ASUS Charging £70 for in-warranty repair

[DavR]

We recently had two ASUS chromebooks brick on us, wouldn't turn on, no power light at all when plugged in. So either the charging port or the mainboard is dead, as we've all no doubt seen before.

 

We sent them off to ASUS for an in-warranty repair. One they appear to have completed under warranty, the other, they're trying to charge us £70 for the repair due to "customer induced damage". They include a picture of the charging port, which looks a bit scuffed, but otherwise intact. I can't see any visible damage in the picture that would affect fuction.

 

I'd like to challenge this, or at least get a fuller explanation other than a picture of a worn, but intact, charge port, but it's all through an automated system with no option to query the charge.

 

Does anyone have any experience of challenging a repair charge with ASUS, or, should I just suck it up and pay? We're in the third year of the three year warranty and the rest of the batch have been OK, so not anticipating many more failures, but still rankles a bit.

[synaesthesia]

I would try and challenge it but charging ports will always be a tough one, rather like HDMI ports in devices. They get abused the most and it's rather typical, but £70 isn't a huge amount compared to what you'd pay anywhere else so would probably suggest paying them for it. At least then the work is properly guaranteed too

[BKGarry]

I had this when they tried to charge us for "Damaging the NVME/M.2 connector on the motherboard" of a laptop we has sent back, the laptop had never been opened in school at all, I ended up pulling in the account manager on that one etc.

 

I would challenge it if you could prove no intentional damage to it at all, but I wouldn't hold your breath. My issues were about 5 years ago and I vowed never to purchase from them again because of it, but that was my experience. 

[DavR]

We bought through a reseller, so don't have a point of contact beyond the support helpdesk. And I know what will happen if I call the helpdesk, they'll just fob me off and say its down to the repair centre, who I don't have a channel to complain to! I doubt I'd win tbh, but can't help but feel I should put up some resistance.

 

I did wonder if we'd get into any trouble with these, as we'd never bought ASUS before, but these were amazingly cheap at the time. I guess you get what you pay for. They're not someone I'd go back to now, unless they came up amazingly cheap again.