Laptops Scammed by asus

[stevie.g]

I have a Rog Zephyrus 16(2023) which is under warranty till 2026. Recently, I had used the armoury crate and set my gpu to ultimate which prompted me to restart my system. on restart, my display would not work. I took the laptop to the service center on the 20th June, and they accepted the warranty and opened it and said they would order a new motherboard and display and my warranty would cover it. Today(25th) they called me and told me a graphics chip was missing on my board and they would not replace the board on honor my warranty. They used rough language and were forcing me to sign the recipt to close the ticket.

I would advise everybody not to buy asus as my 2 lakh product is now effectively a brick.

 

[cassanovalite]

Its not new that terrible service like this is in India & it truly does suck. Can you try a different service center? Cause honestly, customer service in India is very linked to the service center itself. And yes we should not have to search for a 'good' service center but it sadly is the reality.

 

[Black_Hawk]

Won't posting on their Twitter help in anyway? I mean this is surely downright outrageous!

 

[stevie.g]

I did post it on twitter but i dont believe it will be of much help. I will probably have to approach the courts.
Only one service center in my area and they were forcing me to accept the product as is with the signed receipt. I did not sign the receipt or accept the product.
They literally desoldered a chip.

 

[YeAhx]

I have a Rog Zephyrus 16(2023) which is under warranty till 2026. Recently, I had used the armoury crate and set my gpu to ultimate which prompted me to restart my system. on restart, my display would not work. I took the laptop to the service center on the 20th June, and they accepted the warranty and opened it and said they would order a new motherboard and display and my warranty would cover it. Today(25th) they called me and told me a graphics chip was missing on my board and they would not replace the board on honor my warranty. They used rough language and were forcing me to sign the recipt to close the ticket.

I would advise everybody not to buy asus as my 2 lakh product is now effectively a brick.

I don't understand how the graphic card can be stolen from a laptop. Are they not soldered onto the motherboard itself? The whole thing stinks. Did you record your laptop's condition before sending it in for RMA if so then post the whole thing on TWITTER tagging everyone necessary. Since they have said "they would order a new motherboard and display and my warranty would cover it" they can't claim your motherboard had graphic card missing.

Do your due diligence and provide some proof here please. Do you have any call recording of the rude language they used or was it face to face? Just don't quit now, post whatever you can on twitter like I said maybe something will come out of it. If nothing at least it will be a warning for others to stay away from ASUS.

I did post it on twitter but i dont believe it will be of much help. I will probably have to approach the courts.
Only one service center in my area and they were forcing me to accept the product as is with the signed receipt. I did not sign the receipt or accept the product.
They literally desoldered a chip.

Wow I can't believe it. Seems like some rookie tried to desolder the chip and messed up somewhere and don't want to accept what he did so he's trying to get away with it. Don't be afraid to ask for proof or ask them why they said they will order a new motherboard when the graphic chip was clearly missing. Let them know you will be going to consumer court, Better yet register your complaint and send them a copy/screenshot whatever.

 

[rootyme]

told me a graphics chip was missing on my board and they would not replace the board on honor my warranty. They used rough language and were forcing me to sign the recipt to close the ticket.

What the actual hell! Asus is an extremely reputed brand so this is just unbelievable! In fact, this is daylight robbery. Do not close the ticket at any cost and file a complaint with NCH tonight.

This is a very shady tactic btw. There were two GPU chips on the laptop. The laptop's CPU still had iGPU on board and it was supposed to boot without any dGPU even if we consider their lies legitimate for even one moment. Why would a consumer take a product to claim warranty after removing a GPU chip?

Btw, what rough language did they use on call? Can you tell us the exact lines?

 

[stevie.g]

I have posted the photo they sent me. They took the laptop to a room inside while inspecting the product. It would have been difficult for me to take a photo before i would have sent it as the chip was under the heat sink and the laptop uses liquid metal.
i am going to have to go to the consumer court
they told me to sign the receipt and accept the product as is. they would not honor the warranty and i could call any tom, dick or harry and it was my responsibility now. they said to simply throw the product as they would not fix it
it was a face to face convo

 

[YeAhx]

I have posted the photo they sent me. They took the laptop to a room inside while inspecting the product. It would have been difficult for me to take a photo before i would have sent it as the chip was under the heat sink and the laptop uses liquid metal.
i am going to have to go to the consumer court
they told me to sign the receipt and accept the product as is. they would not honor the warranty and i could call any tom, dick or harry and it was my responsibility now. they said to simply throw the product as they would not fix it
it was a face to face convo

Definitely go to consumer court. If you have submitted it on June 20th and they called you on 25th to let you know the graphic chip is missing then that means it took them 5 days to notice a chip was missing??? Has to be a joke right.

Don't sign anything at all. Even when this whole things gets solved make sure to turn on the laptop and check before taking it in.

 

[PunkX 75]

It's obvious they messed up. This goes beyond common sense. Don't let them think you're stupid.

Escalate the f**k out of this. Make sure you make those (service center) jokers suffer. Make sure to include names in your escalation matrix. Embarrass them.

 

[t3chg33k]

Try writing to the new email ID they created after the Gamers Nexus debacle. It is supposed to right all wrong warranty claim rejections. Not sure if it is limited to North America, but worth a try.

executivecare@asus.com

BTW, I am surprised that you didn't opt for on site warranty. My last 2 laptops are from Asus. Each time I made them visit my home even though they were asking me to bring it to their service centre.

Last time, I asked the technician to pickup the laptop from my home when he said that the issue can be resolved only at the service centre. Also took timestamped photos of the internals as I have upgraded the RAM and SSD.

 

[PunkX 75]

Try writing to the new email ID they created after the Gamers Nexus debacle. It is supposed to right all wrong warranty claim rejections. Not sure if it is limited to North America, but worth a try.

executivecare@asus.com

Be extremely descriptive and precise in your complaint. You have to be savage towards these service-center scumbags.

Include:

1. How they used unprofessional and uncouth language
2. How they are trying to scam you, by breaking things themselves and then pinning the blame on you. You are a layman, would anyone in their right senses think that you would open up an under-warranty laptop worth 2 lakhs yourself, and de-solder a graphics chip? Such a poorly thought-out scam on their part

Also, these things have a warranty sticker, right? If that sticker wasn't tampered with prior to you handing it in, it's a point in your favor.

 

[stevie.g]

Try writing to the new email ID they created after the Gamers Nexus debacle. It is supposed to right all wrong warranty claim rejections. Not sure if it is limited to North America, but worth a try.

executivecare@asus.com

BTW, I am surprised that you didn't opt for on site warranty. My last 2 laptops are from Asus. Each time I made them visit my home even though they were asking me to bring it to their service centre.

Last time, I asked the technician to pickup the laptop from my home when he said that the issue can be resolved only at the service centre. Also took timestamped photos of the internals as I have upgraded the RAM and SSD.

thanks, will try the email.
They were asking Rs. 550 for onsite repair and said it would take 48hrs. As the service center is about 3km from my place, I thought i would drop it in myself

Be extremely descriptive and precise in your complaint. You have to be savage towards these service-center scumbags.

Include:

1. How they used unprofessional and uncouth language
2. How they are trying to scam you, by breaking things themselves and then pinning the blame on you. You are a layman, would anyone in their right senses think that you would open up an under-warranty laptop worth 2 lakhs yourself, and de-solder a graphics chip? Such a poorly thought-out scam on their part

Also, these things have a warranty sticker, right? If that sticker wasn't tampered with prior to you handing it in, it's a point in your favor.

thanks,
no warranty stickers on my product, atleast from the outside

 

[nRiTeCh]

First of all whats your location?
You can escalate to Asus India, US and Taiwan as these brands wont tolerate a bad rep at all.
Open a thread on Asus forums and explain everything.

Definitely go to consumer court. If you have submitted it on June 20th and they called you on 25th to let you know the graphic chip is missing then that means it took them 5 days to notice a chip was missing??? Has to be a joke right.

Don't sign anything at all. Even when this whole things gets solved make sure to turn on the laptop and check before taking it in.

I can recall my days when I was employed with Apple India.. Apple is know for such shady practices. They used to freely swap stuff from a poor customers systems, ipods etc. and what not for their priority customers and even swap serial nos. and pass the bill to the innocent poor customer. So, if that poor customers system had only a bsic or aminor issue, apple used to fool him telling the mobo conked off or the gpu or something beyond repair!
Thats the reason I F** apple and left the job! India is b***shit in services, even if Tesla comes here dont expect Western like services here. They will turn a tesla into a chapri swift.

no warranty stickers on my product, atleast from the outside

How come there were no warranty void like stickers? Usuallt they are found on the side or at the back side. No wonder why the SC pulled the trigger on you!
Still, I wont expect you or anyone to open a laptop to peek inside and check to avoid such scams but who knows what the SC was up to. Sheer bad luck but dont let them slip off easily. Sue Asus!
Who the F** is going to de-solder a gpu and give it to the SC asking for repairs/replacement.
Act smart as if you got zero technical knowledge or you are extremely technically sound so that either way they should not suspect you.

 

[enc0dex264]

Well.. the one thing working in your favour already is that asus is fighting a bad PR battle right now.

Like everyone suggested.. esclate all over social media, mention everything in detail and also try the gamersnexus email + asus executive care mail.

 

[Heisen]

One more lesson to be learned here is not to overclock your GPU's even with the software provided by the manufacturer, there are reasons they are not shipped with higher overclock setting because they can't guarantee that all cards will work on this setting, changing the fan profiles, colors and stuff is okay, but messing with the clock speeds and power requirements of the actual chip for few more FPS is not worth it IMO. Buy the card which matches the performance you need at stock speeds.

I think the display of the laptop was fine (it can not be damaged by changing the setting), it probably was the GPU which had some setting changed in it's bios because that's what happens when you apply any kind of overclock, and it glitched out went into unstable state. This is one of the reason you see dual BIOS feature on the graphics cards, so one can recover to default settings if something goes wrong.

 

[stevie.g]

quick update, guess what, my laptop was a 4050 with 6gb vram. there are 3 vram chips on the board in the photo given to me. The idiot at the service center compared my board with another board which was fully populated and said a chip was missing on my board. My board never had 4 vram chips. it had 3 vram chips of 2gb each. the replacement board had 4 chips of vram because it was an 8gb gpu.

They simply tried to make me shell out cash for a non existing problem. That slot was always empty.

One more lesson to be learned here is not to overclock your GPU's even with the software provided by the manufacturer, there are reasons they are not shipped with higher overclock setting because they can't guarantee that all cards will work on this setting, changing the fan profiles, colors and stuff is okay, but messing with the clock speeds and power requirements of the actual chip for few more FPS is not worth it IMO. Buy the card which matches the performance you need at stock speeds.

I think the display of the laptop was fine (it can not be damaged by changing the setting), it probably was the GPU which had some setting changed in it's bios because that's what happens when you apply any kind of overclock, and it glitched out went into unstable state. This is one of the reason you see dual BIOS feature on the graphics cards, so one can recover to default settings if something goes wrong.

i did not overclock the gpu, armoury crate has standard, optimised , eco and ultimate modes for the gpu. i changed it from optimised to ultimate and it told me to restart, which i did, after which the display went kaput. i think the nvidia gpu glitched

 

[Heisen]

i did not overclock the gpu, armoury crate has standard, optimised , eco and ultimate modes for the gpu. i changed it from optimised to ultimate and it told me to restart, which i did, after which the display went kaput. i think the nvidia gpu glitched

Ultimate Mode - Gaming and other intensive tasks will experience the best performance and lowest button to pixel latency. This mode is ideal when your laptop is plugged in, since it uses significantly more power, which leads to reduced battery life.

Standard - [Windows Default] Also known as MSHybrid. Automatically switches to discrete for demanding applications and integrated graphics for other tasks. This results in good performance when gaming and long battery life during non-intensive tasks.

---

If it is not overclocking in ultimate mode and claiming that it uses significantly more power, what does it mean? Hmm, No idea. It probably uses the discrete graphics for all the tasks, could also disable the iGPU. But that alone can't make the GPU go bad. I think it also keeps the GPU clocks at boosted value or perhaps increases the overall clocks while also raising the maximum temperature and power limits, flipping few bits in the GPU bios, because other wise at least you would have been able to boot into the normal bios.

Was the screen backlight turning on, upon booting? After it stopped working.

 

[rajch2002]

gamernexus did expose of Asus services recently and also shared a email id, tag him in the twitter and post your pics!

 

[altair21]

I have a Rog Zephyrus 16(2023) which is under warranty till 2026. Recently, I had used the armoury crate and set my gpu to ultimate which prompted me to restart my system. on restart, my display would not work. I took the laptop to the service center on the 20th June, and they accepted the warranty and opened it and said they would order a new motherboard and display and my warranty would cover it. Today(25th) they called me and told me a graphics chip was missing on my board and they would not replace the board on honor my warranty. They used rough language and were forcing me to sign the recipt to close the ticket.

I would advise everybody not to buy asus as my 2 lakh product is now effectively a brick.

time to go-a-karen and start screaming "consumer court", they'll capitulate pretty easily, atleast thats what I've seen in my experience with them

Also folks, never give your laptop to the service center specially if its under warranty, always get in-home service, thats what I've done and if you gotta go to the service center, have them open the laptop in front of you

 

[Alucard1729]

If it is not overclocking in ultimate mode and claiming that it uses significantly more power, what does it mean?

From what I gather, Ultimate mode bypasses optimus thus dgpu is used exclusively for all activities (physical MUX switch), and increasing the power consumption significantly. Asus or any other gaming brand usually have oc boost set for their premium laptop GPU. It's used even in standard mode when the laptop requires it (gaming).
Came across multiple complaints over this issue of Asus+ultimate+mode+screen+black over the net. Speculations ranging from bad bios or firmware to physical MUX switch issue and everything in between.
But this situation is different given the service center disassembled and wants to just give the laptop back as is. They're treating the customer with the issue as some criminal and they want to wash their hands off.
As mentioned by fellow members reach out to Asus through twitter and Consumer court with proper gist of the events with evidence like screenshots of the communication by mail and job-sheet among others.

Have you done any troubleshooting before submitting the laptop?