Razer Support Experience

I've owned Razer products for a long time, and have had mostly positive experiences with their functionality. I own both a 2014 and 2013 Razer Blade and recently had to send in my 2013 model in for repairs. This was my first time interacting with Razer Support and the experience was extremely negative.

My 2013 Blade stopped charging randomly one day. I tracked it down to the wiring in the DC-IN component (piece that takes power from the Adapter to the Motherboard). The wires seemed to have shorted out, or overheated, and become brittle, falling apart in my hand once I removed them. I sent my now out of warranty Blade in for a replacement DC-IN, including instructions on what needed to be repaired, and the troubleshooting I had already done to confirm this was the case. To start with, it took Razer a week after they received the laptop (according to USPS) to figure out they did in fact receive it, but only after pestering by myself over email. The repairs themselves required me to constantly email Razer for updates or else I would hear nothing from them. All in all, they had my laptop almost a month to replace a simple piece that would have taken me 2 minutes to install if I had access to their custom DC-IN piece.

When I received my laptop back, I noticed that my WiFi card no longer showed in Windows. When I opened up my laptop, I noticed that the Intel WiFi card I had previously installed was replaced with the standard Killer Wireless-N card that ships with the 2013 Blade. I also noticed that a visible dent on my laptops left Shift key had magically been repaired. It was clear that my laptop chassis\motherboard had been replaced, but they had forgotten to take my upgraded WiFi card out of my original motherboard, even though they had moved my upgraded secondary SSD. It took another month of back and forth for them to finally agree to send me another Intel WiFi card to replace the one that I had sent in with my original laptop.

At the end of the day, it wasn't about the custom WiFi card that came back missing, but the overall terrible experience dealing with this "premium" laptop brand. I spent way to much time getting the entire repair sorted out, and Razer still hasn't admitted that they made a mistake. Instead of trying to make it right and just admit they screwed up, they told me that I shouldn't have sent in my laptop for repairs with custom parts in it as their technicians are only trained to deal with out of box parts, and that they were making a one time exception. Their Liability Waiver that you sign before sending in a product for repair makes no mention of that by the way.

Just a word of warning for anyone with Blade laptops that needs to send them in for repair (especially if you have custom parts like a lot of people on this forum). I'm seriously considering just selling my Blades and getting one of the other premium gaming laptops because I can't imagine going through this again.

 

Razer do state upfront that their laptop is not user-serviceable. Which among other things could mean, that the repair/service procedures they have in place do not account for any custom parts you may have installed and you should expect to lose them in the process unless you take them out yourself.

Considering the specifics of your case (custom parts + attempted self repair), you'd have to go through similar stuff with most of the "other premium brands" except, maybe, Alienware or Apple. And the result would not necessarily be as good, i.e. you did get all your custom parts back and your laptop fixed in the case with Razer. Note: I'm not saying this is how it should be, just how it is. The support sucks in general across all brands, with very few exceptions. Your experience with Razer was actually quite OK, end-result-wise.


Edit: Thanks for the information on the DC-IN issue.

 

Fair enough, and I agree that in the end it turned out OK, but there are a few things to note:

1) I paid for this repair. I fully understand that custom parts (and really we're talking about a custom WiFi card and SSD...not exactly rocket science here) and my self repair should void my warranty. That was why I was fine paying a premium for the repair in the first place.

2) I was not contacted or informed about anything other than my DC-IN being replaced. If they had questions on the custom part, I should have been notified instead of going through the problems I had. My repair PO didn't mention anything about a chassis\motherboard replacement. If it had, this whole thing probably could have been avoided.

3) My biggest issue wasn't with the end result, but how I was treated and the extended period of time it took to get things resolved. I have had much better experiences with screw ups with other premium brands, both in and out of the consumer tech industry, because they fixed the problem immediately without the need for me to constantly bug them. Instead of making it right, like let's say offering to make my repairs free, and getting a customer for life, they completely annoyed me by making me sink even more of my time into the issue.

 

That's the number one CS folly. If you treat the customer like their time is not important you will get a bad rep. If you fail to communicate you will get a bad rep.

Personally I'd like to see them provide parts for sale for out of warranty work. I bought a fan from aliexpress for $50, that's money Razer could have had. It's already a ridiculous markup, there's people selling them for $100. It's easy to replace I'd rather spend $50 than wait. It literally took me 15 minutes to do it from getting the tools out to booting up afterward and putting the tools away.

 

Definitely agree with that! I would have gladly bought a highly marked up piece to fix the issue myself as the value of the repair (high) vs the value of the repair piece\time (low) would have made it a no-brainer.