Good Morning,

I just wanted to share with you my experience with Asus consumer service and an Asus Rog Strix GL702ZC.

On November 17 I made the aquisition of an Asus Rog Strix laptop. On Sunday december 3, I could hear some crispy noises from the laptop, then a lot of smoke went out of the laptop. It, of course, died of it. For sure, I was not happy, it was the first time in my life such a thing happend to me.
The same day I did all the Asus support on their website, and with email. Few times later I received an automated email answer telling that they received my question and they will take care of it. I can still call them from 8 until 20.
On Monday, so I called them at 8. No luck. They open only at 9, and until 19... Weird. But... So I phoned back later and could finally talk with someone. They told me they understand everything. At the end of that day, I had 4 opened tickets to their support. The next days I had to wait for them, to fill some weird papers. On Thursday evening I received everything to return the defunct laptop, which was sent on Wednesday and received by them on Thursday (December 7).
From this day I have absolutely no news.
I also added a post on the official Asus Rog forum. But I have no answers either. Maybe people at Asus are in vacation.

So this was about the story. Now I would like to talk about all what is around this story...

I bought this laptop for several reasons, one is that it was the only laptop with AMD hardware on it. The common price for this laptop is 1800 euros. So no one can tell this is a cheap laptop. And I believe most of people can think this can be a high-end product.

What annoys me the most in this is that I bought a product, one of the most expensive products Asus is selling, which died two weeks after, and Asus is treated it as a warranty, for repair. To my opinion, this is clearly a big defect in a new product that should be exchanged or payed back in the few days after the notice of the defect. This should not be covered by the warranty repair. Indeed, it seems that under some conditions (which one ?) Asus is able to do an exchange the same day the defect has been noticed to them (see https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/hardware/general-hardware/961327-asus-rog-strix-gl702zc). However this is very rare compared to the many people who are in the same situation as me. But why the hell, Asus is treating consumers differently ?

What also annoys me a lot is that I bought something expensive, and I have the same service as if I had bought something at 300 euros (there are Asus laptops at this price).

What annoys me too is that Asus does not take you aware of the repair. I could find a link that should give updates about that, but it was not working for my repair ids.

What is also annoying here is that Asus does not do the repair itself, they pay a company to do so (in France, it is called letmerepair). Most of the time, people had to wait from one up to three months in order whether to get a working product or money back.

What is even more annoying is that many people complained about Asus service since many years now (I know, I did not payed attention to this before, and I should have had). Some were reported this to customer associations. But unfortunately things remained the same. For people doubting about that, google is your friend
Here, in order to avoid debatable talkings and in order to respect some working people, I omitted to write other things about the Asus consumer service.

So I would like to advice to think several times before wanting to buy such a product. Why ?
Most of the people here are like me, they need computers to develop with it, most probably games. Some of us are students. Some of us might start an indie project, a freelance or a startup. Most of us might live from the use of that kind of hardware.
So, when a bad thing like this happens, it might be good to face a good consumer service, which will provide a new product quickly, or at least the money back in a really decent period of time.
From my personal situation, I cannot buy a new computer with the same hardware. So I have to wait. And I know I will wait long, and I am not even sure to get something working back again, or to get the money back (it happend to some consumers, yes).

Thanks for the reading and sorry if this looks bad, anger did not completely fade away...

Did you buy directly from Asus? Or from another retailer? If buying from another retailer they would be my first port of call, they are most likely to be able to send you a replacement and deal with it quickly. You probably have a bunch of consumer rights as a buyer, depending on your country.

15 minutes ago, lawnjelly said:

Did you buy directly from Asus? Or from another retailer? If buying from another retailer they would be my first port of call, they are most likely to be able to send you a replacement and deal with it quickly.

There are two kind of warranty. First one is satisfied or reimbursed warranty. But you need not to use the product to make it work. Second one is the 'constructor warranty', so they send it back to Asus too. And I preferred to directly talk with Asus, hoping it could be more fast.

17 minutes ago, lawnjelly said:

You probably have a bunch of consumer rights as a buyer, depending on your country.

There are. From my researches on Internet, they are not really helpful, at least at this moment.

10 hours ago, grumpyOldDude said:

Seriously? In France? Consumer watch dogs should be setting examples.  They're trigger happy here in the UK and always ready to punish companies if it can be proven they've done wrong.. So i'm really surprised to read that

Yep. As another example, I take the train everyday to go and come back from work. Since several years there are a lot of problems, and things are getting worse and worse.  Consumer associations, politics have been made aware of it. There are several consumer associations which 'want' to do things about it. But all what they do is asking money... This is one of many examples

To go back to the topic, this forum (if you are able to understand french) can give you some hints about how things work here, at least for Asus.

And you'll notice this will be the same for almost many things (energy service if they are not from the main providers, internet provider (ie people can pay for something that have disconnections several dozen of times every hours, and nothing happens...). What I am surprised of is to hear that in GB is better

And to go back to the original topic of the topic, 12 days in repair, no news, no answers from my emails, no answers from the main asus forum (which isn't french, by the way)...

From this article https://www.frenchentree.com/living-in-france/shopping-in-france-your-consumer-rights/ 

Quote

Legal guarantees apply in three different cases. If the item you bought is not of the expected standard – for example if it is defective – the seller is liable for two years following the purchase. The item must be repaired or replaced during that period of time in accordance with a EU directive. Furthermore, it’s possible to choose to keep the product and get a partial refund or to restore it and get a total refund – a choice that you don’t have to justify.

The second case is known as the vice caché – a situation in which your item’s defect was not visible when you purchased it and made the product unfit for its normal use. Again, you have two years from the moment you discovered the defect to go back to the seller – but you cannot exceed the limitation period, which is five years from the purchase. The item can be totally refunded or partially so if you choose to keep it.

The last situation where legal guarantees apply is when defective products cause economic or bodily harm. It is the trader’s legal responsibility to exchange or refund the item within the next 30 days.

It suggests you should be able to demand a refund from the seller, without having to justify.

Whether the french retailer takes any notice of french law or EU directives is another matter. I am familiar with the frustration, I remember asking earlier this year at a tech company for the nearest internet cafe, and being told, 'this is france, monsieur' with a gallic shrug.

While I don't excuse you getting a laptop that blew up, the current tech business is built on the principle of churning out lots of high volume. There will be a certain proportion of duds (perhaps even 10%), but it is cheaper to get these as returns than to do quality control in the factory. If they did proper quality control, the product would cost 2-3x as much, and they would go out of business. So in practice when you buy an electronic doodad, you need a quick and easy way of getting it exchanged.

In the UK, if you get a dud, you fill out a form online, a courier comes to your door and collects the dud, and replaces it with a brand new replacement. There is no question of 'repair', it makes no economic sense, and reputation is important for retailers. The duds get dealt with by the retailer (perhaps sent back to the manufacturers, or just claimed for).

Personally if you have something fry in a laptop, you will want the whole thing replaced as who knows how it will have affected the other components .. what if you want to resale it etc? You paid for a fresh new fully working laptop and that is what you should get.

Definitely next time I'd be much more careful about picking a retailer. Even consider ordering from a big respected retailer in UK, Germany etc.

2 hours ago, lawnjelly said:

In the UK, if you get a dud, you fill out a form online, a courier comes to your door and collects the dud, and replaces it with a brand new replacement. There is no question of 'repair', it makes no economic sense, and reputation is important for retailers. The duds get dealt with by the retailer (perhaps sent back to the manufacturers, or just claimed for).

Not only in UK. This depends a lot on the seriousness of the seller or manufacturer. I do computer sciences since 20 years now. I have had many computers and other hardware. I have had very very few issues. Last time (maybe 4 years ago), my power inverter bugged and destroyed my main computer: RAM got killed, an hard-drive died. I called the warranty of the inverter, they came the next day to give a new inverter, and few days later someone came to get the old one. I then sent all the buying proofs for my killed hardware and got reimbursed quickly. The inverter was a cheap APC one (less than 100€ if I remember well, so far from these 1800€). And they did not wanted to know why it happened. I just got reimbursed for far more than the cost of the inverter ! This is just a serious company which takes care of its customers.

Asus is not. At least not in France, and not in other countries (I know this is the same in Russia). Maybe it is in USA, somehow obliged by law. Asus is just sliding from its old well reputation made 15 years ago. This is not serious at all.

I believe that serious companies still exist, and so I hope people who will read this will be able to make the good choice (I think Dell and Hp are good for this). Of course 92% of the time, you will not have any issues...

Thank you guys.