ASUS Says We're "Confused"

[Music]

we think Asus is lying in its latest

statement quote currently we perform a

full analysis of devices sent for R and

send customers a comprehensive list of

available repairs free and paid in our

messaging to customers we understand

this may have caused confusion when a

customer has only ordered a specific

repair ah yes the uh the classic blaming

the customer aspect for being confused

when they were offered an option to pay

for an unnecessary

repair but not fix the actual warranted

issue for which the device was sent in

classic misdirection as always glad to

see absolutely nothing has changed in

the past year since we spoke with Asus

uh and by the way almost literally a

year to the day since we last talked

about this issue in fact tomorrow would

be the one-year anniversary so good

timing Asus on this uh so classic it's

not us it's you you're the confused one

now in this instance Asus claims they

sent a comprehensive list of free and

paid for repairs uh they did not do that

and in fact we published in part one our

timeline and Asus only initially told us

as a reminder the following quote we

would like to inform you that your

product in is out of warranty or judged

as customer induced damage thus the

repair charge shall be applied that was

the email there was no list and it is

extremely clear clear exactly what

they're telling us there's no confusion

to be had Asus it says you're going to

be charged for repair for damage you

caused that is what that sentence says

nowhere in there was this list provided

now only later did Asus eventually

provide a list and at that time it was

the list of paid for repairs so they

have failed to meet their own qualifier

of paid for and free once again it

wasn't until we pressed them that they

provided the free repairs so at best

asus's representation of the facts and

the timeline is inaccurate and at worst

they are intentionally lying and

attempting to deceive and now that this

this is a repeat problem so it starts to

become hard to give the benefit of the

doubt when it's a recurring issue and

it's a pattern before that this video is

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Asus said this after our video they said

quote recent feedback has highlighted

some gaps in our RMA communication

process in the US and Canada we deeply

apologize to our customers and Community

for any confusion and frustration they

might have experienced from this we've

taken your feedback to heart and are

committed to making improvements just a

quick aside here uh that specifically

only addressed the US and Canada all

right continuing they said quote we want

to assure our customers that any repairs

covered under the manufacturer's limited

warranty have always been and will

continue to be free of charge it is

never the intent of Asus to charge any

customers a fee that does not directly

address the device m functions they are

experiencing we now recognize that the

current process and the language used

does not adequately convey this

information we are working diligently to

make changes in the best interest of our

customers this really feels like it's

skirting the reality of the situation a

few ways but one thing that is starting

to become frustrating is this promise of

action just do it just make the change

and say what the change was if that

means another week of bureaucracy before

you can post the change fine but do

something and have a receipt to show

that it has been

done they've already done this they did

this last year and you know like once

you can kind of listen to it and say

okay well we'll check back in later we

checked back in later hasn't changed so

you know the only difference is that

this time it wasn't a motherboard it was

a handheld device uh so anyway Asus

saying it recognizes that their process

is unclear is good it is an admission of

a problem so they get acknowledgement

for at least that the bad part is that

they're saying unclear as if it's the

customer getting confused which is

something that they ensure is the

takeaway of this messaging at the in

bullet point too at the end of the

statement when they say it again so the

reality is that it actually is

completely clear in some ways and that

we had to ask follow-up questions in

order to get the service we were

guaranteed under the written warranty

policy uh is the clear part so

fortunately this being a written policy

serves as excellent legal ammunition

that is very useful for anyone who may

have a claim and if you're informed of

your rights you can start making use of

them which again we're going to be

addressing through the rest of the

series uh quote in addition to

addressing issues on an individual basis

with our customers that have come

forward we are also making changes to

our RMA process effective May 16th we

will implement the following actions to

optimize the customer repair experience

point one we are revising our repair

pricing structure for outof warranty

product this includes a thorough review

process for any abnormal pricing to

ensure consistency transparency and

fairness the problem wasn't the being

out of warranty part in our specific

instance but if this is a different also

problem that they have then great it's

good that they're addressing it we kind

of come back to the same point though

which is just do it make the revision

and then tell us what that is that would

be more useful here um and again that

that we might not have as strict of a

kind of a demand on that if we hadn't

been through this before next quote

currently perform a full analysis of

devices sent for R and sent customers a

comprehensive list of available repairs

free and paid we already talked about

that in our messaging to customers we

understand this may have caused

confusion when a customers only ordered

a specific repair will no longer

automatically offer repair quotations

for cosmetic imperfections unless they

affect the devic's functionality or

specifically asked for by the customer

so we sort of talked about this in the

beginning but the new part of uh this

quote here is they're not going to offer

repair quotes for cosmetic imperfections

anymore that's as simple as uh if it

happens once then they've kind of

breached that new policy so easy enough

to to keep an eye on unfortunately this

bullet point though by in our opinions

misrepresenting our experience and that

of other customers who've emailed us

does kind of take the trustworthiness

out of the entire post uh because there

is something in here which is just

explicitly not true and we already

talked about that next quote we will

update the verbiage of our automatic

emailing system for improved Clarity so

our customers always know what repairs

will be offered for free and the terms

and conditions relevant to the device in

question that's interesting too because

it's kind of In conflict with bullet

point to which was they already offer

that and now they're saying we're going

to update it so we offer it uh so

interesting and finally they give you

some numbers and a website if you need

help now on May 18th 2023 Asus wrote us

their plan to fix the am5 motherboard

issues the problem is that if we again

as a community have to hold Asus or any

company responsible for individual

products and their catalog it is an

impossible challenge because uh they

have hundreds if not thousands of skus

it probably is uh closer to the

thousands than the hundreds for a

company as large as Asus

and individual or

categorical uh warranty investigations

are not going to fix a systemic problem

this is a a a PO poisoned well that

appears to have plagued how Asus

operates at that systemic level uh our

disappointment in Asus here has

genuinely sunk into new lows uh we do

try to provide the opportunity to

improve as I stated before at the end of

the SE The Saga last year the sequence

we kind of said well we'll check back in

they've said things that are good and

seem to be the right things and now it's

about action and not words and this was

the time for Asus to show action and

we've seen how much Asus cares in fact

they care so much that in one of their

support emails and we didn't dating them

for this originally they offered us an

Asus cares discount code for the repairs

we didn't need so um that certainly

makes the the motives in our opinion

clear so get into this we're going to

have Vincent Augusta on again today and

he's going to be talking about asus's

warranty process what we walk through

and consumer rights this is a big change

that I've been trying to to make at GN

for

uh more seriously for the last year or

so and the change we're making is you

know we've we have long pushed an angle

of consumer awareness and consumer

advocacy and highlighting when a company

does things well and poorly and uh we've

had a good mix of things that have been

done well in recent months also so

that's great but the problem is plainly

speaking we cannot possibly serve one

request of the community which has been

okay so if you can't trust Asus or can't

trust gigabyte during this power supply

issue or whatever who do you trust and

it's really a question directed either

at me or at my team and I'd love to

answer it but I can't and the reason I

can't answer it is because it's not that

simple where uh a company first of all

we don't generally trust companies just

in totality uh it's more of a product

level decision you can maybe distrust a

a company in totality if you've had bad

experience with them as a consumer to

protect yourself but to trust one fully

uh it's only going to take one bad

experience and then that nukes our

recommendation and we can't extend a

recommendation of a motherboard

manufacturer whom we trust because there

isn't one and it's not necessarily

because they are all the same level of

shady or manipulative or deceitful

because I don't think that's true uh but

they all have their own flavor of bad as

quick rapid fire examples Asus we don't

need to explain that's recent gigabyte

had the power supply issue issue that we

covered years ago and they did a lot of

the same things we thought they were

manipulative we thought they were

attempting to deceive and misrepresent

the situation and uh which changed some

of our own policies from there forward

and how we dealt with those things and

they did eventually fix the issue but it

took a lot of kicking and screaming and

dragging them through the process so

that was gigabyte um azrock has a

history of blacklisting media and we're

not the only ones uh MSI has its own

history of kind of questionable and

Shady tactics of delaying negative

reviews or criticisms and that's a whole

separate video on its own again not just

from us but from other creators as well

but if you're going to build a computer

you have to buy from one of them and our

suggestions what we're going to do today

is try to set you up with the right

materials so that going into something

you can try to prevent a negative

outcome uh such as a dismissal of a

valid warranty by collecting the the

correct sort of Doc mentation and and

knowing your rights as a consumer

knowing uh such that you have the

confidence to push back when you first

start to sense that a company is going

to try and uh charge you for something

in a way which may not be legal for one

uh and for which you you may be able to

legitimately uh refute that basically

request for money in exchange for

something that should be provided for

free additionally next week we're going

to be talking to Nathan Proctor who is

from uh PG right to repair advocacy

group and he was recommended very highly

To Us by Lewis Rosman uh Lewis spoke

incredibly highly of Nathan's experience

his knowledge on rights to repair

consumer rights so that's what we're

trying to do we're trying to bring some

experts forward and so it's not just me

ranting about things that suck every

time I'll still do that and that's still

going to be the core of when these

issues do go bad and by the way we've

covered some good experiences with

warranties as well it's just they're

less uh prevalent but we're trying to

supplement that that exposure of the bad

practices with some actually actionable

consumer um rights education and also

things you can do to protect yourself

that'll include some of my advice on how

I'd recommend shopping and my best

efforts to answer that common question

from the community which was who can you

buy from or who can you trust so we'll

really put some concrete answers to that

as much as we can sadly consumers also

need to be prepared to look out for

themselves that's what this and the next

installment will be focusing on but for

this one let's start with some legal

analysis of the situation and just

discussion and then check back next week

for more right to repair Magnus and Moss

Warranty Act discussion things of that

nature who knows maybe we can actually

achieve some good in this industry as a

community and get these companies to

improve okay so now we're joined by

Vincent Augusta again where where do you

want to start yeah well thanks for

having me back on uh so I think starting

with the most recent press release uh

it's uh interesting to to note that the

vast majority of it is uh futur looking

so a lot of what has been discussed in

the press release was about policies

that they intend to implement or change

in the future uh but there was one

specific spot where they discussed the

things that they were currently doing

and so if you look at the second bullet

point in the third paragraph uh they

explicitly talk about currently they are

offering uh comprehensive list of the

available repairs to Consumers who

submit to the RMA process uh an

available list of both the free uh

Services provided under the warranty and

also the services that are suggested

that would uh a customer would incur

additional costs for uh so the two

difficulties with the statement are with

the words comprehensive and the words

available so these words are uh a little

vague they are relative to other things

generally understood in a context uh so

I think that one of the ways you can

approach it is just to kind of negate

the statement and look at the

alternative so uh if no list is

presented then that list cannot be

comprehensive right uh if only the that

makes sense right and and so if only the

additional costing services are offered

then it cannot be said that they both

free and are made available right and so

the question is uh is any list that

includes both the paid and the free

services being provided to C yeah so if

you if you didn't receive a list at all

um or if the list that you received did

not have both free and additional cting

Services provided uh then that that

statement doesn't seem to hold true it's

not congruent with your experience yeah

the press release Almost assuredly

Doesn't create additional obligations so

you'd be looking to the obligations that

they did have um and then the

obligations that they didn't fulfill so

uh obviously with an issue like this you

start with the the warranty which is an

obligation so a warranty is a promise uh

regarding the quality uh the performance

the lack of defects associated with a

product or a service right uh the

warranty comes with some sort of remedy

for the consumer and usually at the

option of the warrantor they can replace

uh repair the product uh or offer a

refund and so the first question relates

to that warranty did they breach the

warranty um by refusing to acknowledge

their obligations U and by not providing

that remedy to the consumer uh in this

case it doesn't appear as though uh they

did that uh they in a situation where

you have a consumer who submits a

product uh through an RMA process for

warranty uh if that consumer receives uh

an offer to buy additional Services

those Services may be unnecessary they

may be overpriced uh there may be a

thinly Veiled Threat uh associated with

it sending your device back in pieces

but if if the product is returned to the

customer and it has been replaced or

repaired pursuing to the warranty then

that wouldn't be a breach of the

warranty um that would be an issue with

this this other statement the statement

uh where there was an offer to sell

maybe services that were unnecessary uh

that were overpriced and with the

implication that if those Services were

not purchased uh the warranty would not

uh be fulfilled right if we instead as

an uninformed customer you throw your

hands up you're like okay whatever fine

here's $200 you know H how does that in

your opinion how does that change the

story so it changes the story

substantially because at that point uh

you have damages associated with some

bad act and it's it's difficult to uh

characterize some of uh of the these

kinds of Acts uh so one thing that you

can start with one way of categorizing a

situation where someone is uh making uh

an offer to sell unnecessary services or

or exploiting uh someone based off of

price uh you you can categorize a

situation like that as fraudulent and so

fraud is defined as an individual making

a false statement uh or concealing

material facts with the intent and

knowledge to deceive and if someone is

in fact deceived by that statement and

they suffer damages because of it uh the

person who made the statements could be

liable to that uh so you for example if

you bring your car in uh to a mechanic

shop to have an oil change and the

technician comes out and says uh

actually you need an entire new

transmission if you do not need a new

Trans

and the technician knows that you don't

need a new transmission uh then what has

happened constitutes fraud uh the

statement has to actually be false if

they if you're basing your fraud off of

an affirmative statement uh and

additionally you have this Center

requirement as it's called and that is

both the uh intent to deceive and also

uh that the the statement was reasonably

calculated to deceive so there's a

knowledge and an intent element do you

then have to be successfully deceived if

the customer says I yeah so if the

customer says I know I don't need a new

transmission uh and then okay fine we'll

do your oil change here's your car back

is there no case there would not be an

action for fraud because you were not

deceived and you did not suffer damages

right um so fraud and fraud is very

difficult to establish as you can

imagine because you're dealing with uh

very factual elements so most of these

uh factual elements are dealt with by

juries uh because they're they're simply

issues of fact not of Law and so you can

present evidence to show intent to show

knowledge but it's much more difficult

uh because there isn't something

necessarily to observe directly that

makes sense okay so then another

component of this was this time pressure

that we were under where there were a

couple different days they gave some I

thought were conflicting but one of them

was has to be paid within 3 days another

one was like a response or something

within five they send the device back

there was the comment I'll let you get

into their comments of the conditions if

you don't respond and then there's a

4day thrown in there too so uh time

pressure I understand that the word

duress also has some very specific legal

connotations right so one of the things

that uh you can look to in a situation

where someone has incurred damages uh

because they've entered into a contract

that's unfair uh would be to look at the

formation of the contract itself is that

in this country we presume that

contracts are formed when people who are

on General equal footing for negotiating

a contract uh enter into a contract uh

having agency to do so right having a

meaningful choice and a legitimate way

of attacking a contracts sometimes has

to do with that formation is that if

someone was not able to uh if their Free

Will had been deprived uh then the

formation of the contract could be

considered invalid and so duress

describes the situation in which you're

entering into a contract pursuant to

someone's uh wrongful intentional acts

where they've induced another person to

enter into a contract uh depriving them

of their free will because of the

circumstances so think the Godfather

make you an offer you can't refuse uh

having a proverbial or a literal gun to

your head right uh and so with duress

the it's a case- by case basis uh it's

it's uh the judge will consider a number

of different factors in making

determination uh but the circumstances

surrounding something like duress uh can

be

established to show in theory that uh an

individual did not have the free will to

enter into the contract to begin with uh

and then it would be resented so for

example if you go back to the same

mechanic shop for an oil change and the

technician comes out and says uh you

don't have to but you can replace your

transmission oh by the way you have 15

seconds to decide and if you don't I'm

going to return your car to you

disassembled uh that may rise to the

level of duress if you in fact agree to

buy that new transmission I see okay one

of the other questions I had was the

shipping cost being thrown in there so

let's just say they've they've come back

to us hey your screen has this damage

and I say oh my gosh I've hated that

damage and for so long please replace it

thank you they uh they are still

charging me now $20 of shipping whereas

under the original repair request that

shipping is free to me that doesn't feel

right because it's if you think of it in

terms of Magic the

Gathering this is the only way I know

how to explain things sometimes you have

a stack right you know this don't

pretend like don't know not anymore I

think they got away with the stack but

yeah the idea gener had stack so now

you've really proven you know it so

there was a stack at some point Stacks

were had and uh you cast a spell or

perform an action uh and then the

opponent responds you respond they

respond those execute in a certain way

to me it feels like shipping has gone

onto the stack as a free effect uh I

have a card called claim warranty on the

battlefield okay I tap it when tapped it

claims warranty they respond with

optional unnecessary repair and I

respond with yes it still seems like it

should resolve that the shipping was

free but it didn't so as a certified

judge of Magic the Gathering I'm not a

magic judge okay I'm actually quite bad

with the rules of magic which is ironic

as an attorney okay

so as a as a non-official judge of Magic

the Gathering uh you know what what's

your read on that because in in simplest

terms it just seems not right to charge

shipping

for something that like it was free

originally and now because there's an

unrelated thing that's not yeah so I

think it ties back into the wrongfulness

of the offering of the services itself

uh is that if there is a

situation in which the services were

wrongfully engaged either by fraud or

dress some sort of fraud in the

inducement uh then the shipping would be

considered part of the damages because

if you think about causation but for

this fraudulent offering uh or this kind

of improper duress to engage in this

contract I would not have had to pay

shipping uh so if there was a situation

where I could have sent it in had a

warranty claim and then had it sent back

to me without shipping if I'm induced to

become part of a contract where there's

additional charges the shipping is part

of those damages so where does it come

into the

stack I don't no no I need to clarify

this on the record okay let's clarify

right now yeah so so I was I was wrong