Tell HN: Asus, good hardware, horrible customer service | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Asus, good hardware, horrible customer service

5 points99990000099917 comments

Hi HN.

I had the adventure of pre-ordering an Asus Laptop. https://www.asus.com/us/laptops/for-home/vivobook/asus-vivobook-s-14-oled-m5406/

I found a 50$ off promocode, and placed my order. About 2 weeks later I'm told my order needs to be canceled due to an error on their end. No problem, I'll just order it again.

The promo code no longer works, customer service chat assures me I can just ask them to apply it after I order it. Cool, I'm then told the code is no longer valid. I email their "CEO Office" and after 2 weeks their still "working on it". Compared to HP where I was able to haggle a discount in customer service chat, and then was offered a significant discount when they couldn't cancel an order I placed.

The actual laptop is very well built and fast, but I'm worried if I ever have an issue with it I'll have a horrible time getting it fixed. I'm not upset enough to send it back( mainly since I'd have to wait for the other OEMs to release a AMD 300 series laptop), but I will never buy another laptop from this brand.

At a point it's not even about the money, it's just a really janky bait and switch to sell a product with a discount, cancel the order and lie about being able to apply it later.

This is true for most brands. They are too big to care, it won't affect business.

That's why my next laptop will be from a smaller brand that I know it has a good customer support.

I mentioned I had a really good experience with HP.

Even Lenovo offered me customized discounts when I asked( I really dislike how everything is constantly 50% off though).

I just hope Lenovo fixed their advertising spam. I love getting to see their discounts of 1 cent on 29€ sleeve. Or 0 discount, with old price overlined and new price being exactly the same...

Well, I had a good experience with Acer 10 years ago but everybody else I know who had a problem with their Acer laptop can't say the same.

Customer support for these brands is a gamble that mostly doesn't go well.

Asus has no spare batteries in stock to fix my laptop, only a few years after its release. A laptop that cooks its battery well done with the intel and nvidia electric heaters. I'm not sure I will order from Asus again soon.

Aliexpress

Hard pass. I got my share of counterfeit batteries or too many years used batteries coming from China. Not worth the time and the risk.

Just don't try to buy the cheapest

Asus probably gets its batteries from China. If you buy from Amazon, eBay, or “battery-store-dot-com” there’s a good chance they came from AliExpress.

I know. That’s why I contacted ASUS to get the right battery.

Laptops seem to in general be a losers game unless you need lots of compute. I wonder what would be better cheap alternatives.

The good thing about Asus is that probably you won't need to contact support ever again.

Because if it breaks, it will break for good?

And exactly one week after warranty ends?

it just doesn't break. Battery replacement from them can be an issue, but where I live no brand sells original batteries. Luckily you can find them on aliexpress

The did eventually apply the coupon, but it just feels sloppy.

Overall I'm very happy with my purchase. 1150$ for the laptop and 200$ for a 4TB SSD.

You should've clarified that in the post

They did so after I wrote it. Still took 2 weeks and about a dozen emails

Reply on news.ycombinator.com