The Asus RMA experience review!

After a fiasco of incompetence, lies and downright unprofessional behaviour on the part of Asus staff my R1f has still not been repaired.

Long story short(ish)

03/04/07 Delivery of R1F. Faults began to occur such as broken bag, battery degrading, hard disk ticking, fingerprint reader falling off, pen scratched, static on headphone jack, deformed touchpad, screen hinge loose etc.

21/04/07 1st contact with Asus (resulting in laughter at faults by agent and being told to contact the repair company myself to see if they could replace the unit). The repair company (CRC) said they had neither the authority to do so nor any clue why I was told to contact them. Later that day finally got to speak to an Asus team leader who referred me to customer service. I was asked to contact Michael in CS.This was attempted 3 times and failed.

24/04/07 Attempted contact with Michael, failed again.

25/04/07 When called 3 times Michael was still unavailable and one Vasco Sousa asked me to email the details (including delivery dockets) so that he could pass them to his manager to try for a replacement. I would be contacted by phone according to Vasco.

06/05/07 No response having been forthcoming I filed a technical complaint outlining my issue on the Asus Tech forum in the early morning (00:32)

08/05/07 Received email response from Vasco Sousa apologising and asking me to contact them again. He had been made aware on the 25/04 that I would not be in a position to communicate between the 8th and 19th due to legal exams but appears to have forgotten.

22/05/07 Contacted Asus again after exams to be told Vasco Sousa had left the company. The responding agent had no idea how to proceed and finally I got a chance to speak to the elusive Michael. The situation was explained in full detailing all faults and he said he would arrange a courier to pick it up. While on the phone to me he complained 3 times that his attempt to input my address for a courier was failing but assured me he would sort it out later. The R1F was packed up that day and sealed awaiting a courier.

29/05/07 No courier. Contacted Asus, spoke to Michael who told me to contact the repair company myself to sort out a courier (no apologies at all). Repair company said they could not organize a courier themselves due to the fact I lived in Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland, and it had been impossible for Michael to do so, therefore he had lied and delayed the process. CRC said they would email UPS dockets that day.

30/05/07 CRC emailed UPS dockets and UPS contacted. Courier arranged for 05/06/07 (Irish bank holiday weekend).

04/06/07 Contacted Michael and asked to speak to his manager Ravinder Sanders. Ravinder had no idea what was going on and continually re-iterated Asus policy to the effect that they will not replace a unit after a 7 day period has elapsed. He had no comment to make as to the alleged conduct of his subordinates but said there had been a breakdown of communications somewhere and irrespective of my treatment the tablet was not going to be replaced.

05/06/07 R1f Sent by UPS to CRC in England.

15/06/07 I was contacted by CRC at 10.30am to query the fault description given to them by Asus customer service as their engineer could not understand the faults described. Gave CRC full details again of the issue and they said they would pass it to the engineer that day.


20/06/07 I contacted CRC to query what had become of my R1f. Nothing had been done as they had not passed on the details to their engineer. They requested the details again and I gave them again. After this I contacted Ravinder Sanders in Asus UK to ask why this was happening and when i could expect my laptop back. He read out the details which had been given to CRC from his department which included a statement that my fingerprint reader and touchpad had been ‘ticking’. In fact my hard disk was ticking. It was no wonder CRC could not understand a fault description which couldn’t exist. Ravinder asked for the details of the faults again and they were given. No apology has been forthcoming from Asus UK or CRC.

The simple situation is this. Asus UK cannot claim to offer satisfactory support. I am both a tech support agent and a customer service agent (telephone based in+out). If I or any of my fellow agents were to act in this manner towards customers we would be looking for another job. It’s that simple. Having incurred considerable costs to contact them repeatedly, the time involved and the fact that the faults were all caused by Asus themselves I am disgusted that I will most likely receive my old unit back with at least a still degrading battery. If laughing at, lying to, and delaying a customer who has received a faulty €1700 new laptop is a "breakdown in communications" I’d love to know what the company considers a real problem. Maybe a different department deals with those. I await the next mistake by this company with baited breath. Meanwhile Ill look for a new non-Asus laptop.

Hi Mr.sneis, May I ask which division of Asus you were dealing with as there is obviously a vast difference in customer service depending on region. Oh and im very pleased to hear you had a better experience and hope all is going well.

To date, I've read several of these experiences (and had a couple of my own) with Asus' support, and some patterns have emerged:

1.) Asus' level of service and professionalism seems (to me) to be fairly high in North America, medium to high in Asia, and fairly low in Europe. This means that European customers are much more likely to experience a "horror story" and much less likely to have their claims satisfactorily resolved.

2.) Asus' global warranty is greatly impacted by the fact that the quality of service varies by location

due to these 2 observations, it is apparent to me that while Asus has standardized their notebook production, resulting in (generally) a notable level of quality and style, they still are in desperate need of standardizing their quality of service in order to better address the concerns of notebook owners globally

I've had experience with Asus repair in North America...and it's not very good. I sent my R1F off with the battery problem, static on the headphone port, wifi that turns itself off when the tablet is on AC power (overheating??), scratching pen, and fingerprint sensor that was loose.

The machine was returned with the box I sent it in inside a larger box, but very few packing peanuts were added and the tablet was able to slide around by large amounts. Not a single thing was repaired and the keyboard wasn't even seated! The replacement battery went bad within a month, the pen silo and fingerprint sensor were completely untouched. They had a curt one line response on an "engrish" workorder that said they replaced the motherboard, but I still have the static on the headphone port, wifi that won't stay on more than a few minutes (on AC...on battery it stays on, but hey...I also have a battery life of under an hour!).

I've RMA'd it again and it's been in California for 2 weeks now. Asus has never let me know that they received it, there's been no feedback whatsoever. For the first couple of months of ownership, they even blamed me for my battery problem! They treated me like an idiot that didnt' know that using certain apps would reduce battery life yet I told them repeatedly that I was comparing battery life using the same apps and power settings.

The horrid engrish emails, unwillingness to work/communicate with customers who have the misfortune of buying a lemon (every manufacturer has lemons in a production run, but how they treat customers who buy one of those is the key), and the fact that it appears that they can't repair these tablets lead me to suggest that people should think very long and hard before they choose to buy one of these machines.

I've got nearly $2000 invested in this tablet, that doesn't work in even a partial way. I had to purchase a replacement notebook since the R1F was utterly unusable. So I've got my money tied up in two machines. I can't sell the R1F until it gets repaired completely. But I find it ironic that I as a single individual with limited financial resources am held accountable if I sell a lemon computer, but a multi-million/billion dollar company is not. If it's wrong for me to misrepresent and sell a bad product it's also wrong for a company to do it.

So I have a 5 pound doorstop that cost me nearly $2000 (got the modular battery), but I have to walk a fine line with complaining because on some forums, complainers are made to feel like pariahs. Anyone would scream if someone stole $2000 from your bank account. So I wonder why it's considered bad form to scream about spending $2000 and ending up with a plastic doorstop that generates heat when plugged in. That's the extent of the usability of my R1F.

Too bad you couldn't send it to Asus' Canadian repair depot. Of all the notebooks we've sold, we've gotten best results dealing with Asus. As far back as the bad cap fiasco, they were the only ones willing to use the term "leaking caps". Dell was "power spikes" (near pissed my self laughing), Acer was sure there was "no such thing" but I did manage to get a Gateway tech to once admit "hearing of it".

Of special note is with a missing notebook Purolator Courier had delivered to the wrong address, Asus hunted it down themselves and upon locating it with a neighboring company repaired the backlight and had it back to me in days.

Here we push Asus because of the customer service we have received for our customers. 14 years of dealing with Asus and they have yet to disappoint. Maybe its my suave voice.