Asus Eee PC warranty woes

I hope by now you will have seen our Eee PC review and unbox video. If you are a regular to our site you’ll probably know that I love my Eee PC and use it every day. It’s ideal for me to use on the train journey to work especially now we have free WiFi on the train!

I got my first Eee PC back in November and was very impressed with it. Tracy also liked the Eee PC to the point that we were both wanting to use it at home. So I decided to buy another one so that we could have one each and so that I could install Windows XP on one and leave Linux on the other for the sake of the review.

Initially things went swimmingly with the second Eee PC but after just two weeks I started to encounter problems, the system began to freeze and there were problems booting, a few times I saw the dreaded inaccessible boot device error message.

I decided the best idea would be to format the drive and then to reinstall Linux from the supplied recovery CD. However, the solid state drive took a few attempts to format properly and then finally the drive stopped working completely. Obviously a fault with the solid state disk.

Time to call Asus.

My first argument with Asus was that, despite the Eee PC being just two weeks old, they would not simply replace it but insisted upon collecting it and bridging it in for repair. Unfortunately they would not budge on this so I agreed to send it back for repair, thinking it was a simple job and guessing it would not take long.

I was wrong! We’re now at the end of January and I’ve still Asus have not returned my Eee PC. I’ve been calling them every day for the past week only to be told that it’s ‘Currently in for repair’. Surely replacing the SSD is pretty simple and certainly should not take almost 6 weeks?!

Luckily my other Eee PC works perfectly well and I’m still very happy with it. I’m not trying to put anyone off buying and Eee PC, they are an excellent piece of kit, but I’m wondering if any of you out there have had a similar experience with Asus? Have you had a better or worse experience with regards to a warranty claim or with your Eee PC?

Leave us your comments below!

Posted by: Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Windows Mobile blog, UMPC, Asus Eee PC, Laptop, Tracy & Matt]