Sager NP8151-S (Clevo P650RP6) from XoticPC, Log of RMA

So I bought a Sager NP8151-S (Clevo P650RP6) from XoticPC last year, around September. A few months after I got the laptop, starting around January, I started getting BSODs whenever I was playing graphically intensive games like Paragon, but since I didn't really have time for an RMA and I needed the laptop mostly for work, I just stopped gaming on it and switched over to only playing "light" games like LoL. Starting a month or so ago, though, the screen started flickering black and I figured I had a faulty inverter cable in there and that the screen would give out. Since I still had the one year warranty with Xotic, I figured that I would send it in for an RMA ~~BUT~~ my internship started off and my work laptop wasn't available yet so I held off on it.

Welp, about two nights ago my laptop just completely kicked the bucket.

I was kinda just surfing on Chrome when the laptop just powered off suddenly and shut down. Upon trying to restart it, the fans would just spin really loudly for about 20 - 30 seconds before the laptop powered off. I figured it might be a problem with a sudden shutdown and RAM so I tried opening it, taking out the battery, holding the power button to reset the RAM and cleaning out the RAM sticks and reslotting them. Nothing seems to work and a computer tech friend suggested that it was a faulty motherboard problem(he also suggested that my earlier BSODs might be stemming from this).

Well, no problem, I figured. It was a hardware problem and I could just send it in for an RMA. The folks at Xotic were pretty nice when I bought the laptop and I've been referring all of my friends to them since. This wasn't my first time having bad luck and buying a lemon, so I figured I'd just send it back to Sager to fix through the warranty with Xotic.

Unrelatedly, lemons happen all the time and it's kind of the luck of the draw. This does kind of inconvenience me but thankfully, my work had a replacement laptop for me to use while my Sager is being fixed. Not blaming Xotic for Sager's poor craftsmanship on this model(I know they're just the middleman here) but for other forum users, learn from my mistakes, send that **** back immediately for appraisal/repairs/refunds etc. (whatever you think is appropriate).

These are my logs, ladies and gents. This forum's been instrumental in my laptop/desktop/parts buying decisions in the past and I figured I'd make my first post here a record of the RMA experience with Xotic so that other people can see what they're like.

Log 1: Sending it in to the RMA address Xotic provided. ~~NOT~~ providing the password to my accounts. My work involves pretty patent heavy stuff and I asked the reps if it would be okay that I restrict access to software since the failures(display inverter cable, faulty motherboard) are hardware in nature. Spoke to Reps Emily and Landon. Really friendly people. Did a good job allaying my fears. Sending it in via UPS with the laptop packed in there.

Disclaimer: I'm generally positively biased towards Xotic, so if I seem like I'm overpraising them, maybe take it with a grain of salt.

Please let me know if you've done your own RMAs with them. What should I expect? Should I stay chill? What do you think of what's happened to me?

 

Thanks for posting your experience. We're watching this one and are always happy to assist.

 

Thanks for weighing in, Tanner! Hopefully this resolves itself in the best way possible soon.

Log 2: Sent out to the RMA address after I got out of work today. It should arrive at the RMA address by Friday this week according to UPS. I chose Ground Commercial, which I believe is covered under XoticPC's policies. It's the slowest one, but hey, it's free. I expect there won't be any updates until Sager gets it.

 

Normally we get updates when it arrives at Sager (or any manufacturer), and then another update when it ships out. It isn't like when buying a computer from us, and there are different phase updates, it is pretty basic. But we'll update you when we find out more on your RMA.

 

Log 3: It's arrived at Sager. The process begins now I guess.

 

No update?

It's now August.