I recently have had a bad experience with Asus' RMA and customer service. I don't know if anyone from Asus will see this (I hope they do because clearly I can't get help by calling or emailing customer service directly) or if anyone will bother to read the entire thing but oh well. If you do I appreciate it. Also if you have any advice for how to go about finding a solution it is also appreciated.

I have a Maximus VIII HERO motherboard that went bad after only about a year of use. At first it was the LAN port that shorted out, for whatever reason. No matter what I did, I could not get an internet connection via Ethernet and I did all the trouble shooting steps that the CS rep gave for me and it led to me having to send my board in via their RMA service. Other than having to pay for the shipping, which I feel is dumb considering the product is under warranty, the process seemed to go well and I got my board back in about a week or so from the time the received like they said.

Then I put my PC back together and end up getting the Q code that says the RAM is not being detected. Keep in mind that when the board stopped working the first time I could still do everything else I always was able to including open browser or other applications, play a game offline, etc. so I know nothing else was wrong with my PC and that the LAN port was the only problem before sending the board in. I also know that there aren't any other problems with my PC's components since I was able to do everything I normally would have been able to other than get an internet connection.

I proceed to call Asus CS again to see if they can help and after spending an hour on the phone with the rep going over the trouble shooting steps that he had, we come to the conclusion that the boards A1 and A2 RAM slots were not working. When I would put my two 8 GB RAM sticks in the A2 and B2 slots, like the manual says to when using only two sticks of ram, the computer would not boot and I would keep getting the Q code that means the RAM is not being detected. When I just put one RAM stick in either the B1 or B2 slot it would work just fine and could get it to boot. I tried putting both RAM sticks in each and every RAM slot by themselves and only the B1 and B2 slots would work regardless of which stick of RAM was used. So basically they sent me back a bad board that had a different problem.

Because of this I had to send the board back again for a second RMA. Thankfully, they actually paid for the shipping this time. The rep that set the RMA up also told me to include the two sticks of RAM that I used so that the service center could try them out also to see if they could replicate the problem. I do this and make it very clear on the RMA checklist and description form that I have included my two sticks of ram and I state the brand and that there are two 8 GB RAM sticks that I expect to get back. Fast forward and they have sent me an email telling me they found nothing wrong with the board so they are sending it back since there tests came back that the board is fine. They left out whether or not they are sending back my RAM sticks or if they even tried using them to test the board so naturally I call CS back to see if I can get some information about what went on at the service center. The rep can't tell me if they included my RAM sticks when they shipped the board back so I basically have to wait until I get the board back to see if they gave me my RAM back also. He also tells me that all he can do is send them an email and wait for a reply to get the information about what the service center did and I say that is fine and he puts me on hold. Then the rep hangs up on me or we get disconnected and didn't even bother to call back which I think is ridiculous because they ask for a call back number at the beginning of the call in case of disconnection so I don't see what the point of that is anyways. At this point I'm just pissed and don't feel like calling back again so I'm just waiting to get the package before I call again. I also sent a complaint email explaining my situation and it's been over 48 hours and no one has responded.

This is really BS and I'm normally pretty understanding but this is just horrible. I had heard about Asus' bad CS but never thought I would have to go through this. Going on a month without being able to use my desktop. Luckily I have a decent laptop in the meantime. It's just sad because I love Asus' products and I want to keep buying them but this just makes me want to steer clear of Asus.

As of right now, the board should arrive today and I will more than likely put the PC together the following day due to a busy schedule and that is the earliest I will be able to. Hopefully I can get it to work this time and don't have to send the board in for a third RMA.