avadirect a questionable enterprise

Well, netbookreviewizens, I've had a problem with my MSI-1651 purchased through avadirect who now after repeated contact and description of the problem PLUS return to them are claiming that "there is nothing wrong".

[EDIT]
Well, I was refunded, so I'm going to let it go at that. They were actually reasonable with refunding me.
[/EDIT]

 

i will save you some money don,nt both send back to msi they won,nt fix they will telll you return back to people got thoght

Been they done that i can get copy msg they won,nt even sell your parts

sent msi back a mdg barebone that that was solder thought 3 party brand by them they refuseded to fix even thoght it was they barebonne and company sold refused to also

 

Sorry didn't quite understand the post, but:

Actually MSI told me to send it back to them directly, but stupidly I decided to attempt to send back to AVADIRECT first inthe hopes that they MIGHT actually do the right thing. Unfortunately I was entirely proved wrong.

Sorry about your problem, but at leat in my case I KNOW that the retail GX620 (same model as my barebones) suffers from the same problems.... Not at all sure about AVADIRECT after they decided it was "bad" keyboard and to send back to them after MSI told me to send it back to them. The point being that MSI was, apparently, perfectly willing to service a notebook sold by a reseller, although I did initially go through the ocss site and made them completely aware that it was built by a reseller, they still told me to send it directly back. (This is US, I suppose that policies in Europe/Asia may be different, but I'm somewhat confused as I was dealing with the parent company going through the ocss system.)

 

So what exactly is "wrong" with the notebook?

 

Keyboard and hw keys lock out after a random interval, while the rest of the machine continues to operate normally. (Look for the post on the MSI user-to-user forums, too lazy to put in a link ATM.)

Makes the nb ENTIRELY USELESS!

Sounds like AVADIRECT is going to refund me though, so I may go for am ASUS G50 from newegg now if reports look better.

[EDIT]
Here's the MSI forum thread
http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=122245.0
[/EDIT]

 

Sorry to hear that cutterjohn =(

You were all hyped out about MSI previously, and I know you did a heck of a lot of researches on them.

The 1651 is an older model, so perhaps you can try out the GT735? That's one powerful laptop, and you can get it off Amazon for good service at least.

 

Dunno if you;re in the states but if you're hurting for a replacement gaming lappy some linked me this
Rea-lly inexpensive, except it's an Acer (or Gateway same diff) and it's a 17 incher

 

Thanks guys, since I'm sitting up with a nasty case of indigestion ATM, I'll add that they have at least offered to refund my money. Whether they refund the entirety of the original purchase cost or not remains to be seen ATM. They've already stated that they will not be refunding shipping costs, but at this point, thats around $50 which could be worse.

[EDIT]
That Acer IS nice, but 17" is a bit largish for my interests, but maybe I'll swing by a Best Buy later and see if they have a display model. Actually it's incredibly nice, a 9cell battery to boot! (Must have awful battery runtime though...)
[/EDIT]

[EDIT2]
Argh, only listed as available at two stores on the other side of the metro area...

MSI: Well, I was psyched about it, but in the end I was just disappointed in the one glaring flaw, namely how the keyboard is mounted, which I am sure is the root cause of the problem that I and others have had with the barebones and retail model. The keyboard just did not seem to have enough supports as it flexed a fair amount without even applying much pressure to the keyboard itself.

Any of you guys know of a 14" or smaller notebook that has a decent GPU? (Probably going to have to go for 15" or larger as I want a 9600 or better and I imagine cooling problems would preclude a smaller form factor. Going to miss that notebook, until I get my refund and find a replacement.

The 735 would also be nice to look at IF it were a 4XXX radeon, and <17" (I'm picky!).
[/EDIT2]

[EDIT3]
This is what I was thinking of getting instead once my refund arrrives. I also see that Asus now has crossfired 4870s in a notebook as well, but somewhat out of my price range I am sure of...
[/EDIT3]

[EDIT4]
ACK! Was just doing some reading on the G50Vt and found that it apparently has LEDs all over the place on it, plus it lights up that logo ALL of the time, along with the red/black color schema plus it's weight and thickness are kind of turning me off on that one too. (I REALLY liked the black/silver color scheme, thinness, and relatively light weight of the 1651, just wish that they'd release the 9800 based one now, and that other dealers would carry it.)

The Gateway has a pretty low screen res for a 17" display, 1440x900 from I dug up on it.

Still need to look at the GT735, which maybe I can find as a barebones with the black/silver color scheme or another model with a 48XX radeon.

Given the choices, I'm going back on that not buying an MSI again, as I find most of the retail models with features that I want come in disgustingly garish color schemes along with some other annoyances (all sorts of LEDs for some reason). (To be fair it sounds like on the Asus that you can turn off the extra LEDs excepting the one lighting the logo, but maybe thats just opaque plastic using the light from the display like Apple used to do with their notebooks and the glowing apple logo.)

Need to go look at some example models in a store now, but not today as it's snowing enough to be worrisome for longish treks.
[/EDIT4]

 

This is one of the companies i looked at before i purchased my notebook and my wife's notebook. I emailed them 5 times and to date have never received a reply. Called them on the weekend (that's when i started looking) and no answer. I then tried them during the week and got through, the rep i spoke with started giving me serious attitude and avoiding my questions when i asked in depth questions about two different models.

I looked through their site and found their own link to reseller ratings, and if you sort reviews by LOW it seem like this "MISHA" guy gives everyone the same "we can never be wrong" attitude whenever there is a problem. From my experience with them, what you wrote, and the negative reviews seems like these guys are not too customer friendly!

AVA Ratings:

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller4632-p1-s2-d1.html#reviews

 

Just a theory, the keyboard connector might have been slightly loose on your MSI laptop, causing it to disconnect occasionally, thus causing your keyboard not to work, but then be jostled back into place and start working again. It's possible that they opened up your laptop and put it back together again to have a look, and didn't notice the keyboard connector was loose when they disconnected it. Then they put it back together, with the keyboard connector secure, and are, unsurprisingly, unable to duplicate the problem. Something similar happened to my MSI 1013: I opened it up to upgrade the RAM, and when I put it back together the keyboard didn't always work, so I opened it up again and I found I hadn't secured the keyboard connector properly.

 

The issue isn't really the specific root though; there are a myriad of causes that could be looked into, not the least of which is the flex inherent in the design. The fact that within the warranty period the vendor is unwilling to rectify the situation of a literally unusable unit AND places the burden of technological investigation on to the end user is unsupportable.

Considering avadirect merely reships products sent to them in an almost complete condition they bear a little responsibility to act in any situation where a customer has any displeasure whatsoever.

no wonder so many of these places are gone in months lol

 

Well, they shouldn't have opened it up as I explicity asked if they could look at it or if they sent it to MSI. Their response was that, apparently, under their reseller warranty they had to send it to MSI.

I did NOT open it myself as I had no wish to jeapordize the warranty of a brand new machine. My MISTAKE was NOT sending it directly to MSI.

Had I bought the parts individually and assembled it myself, then I would have expected to go directly to the various OEMs, however in this case I did the usual thing, contact the original builder. Frankly I was originally all set to obtain an RMA directly from MSI, however avadirect explicitly asked me to RMA it to them FULLY understanding the problem along with links to the various forum (MSI) threads of my and others keyboard problems with the same symptoms. I even dug up similar problems for completely different models/chipsets. AFAIC I went WELL beyond what should be expected of an end customer in attempting to resolve this problem on my own.

IOW if you CANNOT afford to or just WILL NOT support a product then you or your company has no business selling that product and deserves every last bit of negative commentary regarding shoddy and non-service. THIS is why places go out of business as often(or more? no hard data) as just having a crappy business model.

Resellers also mostly seem to sell desktop systems which they build from components, which represents an even greater support problem as they have more individual parts all, each with their own individual OEM warranties to deal with. When buying a pre-built system from a 3rd party it's not the customer's responsibility to go running after each OEM and trying to get components repaired or replaced under the OEM warranty. While it is true that they could do so for most of the components, most people just buy pre-built systems so that they don't have to hassle with.

[EDIT]
That said, all of my desktops except for 2 powermacs are machines that I built and upgraded over time myself. Usually the components can be determined to be good or bad within minutes of installation and powerup, although sometimes with mechanical faults it may take a while for problems to show, e.g. drives, cooling systems, etc. I have gotten exactly one DOA CPU(probably improperly handled during shipment) in 100s that I've either usedf myself or installed for other people or companies, and have had a few boards die from the use of those Taiwanese electrolytic caps where they tried to copy a Japanese manufacturer's electrolyte formula and go it wrong, along with exactly one hdd that failed prematurely (powermac, but it died out of warranty, replacement drive is still running after 6y whereas the first drive didn't even last 18m).
[/EDIT]

 

Hello Everyone,

This customer of ours was having an issue with his keyboard not functioning. The keyboard would do this randomly. We agreed that an RMA needed to be issued and the system needed to be sent to MSI for repair. When we received the system we tested it for almost a day without and issues. I then sent a message to him asking him to please describe the problem once more because we were unable to reproduce the problem. I don't know if it was a misunderstanding but he started to use profane language and was very upset.. All I wanted was another detailed description of the issue so we can relay this information to MSI when we sent in for repair. We were going to send in the notebook to MSI regardless but I believe this to be a big misunderstanding so we issued a refund for his notebook.

Thank you.