Good luck getting graphics card/component support from ASUS UK!

[martianrobot]

I am writing here to unashamedly trash ASUS UK Customer Support for the absolutely disgusting non-service they have given me regarding a return of a faulty Radeon AX800XT-PE graphics card.

I bought this from OcUK in October for £175 +vat. A great card to play Half-Life 2 with. However....

By the first week in December it had gone faulty, with no red signal being output from the VGA port. I went on ASUS website to report this, filled in all my information and an in-depth description of the problem. I then waited for a reply, which they said would take up to 48 hours.

Two weeks later I get an email from an ASUS employee in China saying they would pass on this request to my local support team.

One month after this I have heard nothing so went to the support site again and submitted a reminder.

A few days later I get an email from the Chinese person again - she wished me Happy New Year and said that she has passed on the info to my local support team. Again.

A few days after this I get a very confusing email from a guy in the UK, with a very ugly looking Excel spreadsheet attached that I am supposed to fill in even though I had already provided the full information, twice.

I send an email to this guy to ask a few questions about this email as he seemed to state that Asus UK provide support for laptops and PDAs and I have to go to the retailer for component support, even though OcUK website states that ASUS provide direct support for all their products (OcUK, can you clarify?)

Two weeks later I have no reply to this email, so fill in the Excel spreadsheet anyway and send it back to the guy.

One month later I have heard nothing, so ring up ASUS UK and speak to another guy who asks me to send the spreadsheet to him, which I do.

One further month later I have still heard nothing.

By now I am getting pretty annoyed as I have been waiting for support for over 4 months for a graphics card that I owned for just over 1 month before it went wonky.

So I write a letter detailing the farce so far, telling them what I would reasonably like them to do to rectify the situation (i.e. provide RMA immediately, do a quick turnaround on my repair/replacement, extend warranty by the time I have been made to wait). I then attach a printout of the Excel spreadsheet and send it all off by recorded delivery to the Technical Support Manager of ASUS UK.

Two weeks later I get an email from a third support monkey. This is almost an exact copy of the email from the first support guy, complete with Excel spreadsheet for me to fill in. Again. This will be the fifth time they expect me to provide all my details and fault description.

I say almost an exact copy, because this time they have highlighted and enlarged the words 'approximately four weeks' in relation to support turnaround, and have added some unexplained text about a £12 postage and packing fee.

Even though I was ready to explode, I wrote a simple polite email to this third support monkey asking if his email was in response to the recorded letter I sent. A week later I've heard nothing.

Seeing as I have now waited over five months for support and have not received so much as an RMA number, for them to highlight that the process takes four weeks and that I have to pay some random P&P charge never mentioned before is just taking the ******* p*ss!!!!

(And four weeks for what? A complete turnaround of the RMA and repair / replacement? Or just to come up with an RMA number and a returns address?)

I guess I've come to my wits end with this and am not sure what to do. I've been stuck with a broken graphics card for over five months, that I only got just over a months worth of usage out of. And as you can see I've just been getting nowhere with ASUS UK Support - in fact they are actively and arrogantly not lifting a finger to help.

OcUK... can you help?

 

[ic1male]

As far as I can see, this passing of support from OcUK to the manufacturer is a bit naughty. They should just have taken that product from you and replaced it with a new one as they have a 12-month warranty on graphics cards.

 

[MeatLoaf]

I wouldve just sent it back to ocuk.

 

[Darkwave]

I thought that if you RMA something to OCuk, you are actually RMAing it through them to the manufacturer. I was under the distinct impression that OCuk simply give it a test to see if it's actually broken, then send it on to the manufacturer for the proper RMA to see if it can be repaired or not.

Gibbo, shed some light on the RMA process? It's confusing to say the least.

 

[Bennah]

Yea, thats what I thought it was like.

Very confusing indeed.

 

[Durzel]

If its any small consolation, HIS has zero consumer customer support in the UK - it's all in Hong Kong.

Good luck trying to arrange a warranty return with them - I spoke to the only UK contact listed on the HIS website and he told me in no uncertain terms that he "doesn't bother talking to the little people" (paraphrased).

 

[ic1male]

Oh blimey. An HIS card was to be my next purchase

EDIT: Having a glance on HIS' website, they list OcUK as an official retailer and hence warranty is carried out through them.

Asus' website says the following:
"VGA Card - 3 Year - All ASUS VGA cards purchased after January 1st, 2001 will carry 3 year limited warranty services. One year limited warranty is given for purchase made prior to 2001. Please contact your reseller"

 

[martianrobot]

I thought that if you RMA something to OCuk, you are actually RMAing it through them to the manufacturer. I was under the distinct impression that OCuk simply give it a test to see if it's actually broken, then send it on to the manufacturer for the proper RMA to see if it can be repaired or not.

Yeah, thats what I thought.

Which means that if I went ahead and submitted an RMA to OcUK now, in about a months time I'd receive another identical email from ASUS with Excel spreadsheet attached which I would return only to wait another month for an RMA. If the turnaround on just processing an RMA is four weeks as they imply, how long would they actually take to repair or replace the bl**dy graphics card? Four years?

Oh, and I hate the fact that they sent me the form in a proprietary format of an Excel spreadsheet - so very presumptious that I had Micro$oft Office.

This was the straw that broke the camels back for me as regards system building, so I recently sold my PC with another gfx card in and got a new Intel Core Duo iMac. Seems to play Half-Life 2 better

I just wanted to get this gfx card fixed so I can sell it on eBay and recoup some of the money I spent on it.

I have to say that I tested this out the other day on a mates computer and it actually works fine from the DVI port, either directly or through a DVI to VGA converter.

Anybody want to buy this ASUS Radeon AX800XT-PE off me for a reasonable amount? It's an AGP card and it's got 256mb memory. Like I said, there is no red colour tone coming out of the VGA port, but it does work okay on the DVI port.

 

[XD-3]

Oh blimey. An HIS card was to be my next purchase

EDIT: Having a glance on HIS' website, they list OcUK as an official retailer and hence warranty is carried out through them.

Asus' website says the following:
"VGA Card - 3 Year - All ASUS VGA cards purchased after January 1st, 2001 will carry 3 year limited warranty services. One year limited warranty is given for purchase made prior to 2001. Please contact your reseller"

Reading this i would just send your X800 XTPE back to ocUK mate you will find they are nice and helpful and if you have the invoice for the card then spectrum is green

i myself have been trying to get a replacement fan for my A8N SLI D mobo for ages now with no joy from asus UK

Thanks
XD-3

 

[martianrobot]

Asus' website says the following:
"VGA Card - 3 Year - All ASUS VGA cards purchased after January 1st, 2001 will carry 3 year limited warranty services. One year limited warranty is given for purchase made prior to 2001. Please contact your reseller"

I think I might get in touch with OcUK to explain what's happened and see if they can help speed this through. If anybody from OcUK reads this thread could you let me know what, if anything, can be done to alleviate this situation in an effort to stop myself turning up at ASUS UK HQ with a Radeon graphics card in one hand and a very large stick in another?

Thanks.

 

[XD-3]

Yeah, thats what I thought.

Which means that if I went ahead and submitted an RMA to OcUK now, in about a months time I'd receive another identical email from ASUS with Excel spreadsheet attached which I would return only to wait another month for an RMA. If the turnaround on just processing an RMA is four weeks as they imply, how long would they actually take to repair or replace the bl**dy graphics card? Four years?

Oh, and I hate the fact that they sent me the form in a proprietary format of an Excel spreadsheet - so very presumptious that I had Micro$oft Office.

This was the straw that broke the camels back for me as regards system building, so I recently sold my PC with another gfx card in and got a new Intel Core Duo iMac. Seems to play Half-Life 2 better

I just wanted to get this gfx card fixed so I can sell it on eBay and recoup some of the money I spent on it.

I have to say that I tested this out the other day on a mates computer and it actually works fine from the DVI port, either directly or through a DVI to VGA converter.

Anybody want to buy this ASUS Radeon AX800XT-PE off me for a reasonable amount? It's an AGP card and it's got 256mb memory. Like I said, there is no red colour tone coming out of the VGA port, but it does work okay on the DVI port.

You can get HL2 for mac?? were from do you get it of steam?...

EDIT: sorry for the of topic..

Thanks
XD-3

 

[ic1male]

i myself have been trying to get a replacement fan for my A8N SLI D mobo for ages now with no joy from asus UK

Hmm. It took me about 1 month to get a replacement chipset fan for mine. 2 weeks to get the Excel spreadsheet and then 2 weeks to receive it. I guess I was bloody lucky!

 

[ic1male]

You can get HL2 for mac?? were from do you get it of steam?...

EDIT: sorry for the of topic..

No, you run Apple's Boot Camp software to load Windows XP. Then you can play the Windows games as if you were using a Windows PC.

 

[martianrobot]

Reading this i would just send your X800 XTPE back to ocUK mate you will find they are nice and helpful and if you have the invoice for the card then spectrum is green

Thanks XD-3, I've always found OcUK helpful and never had problems with returns before.

I'm just worried that this will send me back to the start of the process as regards ASUS and five more months down the line I'll still be in the same place and I'll end up eating my graphics card, excreting it into a paper bag, setting light to it and leaving it on ASUS UK HQ doorstep after ringing their doorbell.

 

[Gibbo]

HI there

You should just RMA the card back to OcUK who will deal with Asus for you and it will either get repaired or replaced for an equivalent or superior product.

The only guys that provide direct customer support is BFG and XFX nobody else in the UK.

 

[martianrobot]

You can get HL2 for mac?? were from do you get it of steam?...XD-3

Like the previous poster said, I'm playing it on Windows XP on my Intel Core Duo iMac thanks to Boot Camp. This is offical Apple beta software that re-partitions your Intel iMac hard disk, helps you install XP, adds a boot menu allowing you to select which OS you want to boot into at startup and even creates a one-click Windows driver CD for the iMac hardware!

And HL2 is ace on my iMac. I'm running at full 1680 x 1050 rez, with all settings except AA & water maxed out. It runs smoother and faster than my PC did with the AX800XT-PE, and looks better too. None of the stuttering I used to have.

I've already pre-loaded HL2: Episode One via Steam ready for release on the 1st June

Just FYI, the iMac also rocks with Tomb Raider Legend, plays Oblivion okay at medium settings, and seems to have no trouble with all current and older generation games.

 

[ic1male]

I wonder what the Mac does sound-wise? Can you enable EAX and stuff within games or do you need a proper Creative sound card to do it?

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Yeah as Gibbo said RMA Asus products back to them, one of the reasoons Gibbo took Asus back on i think, he knew there customer support was diabolical, so said we'll take you back and handle the customer support, thats why Asus products are a bit dearer.

 

[martianrobot]

I wonder what the Mac does sound-wise? Can you enable EAX and stuff within games or do you need a proper Creative sound card to do it?

No EAX I'm afraid - the iMac uses the Intel Pro soundchip and the EAX option is greyed out in HL2 as far as I can recall (I'm at work at the moment on my boring noisy beige Viglen PC. Yuck.) . I don't know if there is anyway to get EAX in software through some third party drivers or utilities. You could probably get EAX if you attached one of the external Creative Audigy USB soundcards.

It does still sound very good through the iMacs headphone port with my meaty full-cup Sennheiser headphones though

 

[martianrobot]

HI there

You should just RMA the card back to OcUK who will deal with Asus for you and it will either get repaired or replaced for an equivalent or superior product.

The only guys that provide direct customer support is BFG and XFX nobody else in the UK.

Thanks Gibbo.

Do you think it would it help speed things through if I gave a brief desciption of the problems I had dealing with ASUS directly? I just want to get this sorted quickly so I can pass on a fully working gfx card at a low price to some lucky eBay punter, and get back to fragging those pesky Combine with my iMac.