Asus reason you may not want to purchase one

A year and a half ago, I order an Asus N73SV. At the time I was incredible impressed with it’s state of the art spec great expandability. I knew at the time it was a bit of a gamble with Asus not being a major player in the laptop market and the price being quite a bit cheaper than its rivals for similar spec. After using for a year I have done upgrades to RAM 6gb –> 10gb and replaced HDD for a hybrid and a larger second drive. It has been a great laptop till recently things have gone a little wrong.

Now I am not blaming asus for its product the two components that have gone wrong are completely under my control but my issue comes with the service and availability of replacements(in the UK). The two parts that have gone wrong is the battery is now completely shot, lasting about 10 mins going to 70% and turning off, and the power cable getting damaged as seen above.

These are normal issues you hit with portable electrical products, replacing the parts though is proving not to be so easy. The battery is out of warranty so I just need a replacement, the transformer is in warranty but I don't really want to loose my laptop for a couple of weeks since it has become a very important part of my life replacing my home computer completely and having heavy usage in the office although accompanied by other computers. So sending it away wasn’t really tempting when I would be ordering another part anyway, also I am not about to pay £150 in labour fees to replace a battery.

So customer support was out, but I want the official replacements so called them, first time they just hung up on me a little concerning they don't have a queue system. Second time I got through promptly, and found out they don't sell the items over the phone you can go to the asus shop website (http://shop.asus.co.uk/) and order there. I am slightly embarrassed that I never actually found this in my googling around for official products. So went on the site after the call and they are sold out of most things and don't actually list anything to do with my laptop.

So what do you do? well look at contact page and call this UK website help line, and what charming welcoming voice do you hear? A nice recorded German lady speaking German that I don't understand, I assume it leads to options but I don't understand. So I have resorted to emailing them.

In summary, the point of this rant was to express that Asus sell great products but there are no official replacements easily available. For a company of which I have enjoyed many great products from, I am shocked they fell down so badly on such an easy thing they can make a great deal of money from.

Hopefully will be able to get the replacement parts soon and have something better to say about Asus!

Stuart James  …