Asus Pledges To Fix Warranty Service, Including Refunding Affected Users

After facing backlash for its warranty policies, Asus is pledging to overhaul its customer support processes, including refunding users who've had to pay the unnecessary repair fees.

The company made these commitments to the PC review outlet Gamers Nexus, which has been reporting on the warranty problems that customers can encounter after buying an Asus product. The alleged issues can include requiring consumers to pay outrageous fees for repairs that should be covered by the company’s warranty policy.

Although Asus apologized for the problems last month while promising to make reforms, Gamers Nexus decided to take things further. The review outlet met with the company during the Computex trade show in Taipei and pressed the PC maker to make concrete improvements.

In response, Gamers Nexus reports that Asus is committing to making about a dozen specific changes. In particular, the PC maker plans to reimburse customers who were charged for “unnecessary repairs which customers felt compelled to accept in order to have a warranted repair covered.” This includes instances when Asus misclassified a repair as “customer induced damage.” The company also plans to refund the labor, taxes, and shipping fees.

To facilitate these refunds, the company is launching a new email inbox at “[email protected],” where affected consumers can notify Asus about any warranty issues that were previously mishandled. (Gamers Nexus has included a template that users can copy and paste into their own email.)

Another important change is that Asus has removed the ability of its repair center to flag a product as “customer induced damage.” Instead, all CID claims will first need to go through Asus’s team.

In addition, the company is creating a new support center in the US. “This will enable customers to choose between a repair of their board or a faster swap with a refurbished board,” Gamers Nexus said. “This solves an issue where refurbs were the only option in some scenarios previously.”

Asus didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. However, in an hour-long video with Gamers Nexus, the PC maker issued another apology. “We know that we messed up,” said Galip Fu, Asus’s marketing director for consumer PCs. In the meantime, Gamers Nexus plans to test the company’s warranty policies over the next six to 12 months to ensure the PC maker is sticking to its word.