General "How to Improve Asus Support" Ideas and Discussion Thread

[wkwrd]

In light of the 2015 review of laptop brands published few days ago, Asus ranked 7th, a massive drop from last year's 3rd, due to the company's absymal support.

I'm a long-time Asus fanboy, and I have been noticing how Asus support has been regressed over time. The best bet as a user when they have a problem is to consult online support like rog forum and messaging from Facebook and the MyASUS app. The phone support is always the most horrible out of the available options, which, given the complicated nature of troubleshooting hardware and verbal expression of issues I thought I'd willing to cut them some slack on this part, but to the most simple advices (like how to get the usb3.0 driver, last time I asked) what I've got from the phone had been next to unhelpful.

Anyway, I believe Asus' support in general (not just for RMA, which I'm generally lucky for never used one) has been a primary sore point to a lot of potential buyers and current users like me. That's why I think open a thread to solely can help Asus make better decision.

To everyone reading this: How have Asus support treated you? Any ideas for improvement?

Don't be shy, speak out!

[Xenocrates]

I had an RMA. Used the online chat. Went rather smoothly. I got a new board, shipped them the old one. Quick and hassle-free. About 20 minute with the rep, and he created an RMA number for me. Which made me sad, I had hoped there was a fix. But it went smoothly and quickly. North American, For Reference.
Cheers
Xeno

[Shark007]

I have recently had the exact experience as Xenocrates except I initiated my complaint in an email. They responded with an RMA #. I sent the motherboard in, and received a new one in return. Just to add something strange, The serial number of the new motherboard that I received ended with 00001

I have supported Asus hardware since '95.

[Korth]

Online reports - based on search engine findings and, of course, popular bias - are invariably going to be skewed. The overwhelming majority of loyal customers buy a product, use it seemingly without issue, never say a word. They rarely bother to offer feedback unless bribed through some sort of rebate or reward. Those people who volunteer comments about their products online are usually complaining that something's not working and they want it fixed. Or they can't really tell if it's not working and want information before losing time and money on RMAs, shipping charges, restocking fees, etc.

Many of these complaints are valid. Unforeseen bugs do exist. Defects do happen. Shipping and delivery can be a dangerous sport.
Most of these complaints can be attributed to user error - clumsy gorilla fingers, failure to read manuals, poorly chosen incompatible parts, whatever.
Some of these complaints are just demands for more perfection which no product can possibly deliver, certainly not at a consumer price-point.
A few of these complaints are just haters who gonna hate, flamethrowers, trolls, and other useless internet vandals trying to leave their stain.

Companies like Asus are high profile and so receive more scrutiny. And they can be judged unfairly when they choose to ignore specific complaints or discontinue open dialogues - even when it would clearly be a waste of their time to continue responding. But I can't at all agree with any claims that Asus fares worse in this regard than Samsung and Dell (let alone user-hostile megacorporate HP and Lenovo), I think the writer of that article really needs to get a few of the finer facts straightened out, lol.

Asus enthusiast products tend to be heavily packed with advanced features, bells & whistles - which adds to usage complexity and configuration considerations. So these products may appear shoddy at a glance simply because so many people constantly report issues and confusions about all sorts of things not working exactly as expected.

However, all that being said ... my personal experience is that Asus support is sometimes sporadic and substandard. And it has seemed to generally decline in overall quality over recent years.

[Red-Tide]

My biggest comment to this thread would be to better include customers in the RMA process. I have been running this RMA gauntlet for 12 months now on my ROG notebook and the most frustrating part is the lack of transparency with the process. I will qualify that.

If I send my notebook in for an issue, I do not think it is to much to expect a rundown of what tests they performed and what, if anything, they had to do to the unit in question. Instead you get a generic service slip with some ASUS only codes that say nothing. This is extremely frustrating for someone whom wants to know what exactly the issue was and what caused it and what parts were replaced etc...

I work in heavy equipment industry and its common practice that we always supply this sort of information to the customer, I guess I expected all industries to work like this. No amount of asking really got me a solid answer either.

Maybe I am expecting to much but I dont think so.

[sectionate]

Asus support has always been good to me, never had to wait xxx amount of days for emails and what not. Never had to RMA any hardware.

[KyleTM]

I, likewise LOVED Asus products, and was a staunch supporter of them.

I worked in Computer repair at the time, meaning all of my customers got recommendations, and completed Asus products by my advise.

I too have noticed their support has gone down hill, and is abysmal, as has my prior employer.

You see, I started in computing when I was in highschool, as a co-op position at a local computer repair shop.  This repair locale, provided me with all of my initial skills, AND my initial vendor loyalty; You see, my employer was a staunch supporter of Asus products, and loved how their products lasted so long, in comparison to competitors, and also provided value-adding ease to support.  I remember very few Asus products I had to support, and each of them were clearly user-errors, like spilling a drink on top of their computer, or using the computer where it would certainly collect dust (saw mills, etc.) which speaks to their quality.

I decided at that point to only utilize Asus products in my own capacities, and started a computer business of my own, which built Asus-boarded computers.

I too, have noticed how their support has moved from superb, to OK, to mediocre, to abysmal.  Just over the past 5 years, I had a problem with my motherboard, which required replacement, as one of the chipsets, related to RAID arrays for the M.2 slot, was not working as intended, so I made a ticket, and then I had to get my ticket escalated to have it serviced, then I got it to the correct department, then I began working with support and they kept heckling me, in a vain attempt to find another vendor as a scape goat, as I had Gigabyte RAM, an AMD CPU, and Samsung SSDs, and a Gigabyte graphics card, at-the-time.

Suffice to say, after my repeated 'suggestions' that it couldn't be issues with any of my components, because it was a data issue, in particular with the raid array and the M.2 drives being used, after insisting for a few weeks they 'discovered' an inadequacy in their firmware, which was corrected with the next bios update.

I provide this, to motivate you to continue in your attempts to find aid, and to provide a gleam of hope, that their is light at the end of the tunnel; You just need to dig through a lot of junk to get their.

My improvement suggestion is for Asus to either respect their customer's knowledge, time and effort, and provide aid more easily, or to write up a rationale for their support methodology, such that ulterior vendors can no longer utilized as scape-goats.