Trying to get a laptop repaired
Mar. 7th, 2025 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneI've had a high-end gaming laptop for a few years, an Asus Strix. It's a few years old, probably 7 years or so. 32 gig of ram, both SSD and spinning rust drives, 15" screen. Given to me and served me well, but retired when I bought a really powerful PC tower after my dad passed away. The keyboard was in pretty bad shape, I had taken to using an external keyboard before I'd retired it. I'd looked in to what was involved in replacing it, and you basically had to remove absolutely everything from the case. Far more work than I was really eager to embrace.
I decided it needed to get repaired and put back into service, so I got an RMA number and shipped it off to Asus a couple of weeks ago - just to get them to look at it was some $90. I knew it needed a keyboard and battery, as far as I could tell everything else was fine. And early this week I got an estimate that confirmed everything that I suspected. Parts and labor, plus the initial $90~, I was looking at about $500 to get it back into service. Not bad, a lot less than $2500 or so for a comparable new laptop.
Then a couple of nights later I get an email saying that they can't get parts. I don't know if it's the battery or keyboard, but something is not readily available. But it wasn't really bad news - they were offering to swap me for one of two much newer factory refurbished models! They were about two years old, same memory and about the same disk capacity, same screen size. So very comparable.
Well, memory is an issue. Mine definitely has 32 gig, and they're saying it only has 16. But I can buy 64 gig from Crucial and install it myself for about $155 or so. No problem.
But the annoying thing is that the person handling the exchange will only send me one email a night!
I'm not joking!
I receive an email around 7:45pm, it takes me a little time to digest, maybe do a little research, formulate and type my response and send it, and that's it for the night. Maybe I get a response the next night? Or it'll be two nights later? I really don't understand why they're working like this, are they so utterly slammed by repairs that they can only respond once to any given case per night? It doesn't make sense and isn't that great of customer service.
Regardless, hopefully I'm on the way to getting a new(er) laptop in the not distant future! Once I get shipping confirmation, I'll get on to New Egg and order the Crucial memory, and if there's a lag on the memory arrival I'll have time to do some configuration and initial software loading on the new box. Installing the new memory should be no more than 30-60 minutes work.
I decided it needed to get repaired and put back into service, so I got an RMA number and shipped it off to Asus a couple of weeks ago - just to get them to look at it was some $90. I knew it needed a keyboard and battery, as far as I could tell everything else was fine. And early this week I got an estimate that confirmed everything that I suspected. Parts and labor, plus the initial $90~, I was looking at about $500 to get it back into service. Not bad, a lot less than $2500 or so for a comparable new laptop.
Then a couple of nights later I get an email saying that they can't get parts. I don't know if it's the battery or keyboard, but something is not readily available. But it wasn't really bad news - they were offering to swap me for one of two much newer factory refurbished models! They were about two years old, same memory and about the same disk capacity, same screen size. So very comparable.
Well, memory is an issue. Mine definitely has 32 gig, and they're saying it only has 16. But I can buy 64 gig from Crucial and install it myself for about $155 or so. No problem.
But the annoying thing is that the person handling the exchange will only send me one email a night!
I'm not joking!
I receive an email around 7:45pm, it takes me a little time to digest, maybe do a little research, formulate and type my response and send it, and that's it for the night. Maybe I get a response the next night? Or it'll be two nights later? I really don't understand why they're working like this, are they so utterly slammed by repairs that they can only respond once to any given case per night? It doesn't make sense and isn't that great of customer service.
Regardless, hopefully I'm on the way to getting a new(er) laptop in the not distant future! Once I get shipping confirmation, I'll get on to New Egg and order the Crucial memory, and if there's a lag on the memory arrival I'll have time to do some configuration and initial software loading on the new box. Installing the new memory should be no more than 30-60 minutes work.
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Date: 2025-03-08 12:57 am (UTC)Hugs, Jon
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Date: 2025-03-08 01:57 am (UTC)Very true.
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Date: 2025-03-08 01:14 am (UTC)It's probably one customer service email queue and one person who is required to answer in strict FIFO order.
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Date: 2025-03-08 01:58 am (UTC)Could well be. Personally I'd say oldest ticket gets priority answering, but that's just me. It would increase customer satisfaction and service review positivity.
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Date: 2025-03-08 02:07 am (UTC)I am in no wise attempting to advocate for the practice!
But I have hit it before, and the metrics (often around similarity of response times) that tend to drive that kind of policy.