Asus tech support: Angels or Arseholes?

Just in time to reach a new round of Asus complaints comes this indictment of Asus tech support, where Asus managed a score of -1 out of 10. Note that this was not regarding laptop purchases, but motherboards.

Are these conclusions a realistic representation of Asus' customer neglect or just a gross exaggeration?

 

well for me they were great i sent my board on a wensday they got it on thrusday repaired on friday and i got it back on monday.

 

Well, my experience with ASUS Tek Nederland (Tech Support) has been OK.

Pros:
1. They do not waste your time by making you try to solve your problems at home, by pointless and time-consuming system recoveries etc. Rather, they will take the notebook in without much fuss.
2. Very well-behaved in their interaction with customers.
3. Quick turnaround times: usually under or 2 weeks. This is quick, considering they have to order parts from Taiwan if they need to change any hardware.

Cons:
1. In most cases, you really need to get on the phone with someone to get your problem solved. It's quite unlikely your emails will get replies in reasonable time, unless they are very "energetic". Likewise, unless the problem is severe, you are unlikely to be called back, even if you have been announced you will be.
2. Testing procedure not very thorough. A battery problem that I had went undetected through 4 testing rounds. That's understandable however, since it was very difficult to detect, and I presume you can't have very thorough testing procedures and a reasonable average turnaround time at the same time.

 

I have bought an ASUS laptop from ASUS's representative in Iran, and their support was good.Actually one of the best notebook support centers in Iran.
P.S. : Evil_Sheep, don't post like this (I know ASUS motherboards for PC's are annoying, I had an A8NX-X and an M2N-E,both were not satisfying.Specially the second which despite the advertising was a total no-brainer when it came to overclocking), it actually seems that you have a personal vendetta against ASUS.

 

That whole article is a load of bull****.

The "issues" they describe are simply inane.... A small change in Vcore is expected between idle and load, and the changes they describe are within the margin of error of onboard voltage monitoring anyway. Then they complain about running non-standard RAM speeds and a couple other stupid things.

And if you look at the scoring system, it's + points for 'yes' and - points for 'no', which means that the scores are not out of ten at all. They can actually range from 10 (best) to -6 (Worst).

What a load of BS. It's written like a 12 year old wrote it as well. My housemate has had 5 Asus mobos between himself and PCes he has built for family and has never had any problems. He got his C2D E6400 up to 3.2 Ghz on a P5B Deluxe.

 

Their motherboard support has NEVER been good... never in basically the last 10-15 years they've been big into boards....... however, they've also been ranked as the best and highest quality motherboards during at least the last 7 years. Now, they're motherboard division is not even close to the same company.... the mobile division is responsible for notebooks, pocket pcs, tables, umpcs, phones, wireless.... Their support is top notch in the US... however, in my younger days I went through Asus support for their motherboards and it's horrible... but it's no indication of the support you'd get with their notebooks..

 

Also it's worth noting that the types of issues they describe - mainly related to overclocking/running non-standard settings - are present in all of the major top tier motherboard manufacturers offerings.

Anytime you get outside what the standards are for hardware/timing combinations, there are little idiosyncrasies that have to be dealt with.

 

Very true..... I've heard from the notebook techs that the motherboard division has had TONS of problems with people who overclock that run into problems.... and they're the type of people who shouldn't be overclocking in the first place... and of course think it's automatically a warranty issue.

At the same time, you have to understand that the motherboards are being installed by the users.... I've always installed them in the proper environment and in the proper way (we do have a facility to do this), but still I've fried a motherboard during install...... so just about anyone can, but it's not going to be covered under the warranty.

I guess I could also add that motherboard support is sort of ridiculous to have anyway... Asus' boards are known to run for ever without problems.... and a majority of the problems they see are user install issues or software issues unrelated to the hardware.... so it really isn't their fault, it's just ticked off users.

 

I have dealt with asus notebook support and many others. While they do have heavy accents. They handle everything quickly and well. turn around time is about a week. They are def better than dell HP and compaq support unless you are talking the business class support. The only other company believe it or not i didnt mind dealing with was Acer. But they make crap so doesnt matter.

 

In my experience, high-end ASUS stuff generally doesn't break unless it's someone abusing it or someone not taking good care of it. However, it's not uncommon to see their low-end stuff (-MX series) initially have a spurt, then go down to almost nothing.

From my understanding, their notebook support department is separate from the tech support department. The notebook support group is quite timely.

Their tech support department has some issues. They are for people who are less computer savvy, but super-technical stuff is not exactly what they're for. They have the worst wait time compared to the other ASUS departments I've seen.

RMA department works just fine for me. Phone and fax work well. Email not quite as much.

Sometimes the board simply needs a new BIOS update. AMD64s are notorious for this, since whenever a new model comes out and isn't defined in the BIOS, it usually detects as experimental processor or unknown processor and causes memory errors when performing memtest86+ on it.

Main causes of motherboard death:
- bad/insufficiently powered power supply (causes fluctuations and ruins components),
- insufficient system cooling (causes fluctuations in power supply, see above),
- other faulty component which shorts/damages unit (read: overheating video cards),
- not removing power supply power when doing service to the system for adding/removing cards, etc.,
- putting in the wrong type of memory into the slots (I never thought people could manage to shove an SDR module into a DDR socket then think it would work... or a DDR1 into a DDR2 and vice versa... it happens... -_-)
- Intel 865 Southbridge chipsets are highly susceptible to damage if you have a cheap tower with cheap front-panel USB (I suspect it's missing the last ground pin, most cheap internal front panel USBs only have 8 pins whereas good ones have 9, extra grounding),
- didn't screw in all the grounding screws (the holes with metallic rings are there for a reason...).

Also, it should be mentionned that many OEMs like HP/Compaq and Acer have a tendency of using ASUS OEM boards... however, that means support is directly with the company that built it...

 

I ll tell you this. their mainboard rma may actually send you a reconditioned mainboard thats faulty. That can be said for any other manufs. you can not say that all other manufacturers provide advanced replacement. asus does to resellers and end users alike. I use them every week as it seems. it is an invaluable service. like jumper said. the article was written by a pissed of individual who does not know service from a hole in the wall.

 

Also, what's more, some other cheaper companies give you the runaround for RMA, charge you for return shipping, charge you handling fees, sometimes only give 2 year or even 1 year warranty (ASUS is 3 years for parts & labour for video cards and motherboards). Or even worse, only allows RMA from authorized resellers, so the end-user is stuck.

Cross-shipment is always useful. The replacement you get from ASUS is usually a repaired board, but it generally works fine. There have been some instances were I've gotten back a few that needed to go back more than once, but it generally doesn't have a problem. They generally don't let bad boards stay in the RMA pool (the serial number of the replacements have the number of times the board had been reissued, very rare to see more than twice).

Meanwhile, I had a RMA to another company (which will remain unnamed, hint: starts with a G) which only provided 2 year parts & labour, wanted to charge us 45$USD during the third year, and every single board we got back from them died very soon after it came back... at that point, it doesn't even seem WORTH sending it back. Just spend the extra money in the beginning and get a better brand like ASUS.

Oh, and there was another company which will be unname (*COUGH*POWERCOLOR*COUGH*) which always seem to come back having burnt components likely because of the use of substandard parts. Most of our dealings with them have been so rotten that they would return the pieces as physically damaged since the PCB was burnt by the burnt components. And when you actually did qualify for a replacement, the unit usually was still very defective and would not last very long either... we don't buy from them anymore.

 

I'm in the middle of dealing with a problem with Asus laptop. I am not sure about the repair service but what I do want is an email address to make a complaint to. All that is listed is a technical support address.

My situation below:

The quiet office facility stopped working after a week and the fan comes on full after using a wordprocessor for about 5 mins. I reinstalled the software and it is not a software problem: I have checked. (I bought the laptop from TechFever and sent it back, it was returned to my neighbours house who was moving so I got back three weeks later. )I have contacted Asus but all I get is a standard reply about sending for a RMA to get the laptop repaired. I'm sorry but if a new laptop develops a fault I want it changed not repaired although I understand many may see this as over the top.

 

Have you tried:
1. Removing power 4 gear completely, as well as any other ACPI programs that you have like SpeedFan, Everest, NHC, RMClock? Then set the Notebook to the Portable/Laptop power scheme. That means the CPU speed is dynamically adjusted using Intel Speedstep.
2. Updating the BIOS to the newest version?

I wouldn't RMA it just yet. It's a subtle problem and I'm unsure any hardware replacements will fix it.

Also, if the above two suggestions don't work, I would also recommend a Windows recovery. That's the only way in which you can completely eliminate software as the cause (as I understand it you only reinstalled Power 4 Gear).

You can also try a live Linux distro and see if the problem appears as well.

 

Question: what temperature is the CPU at when your fan turns on full blast during word processing?

 

Download a couple of free pieces of software and each indicated that the fan came on full when the processor reached 27 degrees. After loading up the temperature was 24 degrees.

 

I tried reinstalling Power4Gear and a complete reinstall from both the partition and the CDs.

 

New BIOS then?

 

I'm hoping that the Asus support is better than HP.

And i'm hoping i never get to send my A8Jp to the service center within 3 months.