted to buy the exact part that is broken from MSI, but MSI will not supply the part even though the machine is under warranty. As this is not a common brand, the part of course is impossible to get outside of MSI, so being as XMeld is a scam, it looks like I'm going to have to shell out the money for yet another barebones system to replace the MSI 1034.

Even though the MSI systems look good, and work well initially, I would be very wary of purchasing this line products when the manufacturer refuses to honor the warranty.

If anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears, as right now my only option is to replace the entire barebones component with a newly purchased one of a decent brand (ASUS being the only real barebones option).

 

The only thing I can think of is if your local reseller can RMA it to MSI for you. All they need is a dist that sells the thing. From my experince MSI doesn't track that stuff much. Sorry to hear about your problem, it is really dumb of xmeld and MSI isn't helping much here either. Good luck with that.

 

My advice would be to keep checking with MSI. You should be able to get them to authorize an RMA if you can get someone to understand that your reseller is not reachable or has went out of business, and that your laptop still falls within the warranty. Speak with their technical support department, they are pretty good to work with, they offered me an RMA on my laptop (albeit after my distributor had already shipped it), but their general policy is to go through the reseller. Hopefully someone will realize that it's not possible for the reseller to handle the request and will be able to authorize an RMA to be issued for you.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

Update:

Having taken the laptop to Seattle Laptop to have it repaired at my cost, and having them identify the part that is broken, they have searched for 3 weeks for compatible parts. MSI will *not* sell this part to them for repair (FYI, it's a piece of plastic that's work probably less than $1) and the MSI laptops are not common, and this model is brand new, so surplus parts are non existant.

So, I called MSI in an attempt to get the part, even willing to pay for it. I did find a gentleman who was very cooperative, but after 2 days of trying to get this part, admitted that there was no way MSI would provide it, and that MSI would not RMA the entire unit. They claimed the part was not available, even though the 1034 is still in production and they are fabbing that part as we speak. MSI says that they will not repair the laptop, even for money, and that even were XMeld still around, that they would not be able to repair the laptop because MSI will not make this part available. They will not replace the entire unit either.

This laptop is worthless and cannot be fixed because MSI's laptop was an extremely shoddy construction and soft plastic bound to wear out (that video is a crock BTW), and they do not support their products once they have your money. MSI's official stance is "you should have bought an ASUS."

I'm out $700 because I foolishly purchased a worthless MSI product. I will be placing an order for an ASUS Z96J today and transferring the components over.

 

sorry to hear about your problems. the owner of xmeld is coffeeshark here at notebookreview, though he seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. he may still be found at notebookforums.com and perhaps you could send him a pm.

 

I understand what you are going through since my new Compal is in a limbo state and that is at a highly regarded vendor. Slowly I think personally I myself will only buy Asus shells from now on, built 2 up for customers and they are very well put together, I would see if there is anything maybe your credit card company can do to help if it was bought with a credit card that is.

 

I did buy with a credit card, but not one that had any purchase protection I already checked that route.

I know that coffeeshark is the owner of XMeld. I have found his home address and cell phone (on his business licence and domain registration) but he is not answering his phone. The only sign I have seen of him is someone declined my request to message him on yahoo messenger last week, which mean SOMEONE logged into his yahoo account. I don't know if he is dead, in prison, or just avoiding everyone, but he is incommunicado.

I purchased an ASUS Z96J earlier today fron GenTech, which should be delivered monday, as I need to get this machine back up and running. The Z96J appears much better built, ASUS has a history of standing by their products, and the screen resolution is better than the 1034, which is nice being a coder and using IDE's. In addition, the mouse on the Asus is a true synaptic, which plays better with Linux.

I will still attempt to get the MSI-1034 replaced, although I have my doubts... I went round and round with MSI for 3 days and had a very helpful guy there working with me who was on my side, but the establishment won... the the point where they actually said they would not repair the laptop for any price even going through the original reseller. What I will do with this expensive MSI paperweight is probably make my own replacement part out of aluminum in my spare time and then, in a year when the core-2 duo is cheap, I'll buy a chip, drive and ram for it and upgrade my GF's laptop.

I will NOT buy another MSI product, however. Even before this issue showed up I was surprised at how flimsy a product it was. That might be forgiveble if the company stood behind it's product, but dealing with MSI is like dealing with an Ebay scammer.

 

procyon112,

You may want to try to approach some of the other MSI resellers and see if they can help you out. If this part is that cheap they may be able to give you some support. Just a thought. It would be good publicity for a reseller to help you.

The reseller that has been most active lately here is Noclue4uhere of RK Computers:
http://www.rkcomputer.net/store/
He last posted on this forum about a week ago.

Even though Unleaded (from Rawpower) has been inactive here lately you may want to give him a call or e-mail:
http://www.rawpowerpc.com/index.php

Good Luck!

 

I'll never buy MSI now, that's for sure!

 

I've never used their laptops, but I am a big fan of their motherboards, overclock very well, extremely stable, and very affordable

 

I wouldn't condemn MSI because of one bad incident. When you have a mass production of anything, from cars to computers, a few bad apples will inevitably slip through QC. Although, I can't believe they won't sell Procyon this part. If you ask me, the real blame is with the redistributor.

One a related not, a while back, I watched several "new" MSI resellers post here; not blatant self-promotion, but giving a sales pitch nonetheless. Certain "established" MSI resellers (who USED to post here a lot more frequently lol) verbally tore up the "new" guys. It kind of makes me laugh, because they were building themselves up and really ripping the "new" guys. Now, their customers can't get ahold of them. Something shady is definitely going on, because these guys used to post here weekly at a MINIMUM, and they haven't posted anything new in like 3 months.

 

The only reseller posting now is NoClue4uhere, who operates RK Computers (an MSI preffered reseller, just like XMeld/RawPowerPC). He gave us info about the new MSIs, 1039 pics, and I plan on buying a lappy from him (MS-171772, when it comes out). Only time wil tell if he stays here. But for the time being, I would like to thank him (as well as the now missing CoffeeShark & unleaded) for his contributions to this forum.

 

Another Update:

This get's better. Being as the laptop is now almost surely a lost cause (only one longshot with MSI I'm trying before giving up), I was looking over non-professional hackish repair options with the laptop repair shop, like creating my own part, bolting the **** thing together with plates, etc. While looking at things this way, with a much closer inspection, we noticed something. The cracked part has been glued back together.

Coffeeshark intentionally sold me a cracked laptop, made a cheap, crappy repair so I wouldn't notice right away and disappeared. Up until now, I thought this was just MSI not standing by their parts and was giving coffeeshark the benefit of the doubt; hell, the guy could be dead for all I know, and I'd feel crappy for realizing I'd been pissed at a dead guy for not calling me back. Now I find that coffeeshark intentionally screwed me over.

That's just not cool.

I stand by my original title, stronger than ever. Don't buy MSI or XMeld; these companies, regardless of whether you like their products or not, have no concern for the customer after they have your money. And by no concern, I mean that warranty you have is just a worthless peice of paper that they have no intention of honoring.

On the other hand, I would like to give deep recommendations to the following companies for their help in this ordeal:

Seattle Laptop: They have been most helpful with suggestions on getting this laptop fixed.

Most Especially, RK Computers: Buy from these guys. Any company that contacts me privately to help with me with a problem when I'm not even their customer has gone so far beyond the call of duty as to win my vote for best company I've ever dealt with.

 

I dont think msi laptops are going anywhere. You can see a lot of recent ads in computer magazines.

Nothing fly by night about msi, huge company. Not going anywhere, in fact its only going to get bigger. You may however see the branded msi notebooks change someday, I mean become dell or whatever.

I just want to add that. As far as xmeld or whatever I have no idea or comment but that sounds terrible.

 

I just looked up xmeld on reseller ratings and though the score is high lifetime the only legit looking remarks all say very disatisfied, the ones from recent they say good things look like plants if you ask me. I hope the Asus works out better for you, I think in the end you willbe happier with it anyway the 1034 seemed to plasticy to me.

 

where is coffeeshark

 

coffee is probably mad a MSI too.

 

Well I'm quite fond of MSI until now. I had to choose between ASUS (SIS chipsets ), Acer (mmm forums full of complains ) and MSI...till now it seems I made the right decision.

 

As you mentioned, if you visit the Asus forums, you'll find people have complaints there too. The perfect laptop doesn't exist, I'm sorry to say. Just based on what I read in the forums, reviews, etc (I've never owned anything from either company), I view Asus and MSI as pretty comparable.

 

Well, I've got my ASUS Z96J up and running, and there is no comparison. It kicks the pants off my MSI1034 paperweight. The construction is much more solid, and the parts are more high end and mainstream, which I tend to notice running Linux and needing to scrounge for drivers. The 1034 was a pain and most of the components had only generic drivers or none at all, whereas the ASUS worked right out of the box on Linux. The ACPI is more refined and has more functionality (but there is a bug in the current stable linux kernels keeping you from using some of it... the fix is already in unstable though). Also, my 1034 had various weird bugs, like occasional lockups and repeating keys.

The best thing about my ASUS is the 1680x1050 resolution screen... but that's not really a fair comparison, as the S96J is really the cheif competitor with the 1034 and has the same screen.

But for solid construction, the ASUS wins hands down.

 

XMeld's site looks like it's down. At least for me.

Just thought you guys would like to know.

 

Yeah Xmeld looks like trouble. Coffee was a lot of help to use here before he vanished. And I don't know why unleaded is not around but rawpowerpc is up and looks as good as the day I bought my MSI from him.

Comparing Asus to MSI is a little unfair; the latter being a more budget oriented producer and the former coming from the high-end side of the market.
When I wanted a 12 inch powerful NB, I looked at the W5F and the 1013/1012 and quickly realized I could afford a much more powerful pc by going with MSI. The Asus would not only be slower, but also more expensive.
I love the way the Asus looks but I think my black 1013 looks just fine and I bet build quality of an Asus compared to an MSI blows MSI out of the water but you get what you paid for. Its unfortunate to hear that your experience with MSI was so negative and that coffeeshark may infact not be the trustworthy and helpful person we all knew.

You have every right to bash MSI, I know I would if I was as pissed and felt ripped off, but I and many others in this forum love our MSIs.
You have every right to think what you may think of Coffeeshark, but I don't think he was running a successful online retailer business in hopes of one day ripping off one guy and vanishing off the face of the planet.

I hope your situation improves, g'luck.

 

avadirect has the MSI 1034 for $632 and the almost feature-for-feature identical ASUS S96F for $548. In this case ASUS is the budget laptop and you get a MUCH higher quality system (I totally love the ASUS I replaced my MSI with).

As for feeling like coffeeshark ripped me off... he did. He broke a laptop, tried to epoxy it back together and sold it to me. The fact that he dissappeared off the face of the planet simply adds insult to injury, but his real culpability is that he sold me pre-broken equipment.

I just got my laptop back from MSI. They finally replaced the part for $45 when another reseller claimed to have sold it to me. Had I not had a reseller to lie for me, MSI would have continued to refuse to service the laptop or make parts available, much less honor their warrantee, so even if ASUS cost more, MSI simply is not worth the risk IMO. So, in the end, and after $1000 out of pocket loss for the entire mess, I have a spare barebones laptop and Hard drive. I'm going to buy a Merom processor in a few weeks and give the notebook to my mother-in-law for Christmas, as she has been wanting one.

 

just to let those who bought from Xmeld know,
they are officially dead.

As shown on their site:

Xmeld Computers has closed as of Feb. 28, 2007 and will not reopen.

All RMA and warranty repairs will be shipped out by Friday, March 2, 2007.

No further RMAs can be accepted.

Please contact MSI Computer for warranty repair. Have your serial number ready (on the bottom of your system). MSI will verify warranty status through this number.
http://www.msicomputer.com/support/CustomerS.asp

Asus owners should contact Asus for RMA.
http://usa.asus.com/aboutasus.aspx?show=3

 

This thread certainly caught my attention.
My son (22) and I chose Xmeld and an MSI 1029 also known as a Megabook M635 in January 2006. We have lived to regret BOTH aspects of this purchase. Xmeld proved to be class A scamming sleezeballs. They sure could do the 'talk' for the presales stuff .... but became con artists when it came to the 'walk' for warranty repairs. The laptop was plagued with problems and deficiencies for more than 6 months - went to MSI - USA (we are Canadian) 4 times to actually get everything right. We had to eventually use MSI Canada to obtain warranty support (2 of the 4) as Xmeld was tooooo incompetent and a waste of time. I had always felt as though MSI produced a quality product but this experience and the obvious lack of attention to doing it right the first time convinced me that

for *any* price MSI is NOT worth it.

MSI warranty support in the USA blundered the repairs repeatedly and tried to shortchange us to the best of their ability. MSI Canada did their best to support us and we are grateful for that, however they will also be at the mercy of the MSI product's lack of quality in parts & construction. If anyone wants proof of our problems I can provide far greater detail.