More RMA woes...

[nomaddemon]

I will start by saying until my RIVE toasted itself I was having great luck with my OC and the machine was stable as could be. It was the first machine out of the dozens that I have built that had me perfectly satisfied. It was watercooled and I have GTX 680 SLI running smooth as silk (in Gen 2 mode) and SSD performance was outstanding paired with a Samsung 840Pro 256. I had a stable OC of 4.8Ghz for 24/7 with temps well in line and 16GB of RAM running 2133 Cas 9 no issues.

It was a "C2MCAD" serial number and after pulling the VRM waterblock I could tell that one was much lower than the rest and was the one that cooked itself in a hard gaming session. Hard reboot with puffs of smoke. I knew exactly what had happened when I smelt the smoke.

I dont have another board to test my processor with, but so far everything else seems to be OK. So I began my RMA and was responded to the next day with RMA number and all pertinent information regarding the process. However after sending it in the the depot in Canada I receive an email stating that my board was not repairable and that they have none in stock and offered me a replacement Maximus IV Extreme and that if I did not repond in 24 hours I would be default "upgraded" to this board.

Several reasons this has me pretty upset...

#1: Why would I want a board for a chipset that is not longer used when I have a $600 CPU sitting here staring at me that I can't use untill I get the board I sent in back.

#2: Why are there so many reports of "no stock" in the RMA chain?? I thought ROG actually stood for something other than marketing speak. I had a RIIIE go bad on me and the RMA was simple and effective. Is X79 doing that bad that ASUS is ready to wash its hands of it and burn customers along the way?

#3: 24 hours is not sufficient warning before shipping ridiculous exchange boards by default unless it is in the same chipset family and actually and upgrade. Since RIVE is the top tier there is no real way of offering an upgrade by definition.


I recently bought a MVF and luckily purchased in store replacement warranty on it just for the sake of saving on shipping and RMA time, but with the current state of Asus RMA disarray I am not sure I can go without it. Kinda sad because paying a premium for product should not include headaches like this.

In my opinion Asus has great product, and I know computer sales are down, but these are the times to encourage new customers to buy from you rather than competitors with things such as great support. If I had been shipped my replacement "upgrade" of a discontinued board I couldn't use and could sell for very little I would have been lost as a customer for good.

Last hurdle now is to see how long I have to wait for stock to come in and if I get a board that has been beaten like a rented mule that goes in my Murderbox....

Regards,

Nomad

[Jericho]

It's strange how they have no stock but their resellers do.

[Nodens]

It's probably the service center that has no stock which is not that weird as no service center holds a huge stock of every product..

The only real issue I see here is them wanting to "upgrade" you to Maximus IV Extreme after 24 hours without reply. That's bad in two ways. Firstly 24 hours is really a very small time window to make any default decision unless it's a REAL upgrade. The second issue is that MIVE is actually a downgrade...

[HiVizMan]

Please contact cl-Albert via the pm system.

[chrsplmr]

NoMadDemon .. Welcome to ROG.

Thank you for bringing this to 'our' attention.
Also thankyou for a very well thought out and reasoned review of this.
And your patience in explaining it.

Please keep us posted.
I think you are just in expecting a RIVE not a MIVE..c.

[Necrosan]

Disgusting of ASUS to try and pull the old switcheroo on you.
The even nastier part is they gave you a deadline that defaulted to you being screwed.

Really rethinking my buying strategies for the next gen of hardware.

When is the last time someone has left a GOOD review about ASUS RMA service?

[Nodens]

Necrosan wrote:
Disgusting of ASUS to try and pull the old switcheroo on you.
The even nastier part is they gave you a deadline that defaulted to you being screwed.

Really rethinking my buying strategies for the next gen of hardware.

When is the last time someone has left a GOOD review about ASUS RMA service?

1 in a million users with a good experience bother to post a "Good" review. Still some do...if you search the threads there are people with good experiences. Usually only disgruntled users bother to post about their RMA experience which leads to false assumptions due to wrong metrics. You have millions of boards sold, yet you have a couple of threads every now and then about bad RMA..I seriously doubt that those were the only ones that were returned back..so do the math:)

[chrsplmr]

As witnessed above .. [1st post] those that do don't go looking for help in the forum therefore never reviewing. There are more good stories than poor.
Not to make light of the situation.
One bad one is unexceptably too many. But 'most' turn out well in the end.c.