ASUS has an excellent product portfolio. Therefore, it is unfortunate that post-sale service is so poor that it would be wise to refrain from buying their stuff.
And fortunately there are other - more serious - players in the market, offering equipment at least as good a quality.
We bought a motherboard, which after a time turned out to have a small but annoying defect. One of the contacts in the processor socket had it after a month's time to let go its grip on its pin causing ‘blue screens’. At first we thought the problem was caused by a defective processor. We had it changed at found out it was not. The computer was running fine, but only for about 3 weeks. Then the processor should be removed at reinstalled in its socket. When that was done, it was fine again - for 3 weeks!
In the long run this was too annoying and therefore it was fortunate that we still had full year’s warranty on the motherboard. We decided to make use of that.
Meanwhile the retailer from which we had bought the motherboard had closed his store. Therefore we turned ourselves directly to the Asus Company via their support team.
Unfortunately, the team was unable to take care of the matter. Instead the team referred us to the main European wholesaler – to the German firm ‘Devil’.
Unfortunately Devil could not help us either. Devil had a policy of never dealing with retail customers. They only dealt with resellers. They acknowledged our predicament, but the best advice Devil was able to give us was to try to persuade a random, but friendly and helpful retailer to overtake the responsibility from the closed retailer!
This advice was of course less than useful :-(
Well ... back to ASUS 'support team.
Too bad! Again we were referred to Devil. ASUS themselves could not do anything at all. It was VERY, VERY unfortunate for us that our retailer had ceased to exist, but we had to understand that this simply was a case of FORCE MAJEURE and hence it should be obvious that ASUS was chess mate and out of the game! The higher powers had spoken! ASUS’ sorrow was deep: 'Dear valued customer ASUS', this was really, really sad for us, but there was nothing, nothing ASUS could do to help us now!
Then followed a correspondence of about 10 to 15 mails each way. We tried hard to convince ASUS’ support team that it ought not to be our problem that one of their (!) dealers had turned the key. It was ASUS and not the retailer that had issued the guarantee on the motherboard.
ASUS Support Team – on their side - tried their best to convince us that it obviously could not help when our (!) distributor had ceased to exist.
Finally, finally we succeeded in getting a tiny breach in the team's barricade. For a reasonable fee (around 50 US $) ASUS would - exceptionally - open to the possibility that we could send the defective board for examination at ASUS Nordic in Sweden. However, the support was warning us: As the defect typically appeared approximately 3 weeks after the processor was inserted into the socket it was highly unlikely that the technicians would hold sufficient patience to observe the fault. Most likely the outcome of the inconvenience on our part would be that the defective board would be returned to us and that the 50 $ would be lost!
The ASUS support team was right. We had to give up. ASUS had won the battle.
And yet ... We, the Network Group, will obviously never buy products from ASUS again. And the sum dedicated to IT hardware on our budget is not small.
When we search the Internet for reviews on ASUS it is evident that we are not the only ones to think that ASUS support have much to be desired. These many others customers are not likely to buy from ASUS again either.
Moreover it might be possible that you - dear reader – when you read this story would consider other options and perhaps prefer to buy from other companies with better service.
SAMSUNG could be a case in point. This company quickly and efficiently repaired a defective monitor - purchased from the exact same dealer - without dodging at all.
The Network Group would of course prefer to buy their stuff.
Perhaps in the long run a better service would be a more profitable strategy for ASUS.
We hope so!
