MALIBAL Reviews

thesilent85, just read the reviews, you'll see the positive ones easily outweigh the negative ones

 

Just ordered P180HM, that thing is gona be a beast after the build!

 

Your 100% Quality Assurance Guarantee is misleading. You are leading customers to believe that you will replace products with manufacturer defects indefinitely. This is clearly not the case as you requested bakuhar to RMA (service) his laptop rather than outright replace it.

You should point out the term/length caveat clearly so that in the future your business practices do not appear deceptive.

**Within 30 days.

Straight from the Malibal website:

I was not able to definitively determine what the "limited warranty period" actually is, however given bakuhar's situation and previous history with defective Malibal hardware - I believe the circumstances call for an expedited replacement process...unless you enjoy losing customers. The only options that would work for him based upon what he has said are in bold, yet Malibal is apparently refusing to take either course of action...so I must ask this question: Do you enjoy losing customers?

If you do enjoy losing customers, then the appropriate steps are already being taken. However if losing customers and tarnishing your sterling reputation is not what you aim to do, I would advise you do everything in your power to fix this situation in the most timely manner possible.

Or you could just issue this man a refund, and I would be glad to provide a product that works as well as customer service that actually stands behind a guarantee.

Good day sir.

 

Ok, anyone who doens't have a serious problem with this is probably illiterate. Besides the fact that the '100% QA Guarantee' is a message board post not even in the official Warranty paperwork, 30 days timeline is NEVER mentioned at all in the warranty contract.

Quoted from your own sites warranty documentation.

The only mention of the '30 day' timeline in the entire warranty documentation is at the owners discretion to cancel his own limited warranty service, which is documentated to last one year.

This is without a doubt the option I will be taking once this RMA is submitted. The complete lack of your own guidelines baffles me and I will be writing a letter to the CEO of the company that your own employees who represent this company via a 3rd party message board violate their own warranty documentation.

Edit: Forgot to quote that this is "at malibals discrection" which means I'll be stuck with a 2 month long RMA process to ship/receive to an APO address. To say I'm furious is the understatement of the year.

 

#1: The 100% QA Guarantee isn't a part of our warranty. It's an offer intended for NBR Members.

#2: The refund option in the warranty is to be used by us in the event that we cannot service and/or repair the laptop for whatever reason.

#3 The return policy is outlined in our site terms, here: Site Policies - MALIBAL

 

I'll be submitting my return as soon as I am able to get off work and get my S/N and begin the process. To say I'm dissapoitned is an understatement, I expected accomodating customer service when I constantly have brought up that as a customer the only feasible option I have is to either, A. fix it myself (won't happen) or

b.

*caveat that this is at malibals discretion

This is what I had done with my first machine and do not see the issue with performing the same process, however I am no longer ashamed to see these posts in the light of day.

People need to see how wishy-washy this customer service is, I know I'll get reemed on my return for posting this for 'wear and tear' and anything else they can chalk up. Frankly I don't care, I'll be ordering another machine tomorrow while this return is processed.

Oh, you mean the ty UPS box with styrofoam corners that came with this laptop? My first one was in a 2nd enclosure, had a carrying bag etc. This is unreal.

People need to see how international customers are treated even when the situation is laid out how to best suit the customer. I get it, you're here to make money. Part of that shouldn't be spurning customers because you have to do a international RMA (that will take forever) when other options are clearly available.

I'm done with this 1800$ paperweight.

A footenote while I'm posting this. Why the is the best customer service outlet a 3rd party message board? The support chat system on malibals website may as well not exist, I've never seen a representative. On both of my previous trouble tickets, I've never received a name or contact information for the technician I was troubleshooting with, just an org box. Have some professionalism. This carries over to phone troubleshooting; the individual I spoke with last night in tech support, after outlining very specifically what is going on with my computer, just sat on the line for 30 seconds saying nothing then noncomitally saying the BIOS are corrupted. Well no kidding? REALLY? I'm glad you can use google in the span of a phone call because I already knew this.

Conclusion: Machine was awesome when it worked, which lasted not at all on the first machine, and just shy of 90 days on the 2nd one. If you want to risk having your machine fail spontaneously with poor customer service, go for it guys.

I'm done with this message board. I've tried to remain somewhat objective but now I'm just getting upset over a machine. I'll take my business elsewhere.

- Active Duty Staff Sergeant, United States Air Force

 

You started out by complimenting our customer service and now that we have explained our terms to you and are abiding by them 100%, and have responded to your posts in literally minutes each time, our customer service is now wishy washy?

It's unfortunate that your laptop is having issues, but again - that's why there is a warranty. Once we get the laptop back, we'll expedite the service to reduce downtime as much as possible.

 

does stuck pixel fall under that warranty as a defect?

 

If you checked the box where it says no dead pixel guarantee, I think any dead pixel will be treated the whole machine as DoA. Thus they cover your shipping also.

Even if you don't have that guarantee, I think they will change the screen for you at your expense (I mean shipping). I am not certain though, best to wait for them to response to that.

 

Another stuck/dead pixel eh. Dear me.

If I recall, for the standard warranty to kick in - you gotta have 6+ pixels in a broken, tired, lonely state.

 

The goal of any customer service representative is to continuously meet and exceed the expectations of customers. This is how you build a positive image for your company and ensure that customers will come back to you for all of their laptop needs. The idea is that that they will also refer their friends to your company so that they can become repeat customers as well.

In this example, Malibal seems to have met and exceeded bakhuhar's customer service expectations in the past (for the first replacement). Well done. However, when the laptop failed again - Malibal was put into a double or nothing sort of scenario. Either you meet and exceed the customer's expectations again and he is doubly impressed by your service, and will swear by it to his friends...or you fail to meet or exceed his expectations and thus the negativity begins.

In bakuhar's case, I do not think that it is unreasonable for him to expect an expedited replacement (or refund). Under his circumstances, sending the laptop in for service and waiting for it is the only course of action that will not work, yet this is the only option Malibal has offered him thus far. It is clearly stated that they can, at their discretion, offer either one of the options that will work. Why has Malibal chosen at their own discretion the only option that will not work for a particular customer?

Like it or not, in quickly replacing the laptop the first time, a standard for service was set. Bakuhar clearly spelled out in his first post that he was pleased with that service. Now when the second laptop failed, when it is even more important for Malibal to step up to the plate, they choose to take the low road. That, sir, is the definition wishy washy. His service the second time around was inconsistent with the service he received the first time around.

I would be embarrassed if I were you. Not only did you just try to call a customer out, but you just tried to call a customer out on something they have a legitimate reasonable complaint about. Have you ever heard the phrase "The customer is always right." I have. However I've never heard the phrase "Try to make the customer appear fickle in an attempt to save face."

If you want to save face, a refund for this customer would be a good start.

 

Whoa, 30-day return policy? I'm glad I read this thread. My MALIBAL crapped out in about four days. All I've done so far is put Firefox on it, read e-mails, and play King's Bounty. I would be inclined to RMA my broken GPU, but a 30-day return policy seems like motivation for company to just mess around with that problem -- read: not fixing the problem, which I see often -- and doing so until getting my cash back is impossible.

 

Sser, please open a ticket on our site and include your NBR username so I can look into this... sounds like you might be having driver issues.

 

I'm really starting to regret buying a Malibal. I sent my laptop in to have the motherboard replaced due to the fact it woudln't power up.

I paid out of my own pocket overnight shipping each way. It took they only one day to replace the mobo, and they sent it back to me. So I was out of a a laptop Tuesday - Friday afternoon.

I recieved the laptop, and threw my HDD back into it.

Now the WLAN is not working. I was able to get in touch with their telephone support last night, and the gentleman walked me through opening the laptop and checking the WLAN card.

It did not show in the device manager, yet it was plugged in. We reseated the card a couple times, and it showed in the device manager, but as an "Unknown device". I tried installing the realtek drivers, but it kept telling me they were the wrong drivers for the hardware.

After rebooting several times (which unveiled another problem) the WLAN card finally came up and I was able to connect to my wireless.

It worked all night until I rebooted again this morning. Then I had to go through the same hour long fiasco of reseating, rebooting, and praying.

I opened the back of my wife's asus and it had a mini PCI WLAN card also. I went to intel's website, downloaded the drivers for it, installed it in my laptop, and same exact symptons.

To rule out that my card is bad, I took my Malibal driver CD, plugged my realtek into my wfie's computer and it works flawlessly.

I got a new HDD this morning and reinstalled my operating system thinking something may have gone corrupt. Same symptoms still. Installed 32 bit windows 7, and it seems to have the same problem too.

I took all of my RAM out except one, and same thing.

ALSO. When I reboot my computers is hangs up at the BIOS spash screen. I have to hard power it down by holding the power button 10s then finally it starts up. THEN... It locks up at Windows screen. (Black screen where the ribbin is coming together right after the bios screen).

Now I'm looking around for a BIOS update. That is the only thing I know to try right now unless someone has some other ideas, or the Malibal people reply to my email from 8:30am this morning.

I am more frustrated right now than an Amish electrician.

 

Whats up with all the negativity now toward Malibal???? A few weeks ago everything was great, and people were happy with their purchase. All of a sudden everybody is now upset with their laptop!


Another strange thing why is Malibal not doing anything about it???

 

Thesilent85, it's not as bad as it seems. You basically have two people here with problems. The Jimbo Slyce character is the world's most obvious sock account. The sser user is also very suspicious. This user claims to have purchased a laptop from us with a defective graphics card, and yet they have never contacted us about the issue (even after we asked them to do so) but have instead come on here and created an account for the sole purpose of stating that we sent them a defective graphics card.

This user goes on to say in their post, that they're not even going to RMA their supposed defective graphics card. Huh?! I'm really not sure what to make of that post.

Anyway, we're in the process of helping those who actually need our assistance.

P.S. An NBR Moderator has already caught people using sock accounts to attack us in the past. So this is nothing new.

 

I was about to say it all seems like a smear campaign. My current experience of Malibal has been nothing but fantastic.
I'm looking forward to receiving the laptop and hopefully adding to the long list of happy customers

 

10char Agreed.

 

It is most definitely people with an agenda. The one poster who registered just to say that you should either issue a refund or replace with a new laptop is just straight fishy.

I wouldn't let any of the recent activity sway me away from Malibal.

 

so I was reading through the forum after literally days of me being told to purchase of another brand by Malibal on chat I cannot even begin to say how pleased I am by Malibal's meanness when I reflect back on it now. I doubt this is a smear campaign, as I was as well was a potential customer; and have seen the bad side of Malibal.

[Actually, even I was a little surprised at first at Malibal's unprofessional and rude behaviour on chat after reading all the good reviews on the laptop build and customer service]


As to Malibal-

I feel I should protect users when falsely accused by a company of being ''fake'', so kindly do not direct insults towards people who might be just stating their experiences.
And as to ''helping those who actually need our assistance'', I certainly hope that you do help them better than you did to me.

[To all those who read this-
I was a potential buyer, but I posted a question about Malibal which summarised all its faults after reading reviews. After that I was told to buy off another brand and non of my queries were solved. Malibal also actually replied to my ticket with a question at to whether I was the person blogging on them instead of answering. I might seem like a bad person who is out to post bad reputations but I am not. I am just stating the truth (Which I found out the hard way)]

The link to the post which summarised all bad reviews which I have read:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/reseller-feedback-forum/603103-malibal-reviews-24.html
[check somewhere in the middle of the page]

 

Well I'm not seeing any retaliation from the two suspect users once it was pointed out how shady they were. I agree that Jimbo Slyce is a sock account and I'd love for the IP's to be compared to other posters here on this page. Slyce and Sser both have 3 posts combined... total! Sounds fishy to me.

All I know for a fact is that I have spoken to a lot of the resellers/builders recently and found Malibal fantastic to deal with and can't wait to receive my new laptop, hopefully in the next few days. Matthew was a legend on the phone and all emails I have sent have been replied to within an hour, even at 8:30am EST which is 5:30am PST... I mean they should be asleep at that hour, right?

link to my Clevo shopping experience

 

It's really simple;

If an alleged customer doesn't substantiate their claims, ignore them. Defending them is pointless as they have the means and the wherewithal to defend themselves with proof.

 

Totally agree 2.0™ however the only issue is when new user logs in and reads the bile, taking it at face value because they have no reason to question it.

Sadly it just seems to undermines the authority of this forum, which largely involves intelligent and respectable people who have genuine and well informed experiences with the companies and the products.

 

Shills and trolls come with the territory. Not much can be done about them. Nature of the beast.

If we find that they are sock accounts, the obvious will be done.

 

Trolls will be trolls I guess.

 

I think this is really dangerous ground to consider those who have just signed up to state something negative about Malibal, as 'trolls'.

In other news: My new Malibal should hopefully be shipping soon. Been about 5 bizzy days. w00t!

 

Oh certainly it's dangerous to state that all who sign up to be negative are trolls but certainly lately it would seem so, especially given the lack of substantiation as 2.0™ indicated.

 

How do you propose people substantiate their claims though?

Edit: Not my intention to derail the thread at all. So I'll just be quiet and stop clogging up these tubes.

 

Easy, Malibal rep can confirm. They will ask those "customers" to contact them via their ticket system with the forum username and their order #.

Once they do that, Malibal rep will confirm that they are indeed their customers. If they don't do that, then you know what that means.

 

I hope you can see the conflict inherent there.

Anyway, my Malibal has just been shipped Will update when I open the pretty box, and touch the blessed surface - stroke the sacred buttons and caress the holy power switch. Might be a week though!

 

Mine shipped today too, just waiting for UPS to pick it up and confirm the delivery date... looks like I have a new webpage to fixate over for the immediate future

 

Hi everyone Im really looking forward to buying Veda P180HM - I've never seen such nice design tbh But I'm really *not good* in building and choosing components myself. Can anybody give me any advise on it? especially, what should I include in it to run games as smoothly as possible(games are the main priority). For example, I'n not sure about
(8GB) 8192MB, PC3-12800/1600MHz DDR3 - 2 SO-DIMM
(12GB) 12288MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 3 SO-DIMM
(12GB) 12288MB, PC3-12800/1600MHz DDR3 - 3 SO-DIMM
or graphics card (I dont understand why people take Radeon, because I thought that GeForce is the best for games) and whats a point of 2 x at the begining? Double Graphics gard?oO so:
2 X NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M 1.5GB GDDR5 (SLI)

High-End Graphics featuring Microsoft DirectX® 11 (User Upgradeable)
2 X AMD® Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5 (CrossFireX)

And things like that; I would be glad if someone will help me to build it
thank you

 

UPDATE: The user bakuhar was worried that shipping times would be a month each way since he is stationed overseas - however - it only took 5 total days for the package to reach us. He shipped it on the 20th and it arrived on the 25th. We are currently servicing his notebook and will pay to ship it back ASAP.

For the user Kenwho455, we have overnighted him a loaner laptop that he can use for his work while his laptop is being serviced.

Please note: these are the only two verified customers in the last few pages to have reported issues.

 

How is the status on my ticket number? Did you receive your order of screens to replace mine?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/638564-just-got-my-malibal-lotusp151hm1.html

 

That's awesome Malibal. Can't say that you guys don't 100% try to make it right. Applaud you all.

 

Which Shipping Provider shall I choose to get it safely as possible to England, but at the same time, not paying 400$ pref. :/
- UPS Worldwide ExpeditedSM
- UPS Express SaverSM
- Global Express Guaranteed® Non-Document Rectangulardays
- Express Mail® International (EMS)
- Priority Mail® International

And can anyone please comment on 2 of these graphic cards:
2 X NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M 1.5GB GDDR5 (SLI)
2 X AMD® Radeon HD 6990M 2GB GDDR5 (CrossFireX)
Because I always thought that NVIDIA GeForce is the best option for gaming, but going through pages and people's comments, seems like people prefer to pick Radeon 6990 for some reason :/

 

Hey Breyl, people probably pick the Radeon due to the price differential - i.e, it's considerably cheaper, and the performance drop is not as much as the price drop Also, overclocking can result in only a 2-3 percent difference according to some benchmarks (to the 580). It's certainly better than the 560 option you've got there.

Regarding shipping - I paid for Express Mail International as I didn't mind waiting a few days. Unfortunately according to the USPS tracking site, it's been sitting in customs for 2 days, making it a total of 3 days spent in the US - so it's looking unlikely I'll be receiving it in 3-5 business days. This is dissapointing, but nothing to do with Malibal.

I would however, and Im not sure if this is the right place to ask - like to see if someone can give me an expectation for international mail delivery (New Zealand) in this case?

 

The performance difference between those two graphics options is going to be massive. The two 6990's in crossfire will be almost 75% faster than two 560m's. The 560 is a midrange laptop card while the 6990m is on the very high end. Here are benchmarks for both configurations:

AMD Radeon HD 6990M Crossfire - Notebookcheck.net Tech
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M SLI - Notebookcheck.net Tech

It's usually easiest to see the difference in the gaming benchmarks and 3DMark scores.

This chart is also useful:

Computer Games on Laptop Graphic Cards - Notebookcheck.net Tech

Nvidia cards being better than AMD cards (and vice versa) is a marketing thing. Both companies pay game publishers to make games "better on Nvidia", etc. I personally like Nvidia for 3DVision, but that's just an optional feature.

 

So really, should I pick 2 Radeon 6990M rather than 2 Nvidia 560? Money doesn't really matter that much. I just want to get as much as I can in this laptop.
I just read a lot of different comparance's reviews about them 2 / or Nvidia 580, and there are different opinions all the time :/
And also; people are keep telling me that even 1 Radeon 6990 will burn my laptop, so I defo shoudlnt take 2.. can that be true? :/

 

Wait.. I thought it goes through the customs of your home country, not the country that it departs? At any rate, my laptop was in Canadian customs for 3 business days so I guess give it a few more days?

1 Radeon won't burn your laptop and if 2 would then why would it be given as an option? Yes, 2 x 6990s will run hotter than 2 x 560s but like MALIBAL said it will be a huge increase in performance.

 

Does it get very hot with 1 6990M ? Because, as I said, never tried Radeon, always used GeForce before :/
Basically I cant choose between two 560M GTX (2 X NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M 1.5GB GDDR5 (SLI) or 1 AMD® Radeon HD 6990M 2GB GDDR5, and I want the best performance in games as possible.

 

Well it was at he sorting facility, after passing through customs. Now however, despite not saying it had departed the facility - it has been updated to say it has arrived in New Zealand

Being held by customs on this end now, no doubt awaiting payment - import duties, GST etc - which is not cheap.

 

A 6990 will run warmer than a 560m because it takes more power to run, but no, it won't get extraordinarily hot. It runs around the same temperatures as a 580m/485m, but with 2x the performance of the 560m. I'd recommend the 6990m or the crossfire x2 6990's for the best performance. They'll smoke the 560m in gaming and benchmarks.

 

Ohh, as soon as I get my mind set on 6990M on its own, I'm always being told that CrossfireX is better on different forums, then again someone tells me that 1 6990M will run anything on highest.
+ this 100$ adapter, so out of my budget :/ dont know what to do

 

Save until you can afford it?

 

With 2 6990M, for how long will I be able to use it without charging it? 25 mins?

 

Would it matter? You are buying a desktop replacement machine. The battery you have will act like a mini UPS, that's it.

 

Yeah, but I still gonna use it without charging, very rarely of course, but will.. will it last at least.. mm .. an hour? oO

 

Could you guys keep the topic where it is appropriate?

This seems like the weirdest of places to talk about this..

 

Also, can you guys learn how to use the search engine? Why even buy a clevo when you can't even read posts that are stickied to the top of these sub forums. Apparently this can be compared to rocket science for some people.

(I know there are hundreds of pages and some searches are a "hit or miss" but most of these recent new posts and questions have been answered many times in the stickied threads.)