Do Not Buy Benq

I bought a benq with dreadful consequences. Stay away from them. If you think I am lying then try to e-mail them, they do not even have an e-mail address to any area branch anywhere in the world.
This my complaint that I have tried to send to Benq, I am also writing to computer magazines and newspapers about this.
Here goes;




REF:BENQ R31E Joybook:StephenWood.
Please help me with the following situation.

I am writing to you regarding some trouble I am having with some less than helpful people at the dreadful BenQ helpdesk.
As a backpacker on a tight budget I had to justify to my girlfriend that splashing out 1299 dollars on a laptop back in 2006 was the right thing to do as we would save a lot of money in internet cafes burning photos to disk.
Delighted with my product I bought from Mobile Laptops and Notebooks in Peel Street Melbourne I took it to our rented home and started to install some programs. Less than a week later the laptop would not switch on so I took back only to be told by the shop that I would have to phone BenQ customer support. I told them the problem and they told me I had to have a new one to replace the faulty one. The shop refused point blank until they themselves spoke to BenQ. Reluctantly I had a new laptop, the same model. An R31E.

In November 2007 I was experiencing serious system errors, stop errors, and slow performance by my 512mb RAM machine.
After checking on computer help forums I came to the realization that one of my ram module mounts maybe broken or my mother board is kaput. My machine is running of just 192mb and it crashes whenever it try to use Google earth or watch a DVD.

As I am now in New Zealand and not in Melbourne I cannot take the craptop to the shop I bought it from. I contacted BenQ just before Christmas 2007 and was told that as I am outside of Australia the warranty is no longer valid. I said that it clearly states that it is a two year warranty for Australia and New Zealand. I am in Wellington, I was told that the nearest BenQ service centre is in Auckland, but we could find our own repair shop and BenQ would cover costs.
As it was the Christmas period is difficult to locate a reputable repair shop until January. I eventually found who were busy but asked me to take it into them in a few weeks. In the meantime I persevered and looked for work on the internet. By the middle of February I took the laptop to the shop to be repaired. They phoned BenQ who said they cannot cover the costs. I phoned BenQ and asked why. I was told that the warranty does not cover New Zealand; I told them that I had spoken to Belinda and was told it was ok to go ahead with repairs. The reply was ‘Belinda no longer works here’ ‘DO you have written evidence of this?’ I said I did not and have they had a recording of the phone call as all call centers record there calls. I was abruptly corrected, ‘This is not a call centre but a helpdesk’.
Well, it is the most unhelpful helpdesk I have ever encountered.

I was put through to the manager Dave Wong who then spoke to the computer shop repair manager. They came to an agreement that they would go ahead with the repairs. All I needed was proof of purchase. As my invoice was stolen from my girlfriends handbag in Australia this posed a problem. Dave Wong then said that a bank statement would do, any proof of purchase was ok.
As I did not know which of seven bank accounts I used to make a part payment for the laptop I had to spend more money requesting statements from 2006 for this period. After spending a total of $146 on statements I found the one I needed which showed I purchased the laptop from MLN in Peel Street Melbourne on February 27th 2006.
I phoned Dave Wong excitedly. He said ‘This is not sufficient innit’, ‘We need an invoice or we cannot do this.’
I asked what would happen if we cannot get an invoice from the shop. We were told nothing and that was it.

Back on the internet again to look up the shops phone number. We contacted MLN in Melbourne to ask for a duplicate of the invoice. The staff there said they do not have invoices, and then they did but were in storage. They cannot access the invoices as they go into storage after two weeks of purchase. If this was a criminal investigation I know that the police would be able to locate that invoice no problem. The staff seemed to be not too bothered by my predicament. Now I cannot get an invoice I cannot get my laptop mended and the warranty date has now passed. What can I do? I no longer have the serial number either as it has worn off the bottom of my laptop. I was also told ‘This is not BenQ’s problem innit’ by Dave Wong.

At midday today if I have no answers to this problem I am going to take legal action, I am going to take this to an ombudsman, I am also going to write to every single computer magazine I know of in England, Australia and New Zealand and send them a copy of this letter. I think people should be warned about BenQ and their lack of professionalism, quality of products and distinct lack of service.

Please raise this issue with whomever possible.
As I work in web design and I am in contact with many IT people I am will strongly advise anyone I meet not go anywhere near anything with a BenQ logo on it.

Stephen Wood.


Benq if you wish, but if your laptop breaks you are shafted.

 

Dude you seem similar to me in that whatever can go wrong usually does. Sorry for all of your PC woes although I've never heard of the brand I do hope that you can hopefully find someway to fix your situation.

 

I feel bad about your experience, but why in hell would you spend so much money on a Benq laptop? I didn't even know that they made them. I know that they make screens and CDRW drives etc, but not laptops. Sorry but this was my first reaction? It would have been better to go into Best Buy blindfolded and just pick a laptop.

 

My only negative experience with Benq was with their (temporally?) employed unqualified personnel at CEBIT in Germany 2006. -)

My girlfriend has been owning Benq Joybook 7000 since 3 years or like. She is very happy with it. The notebook once fell down to the concrete stairs so that its magnezium case got an incaved hole near to the hard disk location - it still was performing well after it.

However, last year the motherbord keyboard controller had to be reballed (because of the overheating issues - the fan was already full of dust but my girlfriend was resisitng to my offers to clean it, because she was so happy with her lappy that she did not want anybody to disassemle it, even me ).

Benq service in Germany has responded promptly and friendly with a reasonable offer for the motherboard replacement (well, 300 EUR or like.
However, I was able to identify the source of the error and we have done the reballing of the keyboard controller for less than 200 EUR in Warsaw/Poland.

My girlfriend is so much in love with her Benq Joybook 7000 that she still does not want to upgrade it to anything newer.

 

Just to clarify that it was 1299 Australian dollars, far less than 1299 us if that is what you think. Anyway, this was way before I knew anything laptop specs. The laptop has performed well and done everything that I have needed it to do.

The problem I have is that now it is bust I am really narked at the customer service, after being told that I ca nhave it mended, then I cannot is a kick in teeth.

The shop in Melbourne said they will clarify that it was purchased there and the price paid. See what happens then.

Any advice on what laptp to buy next?
I need one for graphic/web design and video editing. I belive macs are best for this. Will defiantely do my homework next time and pay extra for a reputable company.

Thanks for the comments, very much appreciated.

 

You'll be shock to know that alot of these notebook motherboards were produced by the similar manufacturers in Taiwan....this goes for MACs, too!!

From what I gathered, if you just had safe kept your proof of purchase, you would not have posted this topic!!

Anyway, if you're sure its the memory module's fault..........almost all memory module manufacturers these days offer lifetime warranty ~ why not take it out and have it checked out by the original memory manufacturer?

If you do alot of graphics work, this S41 laptop is a good price for its performance but like any laptop (Sony, IBM, etc......), I would suggest placing a cooler-pad right underneath it from day one of operation. For other laptops with standalone graphics (8600M or higher), you'd need to pay a lot of extra bucks for it......and it still wouldn't guarantee you 100% flawless!!!

Seeing that you aren't going for Benq again, only thing I can suggest is that you look out for dud 8600M graphics on the market.....namely, Asus V2s laptops (there may be others).

Asus V2s laptops' specs also come with a 8600M standalone graphics but what they dont tell you is that the 8600M is a cut-down version with 64bit bandwidth using DDR2 modules (your Benq 8600M is 128 bit with DDR3). Google on the net and you'll find that cut-down graphic card performs no better than a built-in VGA!!

I own a Benq S41-T44, it runs cooler than most NBs with standalone VGA and its specs are T5250 / 8600GS (128bit-DDR3) / 4GB (2 x 2GB DDR2-667) / 160GB SATA 5400rpm / 8x DVD writer / HDMI / 4 x USB / 1394 / 4 in 1 card reader......and it cost me $28000 NTD (~ $965 AUD) .........

 

http://taiwan.cnet.com/crave/0,2000088746,20128612,00.htm

A member of this forum showed me this link and I was quite impressed with its spec and look.

in a 13.3 , NV8600GT , combined with L7500 is interesting.

looks like BenQ rocks.

 

BenQ does indeed rock, at sucking. I agree with TS BenQ is a brand to shun away from. See my topic here.

 

I think BenQ is a great brand , I have one at school and using it under SESU Linux.

I think most of problems reported are all user problems.

BenQ S41 is a great Linux based laptop, just not great for Vista.

 

You really did not read my post.

"I think most of problems reported are all user problems."

Please stop accusing me, how would i have caused the trigger temp to change to from 50+ to 40+ on 2 models? Tell me how i changed that. Please re-read my post carefully which judging from your comments on my posts you clearly failed to do.

 

I dunno, I find it to be a bit more reliable with suspend/hibernate in Vista than in Linux (Ubuntu). I also find I get a lot more battery life out of Vista (unfortunately I can't seem to get anywhere near the same in Linux)

 

as I said many times , the BenQ is designed and optimized for Linux.

 

Source? They might ship it with the worst distro I've ever seen (Linpus) where nothign works out of the box, no wifi, no native screen resolution, no sound, not even ethernet! Just cuz they ship it with Linux doesn't mean it is designed and optimized for it. Where do you get your info from? Even when running Ubuntu on it not everything worked as it should. My guess they ship it with Linpus to make a cheaper laptop, like HP and others do with FreeDOS. A quick look at any of their many country websites where you can find different drivers the Malaysia site has only Vista drivers whilst the Australian site has both XP and Vista drivers for the S32, but Linux drivers, docs or any info at all can not be found anywhere. Why is that if this notebook is designed and optimzied for Linux?

 

How is he "accusing" you? It's shocking to see how anyone could derive something accusatory from what he said. You need to stop intentionally misinterpreting other people's comments when they obviously show no implications of aggression

 

I do understand why not to buy a benq notebook outof a very simple reason. I ow one, bought it myself!! i didn't work from the very first moment: driverproblems with following operation system: xp prof. sp2(3), vista sp1, ubuntu, suse, solaris. unstable hardwarekonfiguration tending to overheat.
I make a short story:
9th nov. 08 mainborad broke down completely: I think an underconfigured cap, at least overheating and freezing system - also known from apples emac. apple responsed with a special repair program /but not benq/
the notrbook arrived nov. 14th firts time at digitest, the benq service in germany. despite of complete error description they send the book back within two weeks with some placebo repairs - incredible incompetent staff!!!
i sent it back immediately - no response since weeks - when i call benq germany they tell me: the exchange item is not available in the moment /is this my problem/ - i wait now nearly two month for the repaired note book and even don't know, whether i'get it back within the next two month. but when i get it back: who wants to buy it? it's a r50 joybook with nvidia 8500 grafic card and i think 2 gb ram. any interest?