Is There Anyone Worse Than ASUS in the Customer Service Department?

[Jimbo]

I had heard stories over the years here on these forums, but never had the occasion to actually deal with them until now.
OMG! The horror stories are true!

I'm not really starting a thread to bash ASUS, I'm just wondering if there are any other vendors I should be avoiding too?
I know everyone has a horror story with even the best of companies, and that no company is perfect, but is ASUS as bad as it gets, or are there even worse out there?

Really, it's getting to be Kafkaesque and I'm only on my third contact with them.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

There mother boards I've had good experience's with, You think its bad then don't buy there GPU'S.

I contacted them as the fan's on my 780TI broke off(blades), I told them I had rigged Intel CPU fan's on them so I could use them. OH no problem if there warrantied, then after sending them in. They wanted $150 to remove my Intel fan's n put back the original fans(which will break again) !

Had a issue with a EVGA P55, was a regular member of the forums. They denied me, we all know it was pin burn but they left me holding the bag.....

 

[Jimbo]

I'm surprised to hear that about EVGA.

I really miss Intel's motherboards right about now. If you had a problem, they were on it, they cross shipped and were never jerks.

 

[Deders]

Creative.

 

[Jimbo]

It has been so long since I have owned anything by Creative, I had forgotten about them.

 

[Kenmitch]

I feel your pain as far as Asus goes. Had the unfortunate displeasure of dealing with them on a motherboard rma 4 years ago. To this day I still skip on past all things Asus when looking for new hardware.

Only other rma I had to deal with was about 15yrs or so ago with a power supply which was no hassle.

 

[Jimbo]

I'm pretty much in the same boat.
Lately I have used ASRock but I also now hear that they are owned by ASUS.
About a year ago I had to RMA a board to them and although they were not as good as Intel, they were not equal parts retarded/evil either.

 

[MongGrel]

Have several ASUS things around, mostly mobo's though.

Fortunately, I've never had to try RMA, have heard stories for many years myself.

 

[Deders]

Can't people in the US return hardware to the shop and let them deal with Asus?

 

[Jimbo]

Can't people in the US return hardware to the shop and let them deal with Asus?

Normally yes, but this item I purchased directly from ASUS. It was a stupid $5.00 I/O shield that didn't fit the motherboard that it was supposed to.
The postage to me was $7.00 and then they wanted me to pay for the postage to send it back to them (likely another $7.00) and only then they would process my measly $5.00 refund. They say they are keeping the postage.
They finally agreed to send me a FedEx label (via email) but they still demanded the I/O shield back.
At this point, they have pissed me off so much that they can keep their mislabeled I/O shields and I'll either build without it or junk/donate the board. I got the board from my nephew that tried to build his own computer without his uncle's help. 'Turn's out he bought an incompatible processor board combo, but he lost the I/O shield and almost everything else that came with it.

Now that I rationally think about this, I'm junking the board altogether and just grabbing another brand from Amazon since I'm building this for my poor friend's even poorer college student kid and I don't want any more issues.

 

[Deders]

Most companies won't even send out replacement I/O shields.

But yeah I had a similar situation with a PSU I bought (before I'd learned about good ones) not having the same wattage on each rail that was advertised, it was causing my SLI PC to shut down during heavy gaming load. The advertised wattage should have covered it.

They said that I should have to cover the cost of return postage, but I was on a tight budget and it was their fault I had to pay it.

 

[Mike64]

Can't people in the US return hardware to the shop and let them deal with Asus?

Our consumer protection laws at both the national and individual state level generally don't require retailers to accept returns for defective merchandise for any particular time period, so it basically depends on an individual retailer's policy. Though there are exceptions, many/most retailers do accept returns for some period of time post-purchase and during that time will usually exchange (if not refund) defective products for new ones rather than simply acting as an intermediary with the manufacturer.* But retailers rarely if ever accept returns for the full life of the product warranty. After the retailer's return period expires, one is expected to go directly through the manufacturer or their representative (and given the size of the US market, virtually all major manufacturers have offices of one sort or another here.)

________________________
* Manufacturer warranties rarely if ever provide for the exchange of a defective product for a brand new one. Occasionally they'll actually repair the existing product, more often they exchange the defective product for a refurbished one.

 

[CFP]

I don't know if they're still around, but Galaxy (video cards).

 

[LoveMachine]

I'm pretty much in the same boat.
Lately I have used ASRock but I also now hear that they are owned by ASUS.
About a year ago I had to RMA a board to them and although they were not as good as Intel, they were not equal parts retarded/evil either.

I think ASRock was spun off from ASUS in the past, and are separate companies now, iirc. I haven't had any dealings with ASRock, so let's not taint them unfairly yet. But, my ASUS RMA experience was abysmal as well.

 

[Jimbo]

I'd buy from ASRock again, they were not that bad, just a bit slow.

What do you or anybody think of Gigabyte?

 

[MongGrel]

I'd buy from ASRock again, they were not that bad, just a bit slow.

What do you or anybody think of Gigabyte?

I had Mobo caps die on a few Gigabyte boards with the green goo, but that was long ago.

Really haven't used one personally in a long time I guess. I'd imagine the caps have improved.

I have not used an ASRock, but in general they seem to rate well performance wise.

 

[Jimbo]

I had Mobo caps die on a few Gigabyte boards with the green goo, but that was long ago.

Really haven't used one personally in a long time I guess. I'd imagine the caps have improved.

I have not used an ASRock, but in general they seem to rate well performance wise.

I think their performance is OK, they were just slow in getting me a replacement board. No real hassle, just slow. It took them about a week to mail me a new board after they had received my old one.

 

[ReignQuake]

I sent an 570gtx to a retailer with details to replicate a fault the retailer refused to test it for more than 24 hours and sent it back as working, then they charged me $80 for it. EVGA tested it the day the package arrived and sent out a replacement that day and gave me a form to recover my money from the retailer.

Despite trying quite a few ASUS products, only the routers have worked. The company is a complete disaster for customer care.

The company that annoyed me the most was OCZ. Each time there was a major problem they claimed it was fixed, send you a new set of ram or an ssd and it'd be old stock from the bottom of the broken pile.

 

[Jimbo]

I sent an 570gtx to a retailer with details to replicate a fault the retailer refused to test it for more than 24 hours and sent it back as working, then they charged me $80 for it. EVGA tested it the day the package arrived and sent out a replacement that day and gave me a form to recover my money from the retailer.

Despite trying quite a few ASUS products, only the routers have worked. The company is a complete disaster for customer care.

The company that annoyed me the most was OCZ. Each time there was a major problem they claimed it was fixed, send you a new set of ram or an ssd and it'd be old stock from the bottom of the broken pile.

I remember OCZ back when they were the only ones to have a reasonably priced SSD. They were reasonably priced for a reason.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I sent my tablet into them at the first of the year and they turned it around pretty quickly.

 

[Torn Mind]

I'm pretty much in the same boat.
Lately I have used ASRock but I also now hear that they are owned by ASUS.
About a year ago I had to RMA a board to them and although they were not as good as Intel, they were not equal parts retarded/evil either.

AsRock is owned by Pegatron. While Pegatron did acquire AsRock in 2010, ASUS spun off Pegatron in June of 2010. Pegatron and ASUS pretty much severed all ties by 2012.

Way back in 2002, ASUS spun off AsRock, leaving AsRock to fend for itself against Foxconn, ECS, and other budget Chinese boards manufacturers.

 

[Jimbo]

I'd pay extra not to deal with a Chinese motherboard company (none of them are customer service oriented like Intel was), but I don't think that's an option anymore.

 

[Torn Mind]

My speculation is that ASUS aims for a low failure rate on products, and does whatever it takes to make sure the few failures that do happen are ignored if possible to maximize the $$$ they make. Meaning, their "support" are actually hired to be gatekeepers that prevent RMAs from happening.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Well, at least in my experience ASRock is soon to rival ASUS in this department.

Two support questions received but still unanswered after 3 weeks.

Dear Customer,

Please DO NOT reply to this automatic mail. It is just a confirmation that we have received your email. We will have technical support personnel to contact you soon.

For technical issue and emergency case, we suggest you to contact your dealer first.

If your dealer can’t solve your problem, ASRock web site also offers FAQ and CPU support lists (http://www.asrock.com/support). Some similar questions or solutions could be found there and our technical support engineers update the FAQ every month.

If it is regarding repair/RMA service, please kindly check with your dealer for related service. Please remember to record the model name & product serial number for future tracking.

Thanks for your email,
ASRock Technical Support Division

 

[MongGrel]

My speculation is that ASUS aims for a low failure rate on products, and does whatever it takes to make sure the few failures that do happen are ignored if possible to maximize the $$$ they make. Meaning, their "support" are actually hired to be gatekeepers that prevent RMAs from happening.

Probably about right.

Well, at least in my experience ASRock is soon to rival ASUS in this department.

Two support questions received but still unanswered after 3 weeks.

That sucks, sorry to hear that.

I had not really heard much mentioned in general about ASRock RMA's.