Service as it should be.
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:28 pmMaxwells: please read, take note, and learn and emulate.
On Christmas Eve last, my ASUS laptop died. I was trying to access it across the LAN, and I was not getting any response. Upon lifting the screen, I had a BSOD. The HDD was making funny noises and the system was refusing to boot.
Given that two days hence I was travelling to the US, and needing the system for that trip, this was what cpuld be termed as "not a good thing".
Clearly the 2 year warranty (the system was just under 18 months' old) was not going to come into play within that sort of timeframe, so I went and sourced a replacement drive for the trip. A couple of hours later I was preparing to install a replacement drive, but the old drive was now working.
I set up the new drive, retrieving the essential stuff from the previously dead drive, and proceeded under the presumption that this was the beginning of the end for this original drive, and that it was now unable to be relied upon.
About a month after my return form the US I again swapped drives, reinstalling the original, not-to-be-trusted unit, using it for essentially non critical functions, backing up frequently, and hoping that it would fail in the relatively short term
Early last week I experienced a similar failure to the first one, and the system again recovered itself.
Late last Tuesday evening I noticed funny clicking noises coming from the drive, and before I even had time to properly shut the system down, I was again at a BSOD, but this time, the system (finally) failed to recover itself.
At last I could deal with it as a warranty issue, and my earlier decision to treat this drive as unable to be trusted was clearly a good one.
About 2 pm today I gave ASUS in Sydney a call. After a short time on Perma-Hold I was conencted to a first level support person.
An experience I normally dread, because too often these people just follow a script and haven't the foggiest idea abotu what they're talking about.
But I was pleasantly surpised: this person listened, and very quickly gave me a RMA, together with a phone number for their couriers, the account number to use, and details for packing the unit for shipment to them, promising a 5 day turnaround.
That's way better than Maxwell, for starters.
"Will it be any quicker if I bring it in to you?" I asked.
"yes"
"If I bring it in this afternoon, and it's just a straight disk swap, would there be a chance that I could wait while you carry out the repair?"
Always an interesting question to ask of service people, and rarely does one get an affirmative response.
"Please wait a few moments while I check"
Whoa! This is promising
The bottom line is that by 3:30 this afternoon my laptop had been repaired, with a new HDD installed in lieu of the faulty one. No arguments, no delays, nothing but exemplary service and smiles all round.
And an apology because "it took so long" - about 10 minutes!
Maxwells, you need to listen and learn that this is how warranty and service issues miust be handled. There are no excuses at all for anything less than this level of service, and your promises of two weeks' or four weeks' turnaround is simply not acceptable!
On Christmas Eve last, my ASUS laptop died. I was trying to access it across the LAN, and I was not getting any response. Upon lifting the screen, I had a BSOD. The HDD was making funny noises and the system was refusing to boot.
Given that two days hence I was travelling to the US, and needing the system for that trip, this was what cpuld be termed as "not a good thing".
Clearly the 2 year warranty (the system was just under 18 months' old) was not going to come into play within that sort of timeframe, so I went and sourced a replacement drive for the trip. A couple of hours later I was preparing to install a replacement drive, but the old drive was now working.
I set up the new drive, retrieving the essential stuff from the previously dead drive, and proceeded under the presumption that this was the beginning of the end for this original drive, and that it was now unable to be relied upon.
About a month after my return form the US I again swapped drives, reinstalling the original, not-to-be-trusted unit, using it for essentially non critical functions, backing up frequently, and hoping that it would fail in the relatively short term
Early last week I experienced a similar failure to the first one, and the system again recovered itself.
Late last Tuesday evening I noticed funny clicking noises coming from the drive, and before I even had time to properly shut the system down, I was again at a BSOD, but this time, the system (finally) failed to recover itself.
At last I could deal with it as a warranty issue, and my earlier decision to treat this drive as unable to be trusted was clearly a good one.
About 2 pm today I gave ASUS in Sydney a call. After a short time on Perma-Hold I was conencted to a first level support person.
An experience I normally dread, because too often these people just follow a script and haven't the foggiest idea abotu what they're talking about.
But I was pleasantly surpised: this person listened, and very quickly gave me a RMA, together with a phone number for their couriers, the account number to use, and details for packing the unit for shipment to them, promising a 5 day turnaround.
That's way better than Maxwell, for starters.
"Will it be any quicker if I bring it in to you?" I asked.
"yes"
"If I bring it in this afternoon, and it's just a straight disk swap, would there be a chance that I could wait while you carry out the repair?"
Always an interesting question to ask of service people, and rarely does one get an affirmative response.
"Please wait a few moments while I check"
Whoa! This is promising
The bottom line is that by 3:30 this afternoon my laptop had been repaired, with a new HDD installed in lieu of the faulty one. No arguments, no delays, nothing but exemplary service and smiles all round.
And an apology because "it took so long" - about 10 minutes!
Maxwells, you need to listen and learn that this is how warranty and service issues miust be handled. There are no excuses at all for anything less than this level of service, and your promises of two weeks' or four weeks' turnaround is simply not acceptable!
