ASUS's Live Chat is pathetic

[Octavialicious]

Really annoyed at ASUS right now, their live chat is honestly a joke. Tweeting at them to get help, but I doubt it will help me out

 

The story: 

 

My phone's proximity sensor is broken, so I'm trying to get some support for it. Went into the live chat, filled out my info, and went in to chat with an agent. They asked what my problem was and obviously I described it, and this is where it gets interesting. They asked for my Model Number, Serial Number, and OS (pretty standard). But after they ask this, the chat box goes away and I couldn't type anymore.

 

Meh, maybe it glitched out I thought. I tried to get back to the live chat 5 times, but the window would keep being blank instead of pulling up the "Waiting for an agent" page. I tried on two different browsers, and it didn't work. I even restarted my PC, and it didn't do anything. This is the REALLY sketchy part. I think they IP banned me.... I went onto a VPN and tried again, and sure enough I got through. But all three times I did this, a live chat agent NEVER joined the chat.

 

ANOTHER VERY ODD EVENT.... I tried a fourth time (with the vpn), but this time I changed my info and guess what? I had an agent in under one minute. They asked me my problem etc. and guess what happened again? They asked me for my phone's info, and the chat box went away AGAIN. (this was on another computer with another browser, so there is no way it could be me) This time I tried to get it to come back, so I clicked exit, and it asked "Do you want to disconnect?" I clicked no, and sure enough I glitched the chat box back. THIS TIME, he left. I sent him 5 extra messages and after a 20 minute wait, I concluded he left....

 

This is despicable, ESPECIALLY speaking this is one of the biggest companies in the business. Here is a screenie one of my MANY chats 

 

 

 

Bad support is one thing, but IP Banning users for no reason and purposely ending live chats is a whole new level of
terrible.

[Laederem]

there's a reason nobody recommends Asus anymore 

[KemoKa]

Most companies are like this. Which is why you're better off coming to a forum like this one. we're more responsive than those idiots.

[Octavialicious]

Most companies are like this. Which is why you're better off coming to a forum like this one. we're more responsive than those idiots.

It's not simply that their support is bad, it's the fact they IP Ban users and purposely leave chats....

[KemoKa]

It's not simply that their support is bad, it's the fact they IP Ban users and purposely leave chats....

Like I said, most companies are like that. Have you ever gone onto the Microsoft forum and asked a question?

[Octavialicious]

Like I said, most companies are like that. Have you ever gone onto the Microsoft forum and asked a question?

I use the Microsoft live chat on several occasions, and for the most part they are helpful. Even if their support was bad, at least they didn't ban me

[GoodBytes]

ASUS support have dropping since many years from now, and gets worse and worse.

When a company is at the top, there is little to no incentive to continue to provide excellent service.

Say for example you are the owner of a company, and you are the number 1 choice by considerable margins. Great and congratulations!

Now, as a big business, in order to be able to reach to the state you are, you had to turn yourself into a public company. This means you have investors and shareholders. Those people want a return on investment. They invested money to you to be able to grow, and be the number 1 company. You want your company to have continuous profits. So on slow quarters or years, what you do, with pressure from your investors, you cut on your after sale service (warranty, warranty coverage, RMA quality and service, etc) by a bit. I mean you are now number 1 by considerable amount, you have this trusted brand and make good quality products, so why worry? These cuts gets you a million or so in revenue. Everyone is happy, and you notice that your sales are still up, or stable, people continues to talk highly of your product. So no harm done. Right? Well now a few years past, and you cut it again, and again.. and...again... Oh look now you have competition... you can't really compete beside pricing. So you include more stuff in your products, and cut the price. Great! But you still want your profits margins... so.. you cut on after sale service again. I mean what is the harm? It still there, maybe slower, and a bit crappier, but few people complain, you can handle it. Right?

Well it eventually comes down to horrible service, and more and more consumers seek for different options, even though it means paying a bit more. I think this is more or less where ASUS is at now.

[79wjd]

Oh god, you don't even know the half of it. 

 

I spent hours in probably about 30 chats just trying to get my VPN on my Asus router working. Every time I spoke with one of their support team members, I was given a highly intelligent and well thought out response. That is of course when I was actually given a response....a bunch of times I would select 'networking', joint the queue and when I finally got into the chat I was told I had contacted the wrong department...like no, I carefully selected networking (and this happened on multiple occasions -- I started to pay attention after the second time, and it still kept happening). 

• That's an Apple issue, contact Apple. (I was successfully connecting via my iPhone, but failing on my windows 7 computer) 
• Contact Microsoft, everything you have should be right (still not a fucking microsoft issue...) 
• Why do you want to use a VPN? Just set up an Automatic IP (The fuck....that's not even close to being the same fucking thing) 
• If it works from your phone, can't you just connect from your phone? Why do you need to connect via your computer (I don't know jackass, why do you need your legs? Why don't you just walk on your god damn hands) 
• Here, follow these steps (as I quotes me HALF of the setup guide on Asus's support site, not even the whole thing -- also, the setup guide was from a much older firmware AND from a much older version of openVPN -- not the version that Asus provides a link to download)
• Try remotely accessing your router, type your public IP into a web browser: 192.168.1.1 (ya....I'm pretty sure that's not my public IP buddy)
• (trying to set up DDNS) No, you don't need to forward a port to the router's IP address in order to set up remote access to the router....(twenty minutes later I decided to just try it, and it worked...to which he responded)...Oh, Great! I was going to tell you to try that next. (sigh) 

 

 

Ultimately I figured out the issue with some help from my brother.....apparently Asus is so god damn fucking stupid that they're not smart enough to recommend a VPN client that supports the encryption methods that the router supports. The current version of openVPN wouldn't work due to the fact that I wasn't able to select a long enough encryption key within the router's VPN config. 

 

So yeah, Asus can take their support team and shove it up their ass. There's very few products I would ever want to buy from them ever again -- it's just unfortunate that they happened to make a great router/PCIE adapter, and that I happened to be able to get it quite a bit cheaper than the alternatives. 

[TheGeeker]

Go asus. Try emailing them? I think email is better than stupid chat.