RMA questions

Alright, I realize that I've been posting about this to the point of annoyance in several other threads, but before I do anything I want to have some opinions.

I'm seriously considering RMAing right now, but there have been so many horror stories about Asus' more than terrible customer service, I'm a little turned off by the idea.

My main problems:

GPU overheating. (I've never had any actual problems, just high temps)

Extreme screen bleeding

Quite loose hinge

And I think there may be something loose in my speakers, as they will sometimes rattle when playing something loud. (Haven't had this recently, however.)


Now, if it weren't for everything I've heard I would have RMA'd without a second thought, but...

With these (hardware) problems, do you think it will go over well? How long do you think this could take? What's the average time?

I've submitted a service report, and I've now called Asus about it, only to be greeted by terrible service, once again.
The first guy I talked to, after waiting half an hour, told me his system was down and to call back. So I did. Second guy (who sounded suspiciously like the first) asked for my service number and asked if I'd like to RMA. Everything was going great, but before I could answer he hung up.


So this is my little rant. What should I do?

 

What do you mean by extreme screen bleed? Also, how bad are the hinges?

I don't know about the speakers. They ARE laptop speakers and will crackle/rattle when playing certain tones on higher volume settings. I wouldn't be concerned about that unless it was a more constant issue.

When I called Asus a few days ago to arrange my RMA, I got disconnected from the line too when I was on hold (I was 16 minutes into the call and ready to break a wine glass on someone's head xD), but called back and even though the guy on the other side had a rather thick accent (couldn't tell what kind of accent) I still got things taken care of. I actually had to call again to fix something, and I swear it was the same guy.

As far as the risk, I don't know. I have my experience with Acer, and I don't think any company could be worse at fixing something than Acer. I took pictures of my laptop and wrote a letter to the tech saying that the computer is in excellent condition with no scratches or anything and that I would like it to come back that way. I was very polite in my letter. :3
You catch more bees with honey than vinegar. And if in the unfortunate event my computer comes back with "obvious copious amounts of bananna" all over it, I'll go from there.

 

The screen bleeding is actually good/bad dependant on the day. It changes. But the top is generally an inch down, and the sides go in about half a cm, but the tone of white they are is very obvious on dark screens. Not a huge deal, but a bit of an annoyance.

The screen hinges, after the GPU, are the big problems. If the table I'm on shakes slightly, the screen wobbles quite noticeably. In fact, I can see the screen shaking slightly just from me typing this. When I'm closing the screen it simply drops from the weight of the LCD at 3 inches. I made a thread describing my problems in detail a few weeks ago. YouTube - Fri, 30 Jul #3

Crappy video, but it gets my point across. When the screen closes, I'm not doing anything.

What's most alarming about it, is it seems to be getting worse. Not the drop, but the screen play and the wobble. It also makes an odd popping noise when opening/closing.


As far as the disconnection goes, it was probably an accident, as the guy had just finished talking. But still.


EDIT: By the way, may I ask how you went about setting up the RMA? I haven't done this before, and I'm slightly confused. I submitted a form to Asus, got my service number, and I'm about to call again. Do I have to set things up with UPS myself, or...?

 

I called them directly. No forms. I told the guy that I had taken my laptop to Best Buy at the beginning of the month about an issue I was having with my screen. I was informed previously by Gary that they should have replaced it then, but the guy at Best Buy told me he wasn't sure if it was covered and it it would take a few weeks. I wasn't comfortable with this so up until a few days ago, I lived with it. I had recently gotten a new wallpaper that made the issue stand out like a sore thumb, and I also read about bright dots turning into bigger issues like lines in the screen. The guy on the phone told me something like "Well, it's a gaming notebook, it's supposed to have an excellent screen blah blah" and then I told him just how "excellent" the screen was. I told him it was like looking at your screen through a net because of the pixel shift. He put me on hold for a few minutes and came back with an RMA # for me.
I'll PM you with the support group phone number.

 

Okay, thanks for the insight and PM. I'll call again in a couple minutes, see where it goes from there.

 

Alright, I have everything set up. :/

10-14 business days... *sigh* They had better not screw anything up.

 

Good luck. I'll be sure to provide info on how my RMA went. So far it's been fairly smooth sailing.

 

Well the worst that can happen is they "lose" your lappy like that one guy

I would say that, if you sent it to cali, you'll get it back in about 25 real days but it will come back fixed (ie totally new screen). The "other" center (indiana? dont know), from what is posted here, is a gamble.

I hope you have a backup comp, it's going to be a pretty long and dull month for you...

 

I have a backup up computer for email and facebook and whatnot. It won't do much gaming though. I have my ps3 to tide me over in that regard.

However, I'm in Canada, so I guess it'll go to Ontario. Is that center any good? Are their repair times fast?


By the way, your post in the Owner's Lounge was the one that finally made up my mind about this. So I'm blaming you if anything goes wrong.

 

First off, I have always had a great experience with asus, But if you are having this many problems with them a suggest that as soon as you get connected with asus support ask to be transfered to there manager, If they ask why just state you wanted to thank them for there awesome tech support or some bs like that, This way you will never be disconected. Then it might take a couple more minutes typically no longer than 15 minutes. Once on the phone explain your problems and they should be able to help, really any problem you are having with your computer they should be able to fix it if its in the warranty period, Dont know if you bought it through BB or not but if you did you are suppose to give it to geek squad I myself called asus and just had it sent to asus because i dont trust geek squad.
Hope this helps

 

Thanks. I have everything set up to go now, so all's good.

Anyone know if the Ontario center is any good? Time and Quality wise?

And I specifically said not to recover the OS, but is there a good chance my HDD still be wiped? I have no way of backing up my HDD, aside from a 4gb flash drive. I've put saves, screenshots and bookmarks and important documents on it, and transferred them to my other computer for safe storage, but there's no way I'm going through my whole HDD 4gb by 4gb.

 

FYI, here's some info that you may find useful: Asus RMA and Warranty Guide

 

Thanks, that helped quite a lot. Very nice article.

My laptop is currently on a Fedex truck.

They showed up half an hour early, so I didn't really have time to pack it as well as I would have liked, so they'd better be careful. (Bubble wrap on only 1 side!!!!!)

 

Alright, this is getting a bit annoying. I RMA'd last Thursday, and their site still says they don't have it, even though Fedex said it arrived in Markham Friday morning. I called 2 days ago, and the guy told me that they don't work over weekends and to call back in 24 hours. I'm calling again as I type this, waiting for their line to free up.

But I'm not happy about this.


EDIT: The guy I talked to told me, once again, to check back in 12-24 hours as the processing may not be complete due to the amount of things sent to RMA. That had better be the case. If someone screwed up at Fedex (Or Asus).....

 

I'm either shipping my laptop back tomorrow, or tearing it open tonight. I just can't decide which...

 

FINALLY. I called again, and they now say that they have it and repairs will be started on by the end of the week. This is taking a bit longer than I thought it would, but as long as it wasn't lost in the mail or something.

By the way, their site still says they don't have it. What's with that?

 

Heh, I dropped it off personally (back in august) on a wednesday morning. They didn't acknowledge receipt of the laptop until the following tuesday. So the 4 business days didn't "count" towards their target repair times. And it still took 23 business days for the first repair. Only a week when I sent it back in (when they replaced my non-GSOD'ing GPU with a faulty one) ... but they replaced the mobo (and not the GPU) for that repair. We'll see how long the current RMA takes.

 

I really hope they don't screw up my RMA.

I requested a repaste of the GPU and them to fix the hinge on the laptop, and I also wanted them to inspect the speakers/keyboard/LCD, as I've had problems with all 3. From what I've heard, they can barely handle 1 thing, let alone 5.