XoticPC/Sager Problems and Frustrations

In July 2011, my wife and I bought a $2000+ NP8170 laptop from Sager through XoticPC. Her old desktop had stopped working, and it was frankly about time to buy a new PC anyway. This was mostly a work laptop for her, but sometimes, it was also used for gaming. We purchased the 3 year extended parts/labor warranty.

Two months later, in September, we started getting multiple blue screens of deaths (BSODs) and also the laptop would just power off. Trying to restart the laptop wouldn't work right away, and it required us to leave it be for 15-20 minutes before having a successful restart.

I contacted XoticPC in early October about the issues. We went back and forth for a few weeks via email with me relaying information about the problems, checking system logs, and checking hardware such as RAM and hard drive. It seemed like the issue might have been overheating since it happened more often while running graphics intensive games.

In November, XoticPC gave me an RMA and shipping label so that I could ship the laptop to Sager for repairs. Since my wife had some work deadlines, we asked if we could delay the repair process till it was more convenient for her to be without a laptop. Also, we didn't have a working backup computer that could be used while the laptop was away.

We ended up spending another $300+ and spent some time installing a new motherboard, Windows 7, and Office 2010 for her old broken desktop to be used as her computer while the laptop was out for repairs.

The laptop was sent for repairs on 12/26/2011. We didn't get an update on the repair process till 1/12/2012. Sager said all of the hardware tested ok but the OS needed to be reinstalled, although they never clarified which pieces of hardware they actually tested. I found it odd that it was just a Windows installation problem considering the issues before (re: overheating), but I am not a computer expert. On 1/24/2012, we received the laptop, almost a month after sending it. For the record, it took them almost a month to tell me to reinstall Windows 7, which they didn't even do themselves in order to test if that was truly the issue.

A few days after we received the laptop, I did a complete reinstall of Windows 7. I used the Windows 7 reinstall instructions listed in a sticky on XoticPC's support forums. All drivers were up to date as well. The system seemed to be stable for a few days but then the same problems occurred again. This time, the computer would just shut off in the middle of something simple like Word, Excel, or web browsing. Interestingly, running two games simultaneously did not cause crashes. It was definitely not an overheating issue, and it definitely did not seem like a Windows installation issue.

On 2/9/2011, my wife contacted Sager to get some support. They responded with an RMA and a shipping label and not much of a dialogue about what was the problem and why this laptop needed to be fixed yet again after getting it back from a repair. Instead of just blindly sending the laptop back without question and having them keep it for another month just to fail to diagnose the problem again and thus fail to fix it, we decided to try contacting XoticPC first.

We contacted the same XoticPC person I had talked to back in October-December. The first call to XoticPC on 2/9/2012 was not returned. On 2/14/2012, we called again. The person on the phone told us the person we were trying to reach "had received our email" even though we had never sent one to XoticPC yet. We were told they were at lunch and would call us back. They never called back. We sent an email to XoticPC this time on 2/17/2012. They finally responded on 2/21/2012 promising they would make sure our repair was expedited and that the same issues would not occur. They asked us to send them some new diagnostic information. We did so on 2/24/2012. They told us on 2/27/2012 that they would take our information and get back to us later that day. I never heard from them until I got fed up and emailed them on 3/7/2012. They apologized for not having gotten back to us and assured us they would hear back from a Sager tech within 24 hours. All the while, we didn't receive any sort of feedback as to what might be the actual problem with the laptop.

At this point, we were pretty fed up with being given the runaround and having to deal with all the delays in this repair. XoticPC had promised a quick turnaround with the repair and it had been anything but quick. They told us they would contact us on 2/27 but they didn't until we finally asked them what was going on on 3/7. So, we demanded they just replace the laptop since their delay in repairs and their lack of information about the repair did not lead us to have much assurance that they were doing their absolute best to thoroughly diagnose and fix the problem. In response to this email to XoticPC, we received an email directly from Sager on 3/8/2012 asking me to return the laptop using the very same RMA and UPS label they gave us on 2/9! In a nutshell, we just wasted an entire month getting back to the same point and nobody even responded to our demand for a replacement!

We decided to send the laptop back. We requested a motherboard replacement along with a CPU/GPU repaste and a Windows 7 re-installation. The mobo and repaste requests were based on suggestions we had received from other members on the XoticPC forums who had similar issues to ours.

Sager received the laptop on 3/15. Yesterday, 3/26, we sent an email asking for an update. We were told the laptop had been fixed by cleaning out some dust from the fans and we were given a tracking number for the shipment back. It turned out that it had been shipped several days before and we actually received the laptop yesterday.

We opened the laptop and noticed Windows had been reinstalled. We went through the process of setting up Windows. We hooked it up to the Internet and walked away for a few minutes. We came back and saw the laptop was frozen and was unresponsive to mouse or keyboard clicks. We powered off the laptop and tried to turn it back on, and lo and behold, it did not turn on. We have captured this in a YouTube video:

Sager NP8170 XoticPC.com Problems Continue - YouTube

Note that this occurred with and without a battery. We never installed anything on this laptop. We waited a bit longer before trying to restart. It did restart, but then it froze again. So, we are basically back to square one with the same issues popping up again.

Conclusion

At this point, the entire experience with Sager and XoticPC has lead us to say we would NOT recommend buying anything from either company.

We've lost many months now without a reliable work laptop for my wife. Every time it crashed, she has had to switch machines. When it crashed away from home, she had to literally go home to continue working on her desktop. Sager and XoticPC's repair service turnaround is very slow. Our calls to XoticPC were not returned. They forgot about contacting us and only remembered after we emailed them back. Sager ignored our demand for a refund/replacement. They ignored our request for a mobo replacement and CPU/GPU repaste. They ignored any information we gave them as to what had happened. Again, I am not a computer expert, but if a computer crashes during Word, Excel, and web browsing and not during gaming, it is not an overheating issue. They claimed a Windows install was bad the first time, but multiple Windows reinstalls by us AND Sager themselves have produced the same issues.

We have no faith in them permanently fixing this laptop. We have no faith in them doing it in a timely manner. We've had this laptop for almost 8 months and it has not worked for the 6 out of those 8 months. Even if this laptop is fixed at some point, we do not want to have to deal with spending weeks and months dealing with the repair process with XoticPC and Sager. This is absolutely unacceptable. At this point, we just want a refund or a full replacement by a brand new equivalent laptop. This is not worth our time trying to fix this particular machine.

I would HIGHLY recommend that if you are thinking of buying a laptop, do NOT buy it from Sager or XoticPC. Sure, you might get lucky and get one that works great. In that case, your money was well spent. If, however, you get a bad laptop, be prepared to deal with an experience like ours. Do some research on these forums and on XoticPC's forums and also do a BBB check on Sager. You will find many others who have had the same problems as we have. Is this a high percentage? You decide. For sure, it has convinced us to buy a laptop from a local dealer with a local repair facility or from a direct seller with a much more hands-on service plan. It might cost more, but it is well worth getting actual feedback and timely responses to our concerns and repair requests.

 

We are deeply sorry to see these issues with your Sager Laptop. We sympathize with your issues and apologize for the added frustration.
I will gladly have our management review the phone calls, I show emails were responded to as we received them. I see our first email from you (your wife Lesley) after the first return shipment was on 2/22 and we replied back on 2/23. I see your reply on Thursday 2/23 at 6:57PM and we had forwarded your email to Sager with the further troubleshooting details and replied to you Monday am at 8:56AM. We had this case escalated with a Service Manager at Sager which from my understanding you started a dialogue with Sager and CC’ing us on the emails. (with Allen @ Sager) With Sager computers we do work as a middle man to set up the repair should you need service. The service itself is done by Sager technician’s.

Again I am very sorry for the trouble you have experienced with your Sager laptop and we will do our best to ensure Sager Management is involved with this and this is resolved. I understand you have requested a new machine and we will be bringing this to the table with Sager and get to the bottom of this for you. One of our Service Personnel (Cedric) will be in touch with you on this immediately.

 

I would just like to again re-iterate to Hutsady's post that we humbly apologize for the trouble you have experienced and we will get this resolved for you. You should have a email from Cedric if you have not already and we will be in contact with the RMA Manager at Sager to confirm more details on this and discuss your requests on this. We will request that Sager only communicate with us on this and we will be working with you direct from here forward until this has been resolved.

 

Hutsady, I have saved all my emails dating back to my first one on 10/8/2011. Back then, I was in contact with Joseph. After our first repair, Jacyn took over. And now, Cedric is in contact. It's a bit disheartening to have to explain our history to a new person every few weeks.

As for the phone calls, I have the dates listed in my original post. I will also add that we tried to make a third phone call roughly a week after our second call on 2/14/2012 but before 2/21/2012 when we finally received an e-mail response from XoticPC. This third phone call went straight to Joseph's voice mail, and we didn't bother to leave a message since our last two attempts had failed to get a response. When we mentioned to Jacyn that we had tried to call previously, his response was that Joseph was not working there anymore. Why was the voice mail of an ex-employee still active? We were told on 2/14/2012 that Joseph was "out to lunch" and would call us back later and then a week later, we were told he had quit. So, were we lied to over the phone or were we just unfortunately in contact with someone who quit shortly afterward? It's been very frustrating to have to deal with service like this.

 

We can pull recorded calls, but I assume the representative had advised that the Service Personnel were out to lunch and may have not heard you reference Joseph. All of our staff was aware that Joseph had left back in January. Jacyn took over the same extension as Joseph and was monitoring VM's. I think there might be a miss understanding as after further research I believe you had try making contact with your Sales Representative John Flaherty, not Joseph our previous Service Representative.

I see Jacyn was replying to all your emails and escalating them to Sager as needed with your troubleshooting efforts. We will investigate these VM's more thoroughly as it was never our intention to miss any calls from any customer, period.

Unless you were emailing from another address, we are not familiar with, our first email after your 1/20 email was on 2/22 as we listed above.

Regardless we are working with Sager towards a amicable solution with this. You will be updated on the progress of this since we will be taking over communications on this and not having you work with Sager direct as you had been previously.

 

I will forward you email threads from October 2011 since they were to Joseph and it sounds like his emails may have been deleted after he quit.

 

We have all your email history previously, but your are welcome to send then also. We have also forwarded all of this history to Sager today so they see the big picture of everything going on. We will get to the bottom of this for you. We apologize again and appreciate your patience.

 

After talking with Cedric it sounds as though we have a solution in place and were able to get you a Brand New 8170 You should have a return label in your inbox and the confirmation of a new machine.

 

Seems like have gotten a hold of a lemon. However I don't see why it would take anybody 8+ months to not change your Motherboard; talk about not listening to your customer. Changing the motherboard would probably have solved it. I was thinking of changing my G73 for a P170EM, but now I think it would be safer for me to stick with the G75.

I truly feel for you bro, what sucks is by the time you received this new p170hm, your 1 year warranty would have long been expired. If they feel any guilt for you, they would have extended the warranty for another year after you received the new p170hm, that's the least they can do IMO.

Unbelievable that you had to be without a laptop for 8+ months.

 

Thanks, Chainspell Like I said in my OP, yeah we were unlucky with this particular machine, but it shouldn't have taken this long to get to this point.

Just an update, Cedric did contact me and offered me a new NP8170 as a replacement. I am waiting to hear confirmation about whether or not the 3 year warranty I purchased would re-start with this laptop. Also, I am waiting to hear about the specs of this machine to make sure it is at least equivalent to, if not better than, the machine we have right now.

Something Cedric mentioned to me was that, in his new role, he would try to make sure there is communication with the customer even when there is not much communication with Sager. I honestly hope he can provide that at the least.

As for my opinion on Sager and XoticPC, well, I guess I will wait and see. There is no guarantee this laptop will work. If it doesn't work, forgive me for not having a lot of confidence in getting it fixed quickly. For sure, I think I would have to make a post about it in NBR a lot sooner.

 

I was just informed the warranty would not be extended. I guess it's good we still have 2+ years left on our 3 year plan, but God forbid something happens with just a few months to go on our warranty. With their repair turnaround, I could easily see that last repair stretch us out of warranty. Also, we've already learned we don't have much pull in getting what we want replaced during the repair...whether it's specific parts or a whole machine. So, yeah, I just proved to myself an extended warranty wasn't worth it.

 

Seems to me that even though we have so many resellers, all RMAs goes through Sager, which from my experience has by far the worst customer service in existence. Yea, this is the disadvantage of buying from a non-major named brand. My ASUS G73's turn around was literally a week for a bad backlit keyboard, they ended up having to replace the motherboard for some reason. And my Thinkpad t420 was even faster, 4 days. A 1 month turn around time is somewhat ridiculous, and having to endure 8 months of a broken laptop is even more so. I'm sure you would qualify for a lemon law, if this were a car the company would have to buy your vehicle back.

 

Yep, that is a limitation of Sager and its resellers. It's something that should be taken into serious consideration when buying from them. So, are Asus and Lenovo any better?

 

Sager's poor track record is one of the factors that ultimately led me to purchase from Mythlogic because they handle all issues in house. I didn't end up keeping those systems for assorted other reasons, but poor support wasn't one of them.

 

Asus is good, much better than Dell/Hp's consumer customer service. However Lenovo's Thinkpad or their business-line customer service is excellent as a business laptop should be. Sager on the other hand lacked much much to be desired, I loved their laptops but god I am not willing to deal with their customer service again.

Now Mythlogic handles their repairs in-house? I might consider my next laptop from them if this is true.

 

Myth gets theirs from CLEVO direct and builds their own systems. I'm purchasing my P270WM through them.

 

Their prices are a lot higher than XoticPc or Malibal, do they price match?

 

No. For a multitude of reasons. First, they're not selling you a Sager it's their product with their testing etc. Second, they have a lot of the upgrades available through sager/other resellers set as the standard. For instance automatic no dead pixel guarantee, they used the upgraded thermal paste on all their builds and they also ship all of theirs with 1600mhz RAM. They also do pretty intensive testing on every rig they send out (even including benchmarks in a folder on the desktop for you to view). Also since they aren't Sager/Sager Reseller they can/are willing to do a bit more with the system than Sager or the others will do, sometimes supporting hardware that Sager says doesn't work, etc...

 

Disturbing story. Reminds me of the saga with my old 9860 currently underway, but the difference is its trying to resurrect a 7 year old machine with refurbished parts. If it had taken months, let alone 8 months I'd be flipping out.

Honestly if its a new product, and it doesn't work like that they need to either repair it, replace it or go out of business. Getting your CC company (if you paid that way) involved would be an option with a ball dropped that many times for that length of time.

Shame to hear as well, my old Sager did last a long time with no problems. My brother got one, he had one problem with it while on the road in CA not far from their shop (City of Industry, CA), they fixed it the same day. Wonder if that has to do with any personell changes, his experience was back around '07 or so.

 

Well, we're still waiting to hear about the specs on this replacement laptop before sending the old one back. If they're going to hold us to the time period of the original warranty, they should at least give us the same laptop or better, right?

 

Sager has confirmed to us that they had tested all hardware on the machine (as they do with any Repair) before returning the RMA's. For one reason or another it sounds like this is something on the motherboard itself causing the issue. They had tested RAM, HDD, GPU, CPU along with other standard tests and it exhibited no problems whatsoever. If there were any signs problem during the multiple tests Sager would never release it back to a customer.

Your first repair they reloaded the OS and it exhibited no problems after many tests. On the second they cleaned your Heatsink and vents due to them being extremely clogged.

There are only 3 North American Importers of Clevo - Pro Star, Sager and Eurocom.

You will at the minimum get a brand new machine with equivalent specification, nothing less.

 

If it were me I'd be trying for an upgrade on something. I know they're not a huge corp like Dell, but if I get the run around from dell, I always get upgrades. My cousins 6970m was faulty and they basically ignored his service requests for a month. When I was done they upgraded him to a 6990m and extended his warranty..

And it's not abuse. Your time is valuable, and I'm sure you've wasted a lot of time the past 8 months.. After 8 months, a direct replacemt is the bare minimum they can do for you. This is when they get a chance to earn some more points with their customers. Going the extra mile by offering some kind of upgrade or at least a warranty extension because of the issues, some of which were on their end while others were on the end of their partner (Sager)..

My understanding is the Myth buys barebone machines from Clevo, buys the other parts from their respective manufacturers, and assembles everything in house. It's a higher level of service/customization than basic resellers which is why they charge a bit more.. They are also a smaller operation than say Xotic or Malibal. I'm sure their rep will be along shortly to explain.. Again

 

Dang this doesn't sound good as I pre ordered form them, i probably will continue with my order and pray i do not have the luck you did. If i were you i would make a consumer report,but then again in technology nothing is "perfect".

 

Any chance that this is a case of a smoked power supply which possibly wasn't returned with the laptop during the RMA process? That might explain why problems weren't seen at the factory but were immediately obvious at the customer site....

 

I was waiting for April 5th to order my 170em from Xotic, but now Myth looks really interesting. Too bad they charge about at least $200 more than Xotic. I haven't seen the upgrade options so I can't really comment. If somehow I managed to get around $100 something more for Myth I might as well just go Myth and save the headache.

 

Don't let one bad review negate the hundreds of positive reviews they have on this forum. At least they are attempting to right things with the customer now. Better late than never.

 

Nope. The same issues occurred with and without the AC plugged in.

 

Even if it were to be a part of your fault like "clogged vents". It would have been noticed and fixed the first time it was sent to wherever it was shipped to, however 8 months is an extremely long wait, i probably would have gone to them in person. And just a replacement is not justified in my opinion, i believe that the months of not being able to use your laptop, and the consequences: stress, anger, spent or lost money (work or buying replacement) MUST be considered.

But im not bashing on the company, happens, and the reason is that someone somewhere did just really some sloppy work. Cant blame an entire company for that. At least they noticed your complaint and hopefully are giving you a well earned upgrade.

Unlike some other companies that jusr rip you off shamelessly and blame you for every mistake they do. Ive lost hundreds of dollars to AT&T so i know how you feel and how much you just feel like blow them up.

 

^^ I know what you mean about AT&T.. My family have been long time AT&T customers, and any time any of us ends up with a problem and regular customer service or account reps can't/won't help, the customer retention department always comes through and credits the account. "Oh, sir, I see you're a long time and loyal AT&T customer. Let me go ahead and take care of that for you. Also, we're gonna go ahead and give you a credit on your next bill for your troubles..".

Sometimes you have to threaten to leave AT&T though or hang up and call back to talk to someone who doesn't yell at you and tell you you're stupid for your Internet being out for a week (true story)

Aaanyways, any updates on the situation OP? I know it's only been a few days, so probably not..

 

Nothing exciting to update. I sent the old laptop back. It's scheduled to arrive at Sager today.

 

AT&T (& now Comcast) was horrible. Back around '02-'06 I had them. Once or twice a year I'd have problems connecting to the main MMO I was playing at the time. I couild connect to the internet most times and get webpages, but would disconnect or fail to connect to the game server. They'd always have you jack around with your home network despite the obvious fact you had connectivity to the internet at large.

After a week or two of jerk around by their customer-service-without-a-clue I finally would get some tools downloaded and troubleshoot their network for them. Would turn out that some router in Parsipanny, NJ or San Fransisco was dumping UDP packets over 75% of the time, killing the gaming connection. Visual Route would provide a contact number and I'd call the nerd in charge to tell them to reboot or replace their router. They'd always be mystified how I found out how to contact them. But that would fix the problem.

Finally got tired of paying their prices while having to do their tech work half the time (the other half my cable would actually be down, and they'd take days to get it back online - this would happen half a dozen or more times a year). DSL has worked much better.

 

Just to give an update. I got the replacement laptop earlier this week. I turned it on and it seemed to run fine for several hours. Granted, I didn't do anything with it (not even browsing the internet).

We have decided, though, to sell it and get something that is more reliable and/or quicker to fix which is something we can't ever get from Sager or XoticPC. As I mentioned before, this is going to be a work laptop primarily. We can't afford to have it be unavailable for 2+ weeks every time it needs to be sent for repairs and we certainly can't afford to have it sent multiple times in case the first repair process fails to fix the issue. We really need a laptop that is either purchased and serviceable in town or a laptop that has an explicit "at home repair" service plan.

Has anyone tried to resell a Sager laptop? What are the steps you have to take to transfer ownership and warranty? I noticed in the agreement there was some kind of fee associated with this.

 

Glad to hear the computer has made it back to you safely and working properly. Sorry to hear you're leaving the Sager family, if you're looking on site service i think Dell is the only ones that offer it.

If you want to sell the computer a great place is the market place here NBR Marketplace
The warranty is fully transferable with no fees associated. You dont have to do anything special to transfer it, the serial number on the bottom of the computer is all that's needed to pull up information needed for service.

 

If its within 30 days, you could look to return it for a refund, no? If you have the laptop in hand, I'm not sure why you would go out of your way to sell it and buy something else that may fail too..

 

You'll see that it's not within 30 days if you read the thread. They're clearly selling it for the peace of mind. In case something does go bad, they won't Har to worry.

I second Dell for quick turn arounds. NBD replacement parts or repair Tech..

 

Whoa! i just placed an order with Xotic yesterday with the 3 year warranty too. I picked Xotic because of the review and customer service. I would be really mad if this happen to me. 8 months of having the laptop and it spent most of the time in repair would definitely suck. It should not take this long. If i receive my laptop and within 30 days i have to sent for RMA, ill ask for a full refund. As a student and a gamer, having no laptop is truly unacceptable. What was the specs they gave you as the replacement? Is it the same exact one?

 

Sounds like it's Sager's problems more than Xotic's.

 

which one is better,XoticPC or malibal

 

That isn't what this thread is for.

You have to do the research and decide for yourself though.

 

Agreed. It's not a comparison as there are risks associated with doing business with retailers. It is a pretty discouraging story, but true to the fact that the process needs to be handled with all parties involved, not just redirect the client to the vendor. As working with the middle man, one should expect followups to make sure the client is satisfied with the service. I guess with the change of staff there may have been variables that caused the communication issues. I would have hoped as what others have stated for xoticpc to step up and provide something for your inconvenience because they were the ones that were suposed to follow up. It really would make more sense to send it to xotic first so they deal with sager and not you deal with them. It is what a "middleman" is all about, but I guess that concept has been lost over time.

 

Yeah.. This doesn't sound very promising. I just hope I don't have your bad luck dude. I mean sure, no company is perfect. But 8 months? 8 months. Damn.

 

You had the Lappy 3 months before you even contacted them... Then you asked them to wait on the RMA for another 3 months.... They could not recreate the issue.... You finally sent it in the day after XMas... You request replacement of mobo based on a thread, but they could not replicate the issue. Then you get a new laptop, and want to sell it because they are completely at fault. Did I get this all straight?.

So for 6 of the first 8 months of issues on this, you either did not contact them or you requested to wait so you could continue to hold the laptop. And now they are at issue for an 8 month delay in fixing it, jeez.

At least I know that in dealing with children, customers and employees, none of them ever have given me a one sided story to make them look innocent. (sarcasm should be noted). And as a side note, I have never bought anything from any of these resellers, but it is funny how after a long time of most of these resellers getting a lot of positive feedback because of their customer service, now so many are getting these complaints ABOUT their customer service. something smells to me. Just saying. Something smells.

 

I would read most unverified reviews on the net with a grain of salt.

 

This could very well be mass miscommunication happening. If it is then kudos to xoticpc for sticking with it and trying to find a solution.

 

pure professionalism by XoticPC........ in contrast to another reseller.. they've improved significantly, thus resulting in very very good responses from them, good job!

a pleasure to read

 

I can say that I have learned my lesson the hard way.

I ordered my first "gaming" laptop from XoticPC back around 2008 and really had a great experience. It was my first attempt into the Laptop gaming rig so I had a ton of questions and Justin helped me a ton. Great communication and ended up with a wonderful NP5793.

Once I was ready to move on I decided to use a different vendor. I figured they are all the same. While I ended up with a great machine "W860CU" the experience was horrible. They messed up the parts like the wireless card, ordered me the wrong memory, and a few other small details. I understand errors, but it took me 2 months to convince the company that I should not have to pay for shipping of the parts they messed up on even though it showed right in the config that I had purchased them.

Anyway, long story short I am back with XoticPC and just put in my order and working with Michael, who has been very responsive. I am not saying people can't and have not had bad experiences, but in my experience they are the exception.

 

I've found XoticPC to be very responsive, their online chat is always quickly connected to someone and if you say, hey I talked to "name" earlier, that rep will quickly say, please hold, I'll get "name" for you. I also know from past experience their response in emails is top notch, can't ask for better.

Plus from the responses the email logs and phone logs kept from Xotic, seem to indicate there are two very different stories going on, and personally, based on my own experience with Xotic, I'd give Xotic the benefit of the doubt. Especially since I know a customer who doesn't get exactly what they want tend to exaggerate, be forgetful (convenient selective memory) and blow things out of proportion.

You want a more reliable notebook than Sager and a more reliable customer service than Xotic? Yeah that alone for me makes me very suspicious, I can't think of any service or laptop beating reliability of Xotic or Sager.

What other brand can and reseller other than PowerNotebooks, Malibal, LPC-Digital and Xotic can you make a phone call, get even email replys at 2 a.m and being able to get multiple representatives helping free of charge on their own forum, Sager forum and on NBR? Oh wait, none. Notice all mentioned are Clevo/Sager reseller/builders? Yep.

@Abidderman, glad I wasn't the only one who didn't notice that most of the waiting time on getting this issue resolved wasn't Xotic or Sager's fault. I know better, so I will 2nd guess Xotic and Sager and do my utmost to impede their ability to fix the problem. And then blame them for lack of service? That's the definition of self fulfilling prophecy. Sounds to me one of the cases when a customer is trying to scam a company by doing whatever they can until they get a full replacement. I'm not saying that's the case here, but that's how disgruntled customers who just want a replacement behave rather than undergo the RMA/Repair service process.

/rant, my 2 cents from reading all 5 pages of this saga.

 

I don't think anyone would willingly try to extend their laptop repairs if they thought was preventable. I have read many comments online about sagers service being horrible and after reading this thread I am seriously thinking about whether just getting an alienware instead of sager. No company is perfect and I'm sure resellers like xoticpc do have their moments as ppl do quit and confusion does happen. 8 months is horrible wait time especially for a laptop you spend 2k on.

 

Have you seen the amount of recent AW failures? They had their own 7970 issues too, due to poor MB implementation. Lurk some forums and its little on the high side for 17 R4, and 18 R2.

Id say seems Sager has less issues right now. Not that I am trying to say buy one over the other, but I have been researching now for some time, and the I have to saw, AW has been kicked to third place, with a Sager leading the pack and if Samsung can get the 7970 lappy out it is in 2nd. Also seems Clevo's QA of video cards is much better.

I am buying in August after my vacation, so we will see how things pan out.