[plug] Linux laptops - yeah, they've been done before, but ....

Sat Aug 6 04:01:24 WST 2005

On Sat, 6 Aug 2005 01:38, Hennie Strydom wrote:
> However, before you rush off and buy Asus in
> order to run Linux, read:
> http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux04/Asus_Sucks_Story-01.html
> This is just over a year ago.  I do not know if their attitude
> towards Linux improved, but if not you may be in for some trouble
> given that most notebooks are quite proprietary.

Forget their attitude towards Linux. Asus has an attitude problem in 
general.

I bought an Asus L3800C (AKA L3C) in Sweden in 2003 before coming here 
to study. It came with a three-year world-wide pick up warranty and 
cost accordingly. (It ran Linux quite decently.)

Right before the two-year mark, the socket for the DC adapter plug 
starts to act up, making a loose connection. Eventually the DC adapter 
catches on fire. At the time, I was in Sweden visiting family, so I 
tried finding the contact details for warranty support in there. It's 
not listed on Asus' Web site, but I get a number from the place that 
sold the laptop.

Ringing the number gives a dial tone for two minutes and then the line 
goes dead, regardless of the time of day. After several days of trying, 
I finally get through--to a call centre in Holland. Reluctant to hand 
over a computer whose data has not been fully backed up, I opt to send 
in the smoked DC adapter at my own cost rather than have them pick up 
the whole computer for free (but with the threat of wiping the disk). 
They promise to send me some forms to my e-mail address.

I get no such e-mail, so I go on another few days' worth of trying to 
ring them. When I finally get a hold of them, I make sure to spell out 
my e-mail address in the NATO alphabet this time. I get the forms, fax 
them back (who uses fax these days?), and get an RMA. I send the 
adapter in and get a new one back a couple of weeks later. It works 
enough to back up my data, but it's still making a loose connection. At 
this time, though, I had to go back to Australia for the beginning of 
semester. Around this time, I hit the two-year mark from the purchase 
date.

So, back in Australia, I try to ring Asus here. Same deal as in Sweden, 
but worse: nobody ever picks up. After weeks of trying, I find a 
reasonably generic form on their Web site as the only other way of 
contacting Asus in Australia. Here is where it gets really interesting.

Here's what I sent them from the form:

I bought an Asus L3800C under a 3-year international pick-up warranty 
just over 2 years ago, and I wish to use that warranty for a problem 
with the laptop.

The problem is that the DC power input jack makes a loose connection 
with the DC adapter plug. The problem is with the receptacle inside the 
computer, not the adapter plug. (I contacted GSM in Europe in January 
and got a new adapter, which didn't solve the problem with the loose 
connection.)

I have tried for a long time to contact the GSM for Australia via the 
phone number listed on your site, but there is no answer during 
business hours or any other time, ever. Not even a "please hold". There 
is simply no-one answering the phone. This is not the kind of service 
one expects when paying over 3000 USD for a laptop specifically to get 
a good warranty.

Here's the reply I got (original HTML-only formatting):

Dear Friend : Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service. My 
name is Jed and I would be assisting you today. We will contact the 
service center in Australia know the reason,I suggest you change a time 
and contact our service center again. TEL:1300-652-865 If having 
any problems, please don&apst hesitate to let me know. Let&apss discuss 
this issue together. Thank you for using ASUS products and enjoying 
ASUS services! Jed_Lu ASUS Customer Service Center 
(Shanghai , China) If you have any suggestions or complaints about 
our technical support service, please e-mail your feedback to 
support at asus.com.cn. We will then arrange for a specialist to work 
on your issue. Your suggestions and feedback are most appreciated 
and allow us to serve you better.

When my "dear friend" Jed says he "would be" assisting, he means it. He 
would be, but he's not going to. Since he says to let him know if I had 
problems ringing at different times, though, I reply as follows (using 
GPG signed e-mail):

I have been trying to ring at various times of the day, mostly during 
regular business hours, for several weeks. There is simply nobody 
picking up the phone there. In other words, I already have tried at 
different times, and I am still having a problem.

Jed replies as follows:

Dear Friend : Sorry, for somewhat reason, the text can't be opened. 
So we don't know your problem clearly. Could you send us a mail again 
and describe your problem in the mail directly? Sorry for any of your 
inconvenience. Thank you for using ASUS products and enjoying ASUS 
services! Jed_Lu ASUS Customer Service Center (Shanghai , 
China) If you have any suggestions or complaints about our 
technical support service, please e-mail your feedback to 
support at asus.com.cn. We will then arrange for a specialist to work 
on your issue. Your suggestions and feedback are most appreciated 
and allow us to serve you better.

...to which I, somewhat irritated at this point, reply:

> > I have been trying to ring at various times of the day, mostly
> > during regular business hours, for several weeks. There is simply
> > nobody picking up the phone there. In other words, I already have
> > tried at different times, and I am still having a problem.
>
> Dear Friend :<br>     Sorry, for somewhat reason, the text can't be
> opened.

I have pasted it in as quotes above.

Actually, your e-mails are not that easy to read either. May I suggest 
you turn off the HTML garbage generator? Sending anything but plain 
text e-mails to recipients who have not explicitly requested otherwise 
is generally considered impolite. Here's an explanation as to why and 
how to disable it:

http://www.expita.com/nomime.html

> So we don't know your problem clearly. Could you send us a 
> mail again and describe your problem in the mail directly?

Perhaps your mail reader has a problem dealing with PGP/MIME. If so, it 
is broken and should be fixed or replaced. Karsten M. Self explains 
your problem better than I could: 
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Rants/gpg-signed-mail.html

I have disabled PGP/MIME signing for this e-mail only. If you can read 
this and you could not read my previous e-mail, you still need to take 
action and fix your broken mail reader.

Jed then writes back with the following:

Dear Friend : Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service. My 
name is Jed and I would be assisting you today. I suggest you 
change a time and contact our > > > service center again. 
TEL:1300-652-865 If having any problems, please don&apst hesitate 
to let me know. Let&apss discuss this issue together. Thank you for 
using ASUS products and enjoying ASUS services! Jed_Lu ASUS 
Customer Service Center (Shanghai , China) If you have any 
suggestions or complaints about our technical support service, 
please e-mail your feedback to support at asus.com.cn. We will 
then arrange for a specialist to work on your issue. Your 
suggestions and feedback are most appreciated and allow us to serve 
you better.

Yes, that's right. He just repeated the exact same "advice" as when we 
started. Not one to give up, I send him the following:

Your e-mail client is still dumping HTML code in what should be a 
plaintext form of communication. Also, technical discussions are much 
easier to read if you don't top-post. I have cleaned up the quoted text 
to make it readable. Please don't make me have to go through this 
effort again.

Because you haven't fixed the problem with your mail client dumping HTML 
nastiness, I am going to assume that you also haven't fixed your mail 
client to handle PGP/MIME signed messages either, so I will once again 
manually make an exception for you. This is an annoyance, so please let 
me know when you have fixed the problem on your side.

Now, to get to my actual problem. You say you want to discuss the issue, 
so let's do that, but that means you need to stop parroting the same 
copy and paste answer over and over.

You already said all the stuff about contacting the service centre, and 
I already informed you that I do still have a problem contacting them, 
regardless of the time of day.

A week later, he comes back with the following response:

Dear Friend : I&apsm sorry reply your letter so late. Sorry for any 
inconvenience that caused to you. I have contacted the service 
center in Australia, and I asked them to contact you. I think our 
service center will contact you later. Thank you for using ASUS 
products and enjoying ASUS services! Jed_Lu ASUS Customer 
Service Center (Shanghai , China) If you have any suggestions or 
complaints about our technical support service, please e-mail your 
feedback to support at asus.com.cn. We will then arrange for a 
specialist to work on your issue. Your suggestions and feedback are 
most appreciated and allow us to serve you better.

He "thinks" their service centre will contact me "later". How 
reassuring! Well, he thinks wrong, which I tell him one week later:

You think? One week and counting and not a word from them. Are you sure 
you have a service centre in Australia and that there are actually 
people working there?

By the way, you're still sending top-posted HTML garbage in spite of 
several requests not to do so, so I'm assuming you have also refused to 
address the issue of your mail reader failing to handle signed e-mails.

I note that, after several weeks, despite taking several hours of my 
time, I am no closer to getting Asus to fulfil its obligation under the 
contract of sale than I was when the problem first arose. Quite 
frankly, this level (read: lack) of service is unacceptable.

Jed doesn't respond. Ten days later, I send him this:

It's now been two and a half weeks without as much of a whisper from 
your enigmatic service centre that you claim to have here in Australia.

Tell me something, Jed: is it Asus' standard practice to try to stall 
warranty claims until the warranty expires? Because if it is, let me 
make this perfectly clear: that *will not* happen in this case.

Well, I never did hear from my buddy Jed again. But lo and behold, after 
about a month of ringing, I finally did get through to Asus service 
centre. No, they didn't contact me, as Jed "thought", I contacted Asus.

Or as the lady answering was very adamant about pointing out: not Asus, 
but the service partner working for Asus. The word representative 
clearly hasn't gotten through to the companies Asus hire to represent 
them.

Anyway, she was able to inform me that Asus only offers two-year 
warranties, and that if I was promised a three-year warranty, I had to 
contact the store (who were the ones who had referred me to Asus in the 
first place) after the initial two years. That was something that I 
guess the retailer who sold it and Jed alike just happened to forget to 
mention. That could have saved me a lot of time and effort.

By this time, a full semester had gone by since I started having the 
problem, and I took another trip back to Sweden, dragging the laptop 
back with me and taking it back to the store.

I'm still waiting to get that back, and in the meantime, I'm using a 
stationary computer. It's running on an Asus P2B-F motherboard that has 
been running solidly for five years now. Unfortunately, their laptops 
don't appear to be built to the same quality standards, and given the 
nature of their warranty support organisation, which should be 
tragically obvious to the patient reader who has made it this far, I 
would stay far, far away from Asus when it comes to laptops.

-- 
Alex Nordstrom
http://lx.n3.net/
Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to plug.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.plug.org.au/pipermail/plug/attachments/20050806/50c93037/attachment.pgp>