How an authorized ASUS service center damaged my $12,000 ProArt Studiobook One laptop

[animatrix_]

 

Name of Brand:

ASUS

 

Description of your issue:

The authorized ASUS service center caused damage to my laptop, and after over 2 months, it still hasn’t been fully restored to its original condition. This has resulted in significant financial loss and out-of-pocket expenses. The issue here is not about warranty but liability.

 

Have you tried solving your issue through the brand's customer support channel? If so, what was the result?

After two months, ASUS only addressed the screen damage and outer back panel, but the lid's closing issue—reported at the time of the incident—remains unresolved. They dismissed the issue as 'normal,' even though the ASUS service center admitted when I first brought it in that they had never serviced this laptop model before. This was after the damage was caused by the authorized service center.

 

What would an ideal resolution of your issue look like?

 

• ASUS should repair the lid and compensate me for the out-of-pocket expenses I incurred due to the damage caused by their authorized service center. If not for the damage they caused, I wouldn't have had to bear these additional costs.
• ASUS should also revoke this service center's authorization to prevent further incidents.

[Blasty Blosty]

This is absolutely ridiculous, probably the worst customer support I have ever seen from them

[animatrix_]

5 minutes ago, Blasty Blosty said:

This is absolutely ridiculous, probably the worst customer support I have ever seen from them

It’s even more shocking that the authorized service center technician lied to my face, claiming he never touched or modified my laptop, and acted surprised when I showed him the damage just minutes after picking it up. When I asked who was responsible for the damage, he said he didn’t know.

[Blasty Blosty]

3 minutes ago, animatrix_ said:

It’s even more shocking that the authorized service center technician lied to my face, claiming he never touched or modified my laptop, and acted surprised when I showed him the damage just minutes after picking it up. When I asked who was responsible for the damage, he said he didn’t know.

Surely this is touching on legal issues, that's like taking your car for a service and it comes back with 3 flat tyres and no driver door

[whispous]

Sorry, out of interest, can I know what makes this laptop worth twelve grand?

[PDifolco]

16 minutes ago, whispous said:

Sorry, out of interest, can I know what makes this laptop worth twelve grand?

Laptop was a scam already, so service was too maybe ?

[animatrix_]

23 minutes ago, whispous said:

Sorry, out of interest, can I know what makes this laptop worth twelve grand?

The price is due to the Quadro RTX 6000 (24GB VRAM) inside, the only laptop to ever house a 102-class GPU in a laptop.

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, whispous said:

Sorry, out of interest, can I know what makes this laptop worth twelve grand?

Mobile rtx6000 competes with full power rtx 3080 mobile cards from the generation after it with ease. Also the only card at the time in a mobile device with 24gb of vram.

 

EXTREME niche device but it absolutely has usecases. Since nobody else was doing it asus could just price it out of the ass because they were the only one. Also keep in mind this was 4 years ago when 24gb of vram was ENTERPRISE EXCLUSIVE and the best you could do consumer wise in a nvidia card was 11gb unless you counted the weird rtx titan then you had 24gb however that card will actually perform worse than this mobile quadro in a fair few applications due to the quadro having different drivers.

 

So yes is 12k on a laptop silly? Absolutely. However if this device can make you work harder better faster stronger then it will be worth it.

 

Eg it takes you 7 minutes to build a architectural 3d render of a building for a client on a rtx 2080m however on this quadro it is 3 minutes. Doesn't seem like a big deal however you have to build this 50 times for the client and you have 7 clients ongoing. That small 4 minutes suddenly becomes a MASSIVE deal and can easily mean that you have to drop a client or 2 because your computer cannot keep up meaning you lose MORE than the costprice of this device.

 

Personal example. I did musical visualization a while ago. My old not weak laptop with a 6700hq and 970m was keeping up but needed time to do it all. I ended up spending 2k on a new legion 5 with a 3070 and 5800h + 64gb of ram and a good bit of storage (still had to keep the old laptop running so no transfer of that ). What my old laptop needed minutes for to test my new one did in SECONDS. Due to me being able to deliver my work faster I could take on more of the work in parallel thus meaning that whilst I normally needed 80% of my deadline time I now only needed like 40% to do the same work thus meaning I could add another WHOLE project alongside it effectively DOUBLING my income.

 

I paid that 2k laptop off in 2 weeks and well made more money than with my old trusty laptop. Ended up usually bringing along both so that if the new unit was computing for a bit the old one could just keep going for demo tasks as it was PLENTY fast enough for that. Eventually retired it for a thinner and lighter since demo runs don't need much power as long as it's not real time 3d.

 

 

[animatrix_]

42 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Mobile rtx6000 competes with full power rtx 3080 mobile cards from the generation after it with ease. Also the only card at the time in a mobile device with 24gb of vram.

 

EXTREME niche device but it absolutely has usecases. Since nobody else was doing it asus could just price it out of the ass because they were the only one. Also keep in mind this was 4 years ago when 24gb of vram was ENTERPRISE EXCLUSIVE and the best you could do consumer wise in a nvidia card was 11gb unless you counted the weird rtx titan then you had 24gb however that card will actually perform worse than this mobile quadro in a fair few applications due to the quadro having different drivers.

 

So yes is 12k on a laptop silly? Absolutely. However if this device can make you work harder better faster stronger then it will be worth it.

 

Eg it takes you 7 minutes to build a architectural 3d render of a building for a client on a rtx 2080m however on this quadro it is 3 minutes. Doesn't seem like a big deal however you have to build this 50 times for the client and you have 7 clients ongoing. That small 4 minutes suddenly becomes a MASSIVE deal and can easily mean that you have to drop a client or 2 because your computer cannot keep up meaning you lose MORE than the costprice of this device.

 

Personal example. I did musical visualization a while ago. My old not weak laptop with a 6700hq and 970m was keeping up but needed time to do it all. I ended up spending 2k on a new legion 5 with a 3070 and 5800h + 64gb of ram and a good bit of storage (still had to keep the old laptop running so no transfer of that ). What my old laptop needed minutes for to test my new one did in SECONDS. Due to me being able to deliver my work faster I could take on more of the work in parallel thus meaning that whilst I normally needed 80% of my deadline time I now only needed like 40% to do the same work thus meaning I could add another WHOLE project alongside it effectively DOUBLING my income.

 

I paid that 2k laptop off in 2 weeks and well made more money than with my old trusty laptop. Ended up usually bringing along both so that if the new unit was computing for a bit the old one could just keep going for demo tasks as it was PLENTY fast enough for that. Eventually retired it for a thinner and lighter since demo runs don't need much power as long as it's not real time 3d.

 

 

It's still the only laptop with 24GB VRAM, even next year's models will be capped at 16GB AFAIK.

[jaslion]

14 minutes ago, animatrix_ said:

It's still the only laptop with 24GB VRAM, even next year's models will be capped at 16GB AFAIK.

Correct! There are some desktops masked as a laptop deals now but well enjoy 15m of battery

[animatrix_]

Anyone knows if it's normal for ASUS service center to alter the warranty expiry date after visiting them? Because originally the warranty was removed and thus it expired in 2020/09/28 which shows in the original service form document. But in the new document, it's changed to 2024/09/23 which is the same day I was there.

 

Could that be human error? I doubt it because when I check the warranty in MyASUS app it shows the new date.

 

It also doesn't let me look up warranty using the same serial number on ASUS' website.

 

I wonder if this date change could be an attempt to obfuscate the fact that this laptop never had warranty as it was a test unit sent to me as a new unit?

[Bitter]

This is exactly the kind of thing that gives Steve over at Gamers Nexus morning wood, you should 107% contact them.

[animatrix_]

3 hours ago, Bitter said:

This is exactly the kind of thing that gives Steve over at Gamers Nexus morning wood, you should 107% contact them.

I contacted him twice with a lot of information but unfortunately no reply.

[animatrix_]

Also just to update about the laptop and ASUS service center:

 

1. They changed the screen, the first replacement was DOA, major screen artifacts:

 

2. They ordered 2 more screens so after waiting 2-3 more weeks, the new replacement looked fine.

 

3. Later they contacted me for the hinge issue after the social media backlash. They saw the issue and after changing the hinge, the laptop lid did close up like before the incident, so my concern wasn't bogus/imagined.

 

4. After taking the laptop home, I noticed they forgot to connect the CPU fans back. The CPU was reaching temps 96C because the CPU fan wasn't working (0 RPM).

 

5. After informing them of the issue, I had to travel to the service center the next day for them to connect the CPU fan. Each travel costs about $50 USD one way due to 2h plus travel distance by car. None of these out of pocket expenses are reimbursed despite asking about it.

 

6. Last month before the holidays, I started seeing some artifacts but wasn't sure if it was some app glitch or the laptop. But after returning to work, I realized it's the laptop screen failing just around the 3 month mark. So not sure if they would be willing to fix it as they say they support the replaced parts for 3 months.

 

I noticed the issue before the 3 months, but reported maybe a week after it because I had to make sure it's the hardware and also because of the holidays I didn't use the laptop.

 

 

 

7. The original panel never had these issues. I still have it despite being cracked, it can still be checked and it's free from any of these issues shown above despite being used 3-4 years by now. No ghosting, no burn-in, no flickering at all.

 

8. I contacted ASUS, they recommended changing some OLED related settings, despite informing them that this is an IPS panel. They also sent some steps for 2025 model laptops, again clearly my laptop is not 2025 model.

 

9. I feel the replacement screen is not up to the same quality as the original panel, despite having the same model number. Is there any recourse or protection for this? I am only in this predicament because an ASUS authorized service center broke the screen by physically dropping it. Otherwise this would have never occurred given by the perfect track record of the original display.

 

Thanks in advance.

[GreenLeaf]

On 9/20/2024 at 10:32 AM, animatrix_ said:

It’s even more shocking that the authorized service center technician lied to my face, claiming he never touched or modified my laptop, and acted surprised when I showed him the damage just minutes after picking it up. When I asked who was responsible for the damage, he said he didn’t know.

how can someone be so ruthless? especially if it has to do with other people's property that they bought with their hard earned money?

anyway i thought asus was kind of in the clear, but it seems like the customer service is getting worse

 

[Bitter]

5 hours ago, animatrix_ said:

Also just to update about the laptop and ASUS service center:

 

1. They changed the screen, the first replacement was DOA, major screen artifacts:

 

2. They ordered 2 more screens so after waiting 2-3 more weeks, the new replacement looked fine.

 

3. Later they contacted me for the hinge issue after the social media backlash. They saw the issue and after changing the hinge, the laptop lid did close up like before the incident, so my concern wasn't bogus/imagined.

 

4. After taking the laptop home, I noticed they forgot to connect the CPU fans back. The CPU was reaching temps 96C because the CPU fan wasn't working (0 RPM).

 

5. After informing them of the issue, I had to travel to the service center the next day for them to connect the CPU fan. Each travel costs about $50 USD one way due to 2h plus travel distance by car. None of these out of pocket expenses are reimbursed despite asking about it.

 

6. Last month before the holidays, I started seeing some artifacts but wasn't sure if it was some app glitch or the laptop. But after returning to work, I realized it's the laptop screen failing just around the 3 month mark. So not sure if they would be willing to fix it as they say they support the replaced parts for 3 months.

 

I noticed the issue before the 3 months, but reported maybe a week after it because I had to make sure it's the hardware and also because of the holidays I didn't use the laptop.

 

 

 

7. The original panel never had these issues. I still have it despite being cracked, it can still be checked and it's free from any of these issues shown above despite being used 3-4 years by now. No ghosting, no burn-in, no flickering at all.

 

8. I contacted ASUS, they recommended changing some OLED related settings, despite informing them that this is an IPS panel. They also sent some steps for 2025 model laptops, again clearly my laptop is not 2025 model.

 

9. I feel the replacement screen is not up to the same quality as the original panel, despite having the same model number. Is there any recourse or protection for this? I am only in this predicament because an ASUS authorized service center broke the screen by physically dropping it. Otherwise this would have never occurred given by the perfect track record of the original display.

 

Thanks in advance.

What country are you in? Is there some kind of consumer rights or consumer protection agency or group you can contact for help? IMO at this point Asus owes you some kind of buy back on the laptop, but I don't know how things work there for you. Do some research into that and get in touch with some people so you can be informed about your rights and come at them with the correct information.

[animatrix_]

27 minutes ago, Bitter said:

What country are you in? Is there some kind of consumer rights or consumer protection agency or group you can contact for help? IMO at this point Asus owes you some kind of buy back on the laptop, but I don't know how things work there for you. Do some research into that and get in touch with some people so you can be informed about your rights and come at them with the correct information.

I contacted the consumer protection agency where I live but and they filed a case but in the end they said it's not malicious intent but mistake and they don't have power to enforce anything. So the only option is to pay.

 

ASUS said they are not obligated to reimburse any expenses nor replace the laptop because it's out of warranty, because they gave me a test unit rather with warranty stripped already than brand new as we discussed.

[Bitter]

3 hours ago, animatrix_ said:

I contacted the consumer protection agency where I live but and they filed a case but in the end they said it's not malicious intent but mistake and they don't have power to enforce anything. So the only option is to pay.

 

ASUS said they are not obligated to reimburse any expenses nor replace the laptop because it's out of warranty, because they gave me a test unit rather with warranty stripped already than brand new as we discussed.

That's shitty. I wonder if the repair facility is using counterfeit parts? If you could prove that or that they're not using genuine parts I wonder if you could bust that up the ranks. Maybe reach out to Gamers Nexus if you haven't already.

[animatrix_]

35 minutes ago, Bitter said:

That's shitty. I wonder if the repair facility is using counterfeit parts? If you could prove that or that they're not using genuine parts I wonder if you could bust that up the ranks. Maybe reach out to Gamers Nexus if you haven't already.

From what I know they order them from China but I am not sure who is the supplier. I emailed GN multiple times but no reply.

[Bitter]

5 hours ago, animatrix_ said:

From what I know they order them from China but I am not sure who is the supplier. I emailed GN multiple times but no reply.

I know it probably doesn't help any but I'm sorry you're going through this frustration. I know I'll certainly never buy an Asus laptop!

[animatrix_]

Now Asus is saying the unit was soldered so they won't fix the LCD and also they said there is no flicker. This issue happens often times but not always but the burn in is present at all times. 

 

 

 

What do you guys recommend?

 

 

 

I asked them if the soldering happened since the last time I visited them and if not why they didn't bring this up before when I visited there more than 10 times. 

 

 

 

I don't trust they tested it thoroughly when they gave the unit back without connecting the CPU fan the last time.

[Bitter]

Can you sue them in your country? Get it repaired properly by a 3rd party with documentation and sue them for the repair costs. In the US this would probably be a small claims court case and if they no-show you win by default. I don't know the details of your legal system but it's something to look into I guess.

[animatrix_]

Yes I am looking into small claims court. But the issue is maybe it won't be possible to find the same quality screen. They need to provide me with an adequate replacement. They are saying they can't do that because I don't have warranty which they removed from day 1.

 

They caused me so much down time.

[animatrix_]

They sent this image claiming CID:

 

 

Before they said this:

 

"We can confirm that photographs from the initial repair show no signs of soldering."

 

now they say this:

 

"To clarify, the photographs from the initial repair do show signs of soldering, as highlighted in the attached images. These soldering marks, observed during the recent inspection, appear to have contributed to the current issues."

[Bitter]

Either the image is low resolution or it's not loading right on my phone but that looks like a soldered SMD component and that's how that should look, same as dozens I've seen on other boards and PC parts. Are they saying that you soldered it? Are they admitting their factory production was so sloppy they can't tell between professional and amateur? Are they admitting that a manufacturer defect is the cause?