ASUS Perform U-Turn on UK Battery replacement scheme?
June 23rd, 2008 by Jon Bradbury
ASUS UK are now reportedly telling UK users of the EEEPC 900 who are complaining of the supply of an inferior battery with the machine (see earlier post below) that their much heralded “battery replacement scheme” is on hold “until further notice”. This seems to fly in the face of their earlier press release, which makes a big deal of their wonderful customer service in its rhetoric.
Typical of the responses our UK users are getting from ASUS UK is this one, which eeeuser member loopz posted on the battery discussion thread. loopz says it was received from ASUS customer service in the UK.
Dear Customer,
Like I promised I would give you an update as soon as I got one.
The Exchange for the battery is postponed until further notice.
I am so sorry for this late call but I only heard 2 minutes ago about it.
The minute I know something else I will let you know.With Kind Regards
Glady’s
It seems to me that, with the competition (for example, the MSI Wind) hot on the heels of the ASUS EEEPC 901, ASUS could have handled the UK battery situation far batter. Potential buyers will surely be asking themselves if this is the sort of after sales service they deserve after forking out their hard earned money on a new UMPC - and they will also no doubt be considering the alternatives.
The ASUS press release quoted by Mobile Computer Magazine’s web page starts off with the bold statement “ ASUS delivers unique customer service“.
UK 900 buyers must be finding the customer service offered by ASUS UK truly “unique” indeed.
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I have long since stopped being surprised by anything Asus UK does. They derserve to have sales of all their products hit for a very long time. I suspect that they will. What an incrediblty stupid thing to do - turn a huge fanbase of enthusiats that were previously doing great things for all your sales, in to an army advising everyone that will listen against your company and products. Real smart, Asus!
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Well, excuse me for resurrecting this discussion, but the latest announcement from Asus regarding the UK battery snafu has given me cause to do so.
At this point, dare I say there would be no shortage of folks willing to sign on to a class action against the chowderheads at ASUS Marketing/Corporate?
I work in marketing for a Fortune 100 firm, and no one I associate with would have the temerity to charge consumers who were bilked into buying a product under false pretenses would have the unmitigated gall to announce a program to make things right and then do an about face.
Mind you, I’m a Yank who got a US market machine with a 5800 mah battery, so I’m not directly effected…but disengenous marketing gives the trade a bad name, which in this case ASUS richly reserves.
So it’s clear that ASUS thinks someone should bear the cost of this program….let’s make the consequences of such actions clear to them as well.
My proposed solution at this point is simple enough:
REPLACE ALL EEE 900s PURCHASED WORLDWIDE WITH 901s AT NO COST TO THE CONSUMER
Unreasonable? No more so the than ASUS remedy to the battery situation.
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Well, considering MSI first planned to release the Wind notebook with a 6-cell battery but then pushed back the launch date by 11 days and announced that you’d get a 3-cell battery instead, I think everyone’s suffering from the global battery shortage.
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Asus support in Singapore is very lousy too
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Again, what a big mess from Asus!
A think some country/regional directors should have their heads cut off. Only if I was the CEO or a member of the board…
This is what you get. A company that grows very fast in sales volume and at the same time a large number of portfolio products in a short period of time. Clearly this is a typical case of poor management and lack of long term vision. Asus, please define your priorities!
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:18 pm
If it serves of any consolation, the way Asus is treating Spain (and all Spanish speaking countries) is by far much worse than the UK and many other countries. The 701 started to come on the 26th of May. That’s only the 701, only the 4GB version and only in white color. We are still not listed in the global Eee PC page. Not to mention that we will have to wait until September to see any other Eee PC version. The battery we are getting is a 4400MAh version. All crap. All to get a friggin’ enya in the keyboard. I have not stressed my discontempt enough in my blog.
Asus policies, at least regarding the Eee PC, have been, at the very least, erratic. They presumably violated the GPL, then backed off and apologized. They supposedly included a modem in it (though nobody cared much about its exclusion). They included and excluded the mini-pcie connectors inadvertedly. They put that ugly “warranty voided” stick on the bottom, then backed off again (in some countries). Then the uncertain battery versions we are getting in different countries. Then … I wonder what’s next.
By the way, I ended up buying a Lenovo Thinkpad X61s. At least I know what I’ll get, and they served it in time.
June 23rd, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I bought a 701, 900, and was planning on getting a 901 and 1000 when they get released but after this not anymore. This is already a very expensive hobby.
June 24th, 2008 at 8:09 am
It is sad my hobby is changing as well
I had so many plans on future Eee purchases but now I’m just gonna wait on some new Pico-Itx boards along with the next OLPC when it comes out. :/
June 24th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Believe me, it gets not better, so far had three more emails today (its on, but you have to call, now email etc etc).
Read the thread at http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=27140&p=56 for yet more fun…are Asus REALLY a global company? Seems hard to believe some times.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:53 am
“With Kind Regards
Glady’s”
That email is completely reeks of being fishy! I highly doubt Gladys is spelled with an apostrophe! I think she would know how to spell her name.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Actully I have spoken to Gladys and she seems pretty clued up to me…
June 24th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Flaco - the email wasn’t just to me, it was to about 10 other people too. If you read the thread they also recieved it. Why would I bother cooking up a fake email, to make ASUS look bad? They are doing a pretty good job of that themselves.
I was actually pretty impressed with Gladys, she at least seems to be trying to help us in this, more than her employer can say!
June 25th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Well Ladies and Gents,
The problem is global with Asus. I ordered mine in Holland, being an expat here, and was assured that the OS would be English and Dutch. It was only Dutch. I could not get the tiniest bit of help out of Asus who referred me to the reseller who referred me to Asus. Finaly I was told that if you purchase in Holland, you get a Dutch system. and no Asus does not provide you with a recovery DVD in English.
Same thing for the battery, advertised ad lasting 2.5 hours, I managed 1h50 !!!!!
I sorted the language problem by scrapping the Xandros and installing Ubuntu 8.04.
As I wrote to Asus, it seems they have gone 30 years back in time and have forgotten the meaning of globalisation and internationalisation.
Good luck to all with your endeavours. I am finished with Asus, I make a mistake ONLY 1 time……..
June 25th, 2008 at 8:37 am
“Flaco - the email wasn’t just to me, it was to about 10 other people too. If you read the thread they also recieved it. Why would I bother cooking up a fake email, to make ASUS look bad? They are doing a pretty good job of that themselves.
I was actually pretty impressed with Gladys, she at least seems to be trying to help us in this, more than her employer can say!”
Thanks for in no shape or form challenging my statement that someone named Gladys would know how to spell their name. I guarantee you that her name is NOT spelled Glady’s. That is what makes the email reek of being fake and I believe it is, or someone named Gladys didn’t type it. Don’t be so dense.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:00 am
The battery shortage is affecting all laptop computer companies. Remember the fire that broke out in a battery factory a month or two ago? That’s why Asus/Msi/etc.. are having to delay! If they had the 6-cell batteries they would be giving them to you, but they are in short supply. Your going to have to hold your horses.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:31 am
This ‘Gladys’ stuff is silly. I too have spoken to Gladys - she exists; of course she exists. I suspect that Gladys is not her true name. Since the UK support centre is abroad, you might expect that customer support staff use names that are more familiar to UK customers. You might also expect that they would choose to keep their own names private. So long as the members of staff are identifiable to the Asus support centre management, and so long as the name used is consistent, it matters not one jot what name the support worker uses.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
okay then, so glady(’)s lacks the ability to spell her assumed name. Sits with me a bit better
June 25th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
[...] Read: EeeUser.com [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 8:24 am
gladys is cute
June 26th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
@Frames:
You might think that Spain has it hard, but Asus it treating the Denmark very nicely too. The 4g 701 which was scheduled to be released in March (according to the distributer when it was first launched), due to them having to localize the OS and the keyboard, has been delayed again, May and June have been promised too, but now the word is August or September, and then who knows if the 4g version will ever arrive.
On the positive side, the 16g (I do not have a clue
900 model (non-Atom) should arrive in August or September too, with the new and improved 2200 mAh battery, and the long awaited danish… oh wait nordic? WTF??? keyboard.
We get to deal with a battery with less capacity than a pair of AAA batteries??? And close to a year to develop a keyboard that isn’t even close to a normal keyboard layout? And then remove a fifth of the SSD?
Yes, Asus, I HAVE learned the lesson, you do NOT want me as a customer. I will stop bothering you, throwing my money at you, I DO realize how annoying that can be.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:24 am
So apparently there’s one battery factory in the whole world?
June 28th, 2008 at 2:02 am
Hey man get out of here with that bullshit
June 28th, 2008 at 3:20 am
A “professional” contact with a Netzero and Hotmail account? LoL
Sure buddy, you sound more like a scammer.
June 30th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I have readers complaining about their laptop’s parts at least 10 times a week. the issue is that computer companies have started thinking about profits leaving the quality behind. Batteries burns, laptop’s cases melt if laptops are used 3 hours, keys popping up from the keyboard, fan stopping working after two weeks, motherboard overheating and the list goes on and on. This thing is happening everywhere… from laptops to cell phones. Of course when the bomb explode it leaves companies totally unprepared and of course users are the one paying the highest price…the era of innocence is over my dear readers. what you are witnessing is just the new normality. excuse me for my burst of pessimist but when you read this things one hundred times a month you end up being pessimistic for real. I hope Asus, which i really like it as a company, will manage to come up with a good solution for everybody
webmaster of http://www.webtlk.com
July 1st, 2008 at 4:56 am
@No1: Wow! You are STILL waiting for it? That IS not caring for you.
You can bet that, specially with the new 903 and 904 models replacing the 901 and 902 models!
More info on that in Spanish, French (also see here) and in English.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:36 am
[...] WordPress.org « ASUS Perform U-Turn on UK Battery replacement scheme? [...]
July 13th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
It’s a support center, it’s a different Gladys everytime!
July 14th, 2008 at 6:06 am
[...] the uncertainty over the ASUS UK 900 Eee PC battery upgrade offer, it seemed a good idea to revisit these batteries, and perform some comparative performance tests [...]
July 15th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Try the dutch & german market,
ASUS doesn’t offer any support, nor will they ever (ASUS’ own statement) provide an 5800mAh battery to dutch or german customers.
“The 5800mAh battery is concidered an option”
Fuck ASUS, 8 years I have been a loyal customer, only to get screwed in the past year over 4x in a row! Next UMPC will absolutely not be an Eee… but either the Wind or HP 21xx series!
FUCK ASUS!
August 12th, 2008 at 5:09 am
In the end the UK *did* get offered a battery replacement program (as seen on the little known ASUS UK site - http://uk.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=12302 ). It ran from July 1st - July 31st so it is no longer possible to get a special offer on a replacement 5800 mAh battery. On the forums ( http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=27140&p=77 ) you can read about people who successfully went through the program and now have a replacement.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:44 am
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September 19th, 2008 at 9:19 am
hmm, my boss saw this last week and mentioned it in passing.
Today I find out its why he’s stopped procurement the order for 300+ EEE900s for our workforce.
Absolute stupidity on Asus’s part.
Personally, I have 2 x 900s, and the battery life is a joke, I now have 4x 10400mAh batts to last the morning commute, a day at work, and evening commute.
Shame how a ground-breaking market-smashing UMPC can go down in flames like this