MSI RMA Experiences?

Well, I'm going into yet another week of waiting for my RMA'ed laptop. I'm curious to hear anyone's thoughts on my situation, and their experiences with MSI's RMA services (specifically on the notebooks).

Basically, the deal is... I ordered the notebook through my friends supplier, MA Labs. Less than one week after I received it, it wouldn't boot (in part due to a BIOS flash, but seems that it was a deffective from the start, as I had random issues powering it up prior to it's death). I dismantled the barebones, and shipped it back to MA Labs. On receipt of the unit, they said they could not do a replacement, because of a scratch on the cover of the unit. The *only* scratches I was aware of were *very* light, basically similar to what you would get if you repeatedly scratched the paint with your fingernail. They were actually caused from the unit being on it's top during dismantling it.

If I'm not mistaken, shouldn't the unit count as DOA and be guaranteed a replacement, since it was within 30 days of purchase? I mean.. I just shelled out $1,000 for the unit to them, and it was deffective, and they "can't replace it" because of a minor scratch on the cover???!?

So anyways, they shipped it off to MSI, who's policy is to ship out within 72 hours of receipt. That was the beginning of last week. As of today, they still don't have it back. Granted, if shipping actually takes two complete days between the two it MIGHT be in transit back right now, but MSI won't tell me anything about it without an MSI RMA#, which I don't have... I only have the supplier's RMA #. I'm seriously hoping that MSI will just replace the unit, as I don't want to see it come back with scratches and nicks all over due to repair, and them say "here's your new computer back...". But I would think if they were going to replace it, MA Labs should have had it back by now.

So, anyone got any comments? I've seen both ways on the forums, some people got theirs replaced without much hassle, and some got it back full of scratches. Really ticks me off, and the worst part is I don't know if I have any rights to demand a replacement or not.

 

You are entitled to a replacement notebook, I would call your friends sales rep at MA Labs and find out what they can do. Since you said it has only been a week they should work with you. I have seen some distributors charge you a $x amount for the scratch. I have seen around $20-$30.

Another thing you can do is call Raymond at MSI. He is at ext. 138. He is the manager of the NB tech support department and should get you taken care of. There policy is 72hours, so it should have been to you by now.

Hope this helps with your RMA....

 

Cool, thanks for the info.

Since they've already shipped the unit out to MSI I don't know if they'd be willing to replace it at all now... but apparently they were really not willing to replace it in the first place. My friend called them and talked to them about it when he got the message about the scratch, they were like "yeah because of the scratch we won't be able to replace it"... after we told them about the MSI case # they checked into it some more and then called back and said they still could not replace it and would send it off to MSI.

If I figure the timing right, MSI should have had it last Tuesday, if not Wed at the latest... so we figure it *should* have been shipped out some time today. But, I think I might give Raymond a call as you suggested and see if they would be willing to replace the unit or give me some direction of how to get this cleared up.

Thanks again for the info.

 

As a local store manager I can understand what you are going through since I handle the RMAs for the store I work at. We learned with MA Labs to only order products that we can RMA through the manufacter after a couple similar problems. Our best distrub we use is DandH we have sent back all kinds of crazy problems to them and they have taken care of just about everyone. In the past my experince with MSI has been pretty positive for their motherboards and video cards, we have never had to send back a shell. I hope this gets resolved quickly for you and good luck.

 

Thanks, aurawolf. I was hoping to do the RMA direct to MSI myself, but they confirmed the problem with the chip and said to contact the distrib for service. I'm going to give MSI a call this morning as Justin suggested and see what they are willing to do since the kit is in their hands presently. If that doesn't get anywhere, I'll have to bug my friend to call his rep at MA Labs back and see how flexible they'd be with letting me pay for the so-called "damage"... I just really don't want to be stuck with a brand new laptop that looks like I've tossed it arround and ruined it.

 

TuxToaster, Dont let them push you around . You are entitled to a unit that is not DOA. (You are the one that has already paid for a DOA machine in full) If i were you i would get on the phone with your friend or MA Labs and request a new unit or the repaired unit to be in your hands by Thursday.

 

Thanks again Justin. I meant to call MSI earlier today, but ended up getting caught up with something. I left Raymond a message a while ago, he attempted to call back but hung up right as I answered, so I called back and left him another message.

As for MA Labs, that would probably be the easiest route to getting a replacement, as MSI's support last told me that whether or not I get a replacement or repair is entirely up to my place of purchase, and "not determined by MSI"... so if I take that right, MSI themselves won't offer a replacement unit for a DOA, unless the distributor requests it? That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense...

Problem with them is that I can't talk to them directly, and my friend has talked to them a few times about it, but I honestly don't know if they are even willing to bend or not... obviously I wouldn't want him to risk his business with them over one problem (they are his sole distributor presently)... but I do want them to offer me a replacement for this deffective unit. Just doesn't sound like they are willing to do that... I'm trying to see if my friend can suggest the damage coverage charge you mentioned -- I'm definitely willing to shell out a few dollars to cover a minor scratch if they would just solve this already.

Update - Just spoke with Raymond, he was pretty cool about it, but couldn't do anything for me without the MSI RMA #, which MA Labs has since they are MSI's customer and the one's who sent it in. He was actually prepared to get me an RMA # assigned to ship it back, something MSI support told me had to be done by MA Labs only. So, he referred me to a person at MA Labs again, to see if they can get me a better update or possibly leak the RMA # to me. Saddly, my friend's attitude about it was more like "well, we'll have to see..." and doesn't seem too willing to be calling them and hounding them about it. Making me wish I'd just bought it somewhere else, even though I did get an excellent deal on it being direct from the vendor. So, unless I can get ahold of MA Labs myself and actually get them to tell me anything, which is doubtful since I'm technically not their customer, he is, then I guess I'm screwed until they get their act together.

 

I would point out to your friend to find another vendor, MA labs has good offers on a couple of components but honestly they are overpriced on laptops even the name brands like Acer are more then what Newegg has them listed for. Their shells I have found to be around 100 dollars more then D and H sells them for and ever Buy.com has them cheaper half the time. MA Labs probably wouldn't deal straight with you the end user anyway and just refer you to you friend who is their reseller and if your friends rep won't do anything have him talk to a different rep or manager there. Alot of times the new rep will do things the old one won't to try and get you to switch to them since it improves their numbers though I don't know how many sales reps are at MA Labs in the first place we do most of our ordering online so we don't have to converse with them Keep us informed on how things progress, I wish you the best of luck in gettign this resolved.

 

This is terrible, I am sorry to hear of this experience . I would assume you paid cash for the purchase? If you didnt and paid with a credit card you have more options available to get them to take care of this.

Maybe ask your friend for the RMA# and you can call MA LABS yourself and follow up. If you need their # i can help you get it. Which branch did you get it from?

 

If your feeling up to it, try calling MA Labs and tell them your from your friends store and checking on that RMA, more then likely they will just look it up on their system just make sure you have their address and phone number and know the actual company name the account is under, worth a shot if you don't get results soon.

 

Justin -

I do already have the MA Labs #, as I'm the one who actually shipped the unit off to them. I paid for it via PayPal, mainly because the source of the money I had to purchase the unit was sent to me from a client (I mainly do custom programming work).. so the quickest way to get it was just to paypal the money over to him, and he called them up and ordered it. They received the payment from him in the form of a check I believe. I talked to him a while ago about your suggestions, and he is going to call them first thing in the morning and find out if they have any updates, and suggest a replacement if they still have not received the repair, suggesting that I am willing to compensate for the scratch. We'll see how that goes.

Aurawolf -

Yeah as Justin suggested if I have thet number I should be able to check, so if he's not able to work out a deal with them I'll see if I can get MSI's RMA # from them and then see what MSI themselves is able to do.

Thanks for your input guys, I really appreciate it. I'll let you know what I find out tomorrow.

 

Ok, I've gotten some good news at least. Not fabulous, but good.

MSI Customer Service says they have "finished processing" the RMA, I inquired about changing the shipping address so that they could ship directly back to me, but they said it was already ready to go out and could not be changed at this time. I inquired about what actually happened during the RMA (repair, replacement, etc) and he said I'd need to talk to tech support for that, transferred me, and I ended up on hold for a while. So I called Raymond back and left him a message, and we'll see how that goes.

MA Labs said this morning that the scratch was the big issue, and now that they had already shipped it out to MSI they couldn't make any kind of provisions and that I'd need to see if MSI was willing to. Good ol' cat and mouse game.

So, hopefully I'll get a call back soon with some better news or at least they'll be able to maybe make it better.

Update - Just got a call back from MSI, he says that their RMA department has listed the repair code as "no problem found", they did not note if they did any repair or not. He is going to go check with them and see if he can verify what happened, but he kept assuring me that they wouldn't send out a unit that is not working. He did say that any scratch, even a light one, means the unit is not considered brand new, and would just be repaired. So he will be calling me back shortly to update me on what he finds out.

Update #2 - MSI says that the repair code "no problem found" is probably a typo, their engineer says that it basically should mean that they fixed the problem. They say it's already been processed and should be going out, so hopefully it gets shipped out today, and out from MA Labs by Friday, still putting it in my hands sometime next week. If it comes back with anything more than "just a scratch", i.e. keys or tabs broken off, I'm NOT going to be happy.. but my friend thinks that if we try to return it to MA Labs they may not be willing to take it, or might only give him an account credit instead of a refund. So, here's to hoping it comes back in perfect condition ;-)

 

I wish you all the best, I know from prior experiences that MSI doesnt contact the user if they receive a RMA and their testing comes up with no failures. You would think a company like MSI would contact a user if they receive a unit for RMA and dont find anything wrong with it? The RMA was surely set up for a reason

I hope this is not the case for you but by the confusion on what they did to the machine seams odd.......

Keep us posted....

 

It at least sounds like something is getting taken care of so that is good. MSI is pretty reliable about sending back motherboards that function from RMA even if it was just repaired so I would think they would do the same with their laptops. Good luck on that and hopefully happy computing soon

 

Thanks guys. I just got confirmation that it's left MSI and is on its way back to MA Labs at this moment, so here's to hoping they were able to fix it up. I do have to say though, the build quality of the unit is incredible... and the first time I opened it I found no indications of your typical manufacturing blemishes anywhere. I just hope they take as much care with repairing their notebooks as they do in building them, and I will be happy. I guess if all else fails, we can send it back for a refund and just purchasae another unit entirely... but I just have a good feeling that it's going to come back in good working order.

It's expected to arrive at MA Labs by Friday, so I should see it by the middle of next week. I'll be sure to post back on how well it returns, but so far most people's experience with MSI (that I've talked to) have been good, so let's hope mine is another good one.

Cheers.

 

Thanks again Justin and aurawolf for your help, I probably could still be waiting without the information and advice you guys gave. I really appreciate it.

Allright, here's the update!

I got the unit back about 2 hours ago... and much relieved to report in perfect condition. There was a minor scratch on the cover (probably the one they were balking about) and it really isn't that bad at all... I honestly don't remember that particular scratch, so MA Labs may well have done that or noticed it after shipping, something to that effect.

MSI did an excellent job of repairing the unit (from what I could tell, they may have somehow forced the BIOS to reflash, it doesn't look like they resoldered the chip... but they at least must have opened it, as the only glitch I've noticed now is that the PCMCIA card slot is a bit tighter than it was before, I have a harder time getting the faux card out of the slot. Otherwise, it's in great shape.

So, back to the reason for this thread, MSI's RMA system is admittedly slow... they had the unit an extra 3 days outside of their 72 hour guarantee.. even then it was fairly quick (compared to the rest of the time wasted with MA Labs) and they did an excellent job of repairing the problem -- plus they updated the BIOS to the latest version for me.

A side note:

For those who deal with MA Labs, I would avoid doing an RMA directly to them unless you have no other alternative. They were much more a pain to deal with, and it took them 2 days after receiving the unit to identify the scratch and say they'd have to send it off to MSI (I sent it off to them on the 3rd, they didn't ship it out to MSI till the 10th). Then, after receipt back from MSI last week, it sat on their dock for another two days because they were behind in processing shipments, and then when I called them Monday morning for an update, I was (very rudely) told that it had been tested and would be shipped out "today or tomorrow", they refused to provide me any further details and ultimately hung up on me after repeating the time it was supposed to be shipped. Well, it didn't leave their dock until almost 10pm Wednesday night.

So, I just got it back today, almost an entire month later. It was too bad, MSI had offered to do a direct RMA to them after I had already sent it off, had I waited and been able to go straight to MSI I might have had the unit back in about a week.

But, you live and learn I guess... so anyways, that's how it all went down, overall I would say MSI's procedures are pretty decent, a little slow and not terribly clear on updates, but overall pretty good.

// TuxToaster

 

No problem at all TuxToaster, Glad the machine is back in your hands and it working as it should. I 100% agree with you about MALABS If at all possible avoid dealing with them.....

Good luck