36
votes
ASUS demonstrates a pattern of scammy, questionably-legal practices to deny customer RMAs
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- ASUS Scammed Us
- Authors
- Gamers Nexus
- Duration
- 29:36
- Published
- May 11 2024
Given the known defects with the ASUS ROG Ally, their behavior like this around RMAs is a pretty bad sign.
Tangentially, I had to RMA my Steam Deck for a battery issue a couple years ago, and the process went incredibly smoothly despite the fact that I asked pretty late after I originally got the device and had moved to a different continent since (and needed them to ship it there accordingly). Just in case anyone is deciding between the two.
I acquired a launch era Steam Deck, and love it. But I'm also something of a gaming gadget collector, and considered getting the Ally to compare. But someone else either on here or reddit made a comment that really hit home for me. It was in regards to which company would likely be more supportive post-purchase: the software company that wants to keep you buying more games to play on its Steam Deck, or the hardware company that just wants to sell more devices and has no incentive to support you beyond that? Asus's software support has always been terrible, why would this be any different?
As someone who has bought multiple Asus gaming laptops, for better or worse, I knew this situation all too well and decided to skip the Ally entirely.
Yeah I think that was a very convincing argument against buying the Ally when it was released. But ASUS used to be easier to recommend for the hardware side of things, and this behavior has honestly convinced me to wholesale avoid their products for any future PC upgrades.
Thank you for posting this. I don't own ASUS anything, but ended up watching to the end, and then several other of their videos. Really impressed with the depth and professionalism of their reporting.
Gamers Nexus is a great channel. They get into trouble with nvidia or intel for not toeing the party line pretty regularly, because most hardware review channels are actually just extended ads, so when you make an actual review which sometimes has to be negative the company gets mad.
oh yeah, Gamers Nexus are pretty much the only hardware guys I watch and definitely the ones I trust most when it comes to both testing/evaluating hardware and holding companies to task for their bad behavior.
It’s disappointing, because ASUS stuff can be great. I’ve had a great experience with a few of their motherboards and have a couple of monitors of theirs which are still going strong after around a decade.
It feels like the number of computer hardware manufacturers that have proper customer support is shrinking. How much longer before computers are like printers where everything, even machines you build yourself, are some degree of garbage?
Luckily we as consumers do still have some ability to push back on this stuff. A lot of ASUS's practices in this video are basically illegal -- Louis Rossman recently did a video in response to this Gamers Nexus video talking about how if even 1% of their subscribers reported ASUS to the FTC, that would be 7000 people. The FTC would pay attention to 7000 complaints against a company like that. Consumers in other countries should also avail themselves of their own legal options.
These companies are only going to care if it effects their bottom line, and we as consumers can effect that by spreading negative word of mouth about shitty companies like ASUS and reporting behavior like this to the relevant government bodies when we find it so that there's a chance of their being fined.
I have almost exclusively bought ASUS motherboards for over a decade now. Every now and then I've taken a gambles on MSI and Gigabyte and ultimately regretted them for one reason or another.
This news is very disheartening because I'm not really sure who else to go to for motherboards at this point. I guess I've never had this problem because their products have always proven exceptionally reliable for me. Which makes it all the more infuriating; you would think they could stand by a reliable product and offer fair support without it really hurting their bottom line.
This totally. Their chipset and SoC used to be the gold standard where I used to work and since the chip business is pretty much an oligopoly with only a handful of players dominating the market, we need to cut them some slack. I think the primary business model of South Asian companies like Asus is to sell gadgets through online channels like Amazon or Ali Express, and not have much legal presence in those consumers' countries themselves.
Consider that other local/regional players won't ever let them do that and/or their prices would be too prohibitive to compete then? Moral of the story is don't expect any warranties if you buy from these brands, consider it a calculated risk of buying a gadget and they usually work great. If you want warranties, just go for Apple or Dell or whoever the established player is in your region.
The problem is the people buying these boards (PC gamers) usually don't want a prebuilt machine from a big box. Apple has a good track record with quality control and warranty support, but they don't make gaming PCs at all. Meanwhile companies like Dell have no problem shitting out garbage and charging a fortune for it. Garbage with a warranty is still garbage.
The best pre-built PC makers aren't the big brand names, but instead boutique PC builders like NZXT who are ultimately using these same off-the-shelf parts you or I would use at home.