Experience with Portable One

At my suggestion, largely via my reading of this and the LeoG.net boards, my brother bought an Asus tablet from Portable One. Before his purchase, my brother was assured that Portable One would stand behind the sale and be available to resolve any problems with the tablet. This fact was especially helpful in that their offices are close to my brother's home and quick turnaround on any repairs was particularly important to him. There was a recent problem with the tablet's screen and my brother called Portable One. He was told that they couldn't do anything and he should send the unit directly to Asus. After some runaround with Asus and quite a bit of time, my brother sent the tablet directly to them and the screen was replaced. Net result, the screen is still not right and he will need to return the unit for further repairs.

I am not a computer expert, but the expression - in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king - is applicable in this situation. I have more time for research and know a bit more about technology than my brother so he came to me for advice. After much research, I gave him what I thought was a reliable recommendation. I am disappointed and embarrassed that my suggestion turned out so poorly.

 

juancham,

Sorry to have to find out about your brother's experience this way. If there was an issue with the notebook when it arrived, we do offer a generous 30 day return policy.

Re: repairs with ASUS, we find repair times to be faster when working directly with them and rarely to never do we hear of any issues with their service.

Please have your brother contact us so we can work with our representatives within ASUS to get this resolved to his satisfaction if it hasn't been already. He can ask for me, my name is Scott.

Portable One does stand behind our excellent reputation and we do go to bat with the manufacturers we sell on behalf of our customers whenever necessary. We always welcome our customers contact us directly and we'll help resolve manufacturer warranty issues, or any issue, in any way we can.

 

Scott- I know that things have changed a bit by you guys, but what manufacturers are you still doing on-site repairs for? The overriding reason many of us bought from you was the impeccable customer service in the past.

My daughter's P-1 UX has just about outlived its useful life after three and a half years (this was a heavily used unit, so that's ok) so we'll be in the market for a replacement shortly (hopefully it will hold out till the new Windows is released in a few months) and I wanted to know what you were handling on-site.

 

I am the original poster of this this thread. The following is my brother's response to Scott's posting of 6/11:

I am the technically challenged guy referenced in the previous posting who relied on my brother's advice and ended up buying an ASUS tablet from PortableOne. Prior to my purchase, the salesmen assured me repeatedly that if I ever had a problem, I could send my tablet to them rather than sending it to ASUS. They explained that they were close to the ASUS repair center and could make sure that the repairs were done correctly. This promise of personalized service was the determining factor in my decision to buy my computer from PortableOne.

After about a year, the screen on my tablet failed. I called PortableOne and told the tech on the phone that I wanted to send it back to them. To my surprise, I was told exactly what Scott says here – that their in their experience repair times are faster when working directly with ASUS. I said I didn’t care, I wanted to send the tablet to them and have them take care of it as they'd promised to ensure that the repair was done properly. He said they didn’t do that. I asked for the specific guy who sold me the computer so I could remind him of his promise. I was told that he no longer worked for the company. I asked for the manager and was told that I was speaking with him.

I argued for a while, reminding the guy on the phone of the promise they had made to handle any dealings with ASUS for me, but he kept insisting that it would be quicker and easier for me to deal directly with ASUS. I finally gave in and agreed to send the computer to ASUS myself. I called ASUS and after giving a long explanation of my problem to someone who did not speak English well, was told to ship them my tablet.

I did. It came back 10 days later still broken. So I called again, explained the problem again and shipped it back. It came back broken in ways that it hadn’t been broken before. I had to send it to ASUS three times before it was fixed properly. My tablet was basically out of commission for a month.

If PortableOne had honored their original commitment to me, the repair may have initally taken a bit more time, but it presumably would have been done properly the first time. They would have handled the problems with ASUS as I expected them to and I wouldn’t have had to spend time on the phone with ASUS three different times explaining the problem, write up a summary of the problem, wrap up the tablet and ship it to ASUS again and again.

So whatever Scott may claim about customers having better experience dealing directly with ASUS, I absolutely did not find this to be the case. More importantly, PortableOne broke their promise to me, and caused me unnecessary hassles with ASUS customer sevice. I had the reasonable expectation that they would provide the service they'd promised. Instead, they blew me off and complicated my already too complicated life. Needless to say, I will never do business with PortableOne again.

 

Hello m61376,

We handle Sony and ASUS repairs on-site. And Our own Portable One notebooks as well.

 

juancham,

Thank you and to your brother for taking the time to provide the details here. First, I'd like to apologize for whoever it was on my staff that treated your brother that way (if he has a name that would be helpful). They were out of line and did not live up to our standards. They/ we should have offered him the choice upfront and taken care of it as he had asked, which is our norm.

I'd like to invite your brother to contact me directly ([email protected]) in hopes that we can make amends. Also, if he has the details, I'd like the case numbers from the ASUS repairs so I can follow up with them and express our displeasure with their service. This is hardly ever necessary, but incidents like this do come up once in a long while.

You, and anyone for that matter, can always contact me directly. Despite the regrettable incident here, we work tirelessly everyday to exceed our reputation for exceptional service. Just ask for me by name.

Scott Darling
President, CEO
Portable One Inc ®
5627 Stoneridge Dr. Suite #314
Pleasanton, CA 94588 USA
Toll Free 800-650-4006
Fax 866-512-1951

 

Scott- I'm a little confused from this discussion. Do you do the Asus repairs on-site or send them to Asus as was the issue with the OP?

 

Thank you for your question. We do both actually. ASUS prefers to perform in warranty repairs themselves. For out-of-warranty repairs, we perform them here or we recommend sending them direct to ASUS depending on which offers the best and fastest resolution for our customers. For example, ASUS sending us parts adds time, but they have them on hand. If a repair is urgent, we'll pre-order parts if we're confident we can diagnose remotely or we'll contact ASUS for the repair and facilitate sending the notebook directly to ASUS. We have a great relationship with ASUS and us facilitating in this matter can be handy if any issues arise.

Thanks again!