When he had problems with his ASUS tablet dock, he packed up the dock and its power cable and sent it off to ASUS for some loving warranty repair care. Both the dock and the power cable had separate, seemingly unrelated problems. He suspected this might cause some confusion at ASUS, so he was sure to clarify that both parts had their own issues. He had not anticipated that the dock’s cable would disappear somewhere between his house and when the equipment was checked in at ASUS repair.

Hi Consumerist,

Back in July I had two issues with my ASUS Transformer TF101 tablet:

The dock battery stopped holding a charge (although the keyboard and ports worked fine.)
The charging cable stopped working.
I purchased a new OEM cable (two parts: adaptor “brick” and break-away USB cable) from Amazon, which worked fine. Submitting an RMA request on July 5th, I shipped out both the tablet dock and cable (both parts) to ASUS on July 15th. Suspecting that there’d be a mixup, I fully documented both issues on the RMA form, as well as hand-writing a full description of both issues on a form included in the shipment, as instructed by ASUS.

July 27th the RMA is returned with the dock fully operational, but sure enough, no charging cable. The following is a rough timeline of events:

(7/27) – Received repaired dock, but missing charging cable

(7/30) – Called ASUS; opened Case ####### to investigate

(~8/5) – ASUS called to confirm which cable was sent; I confirmed that both the USB cable and adapter were sent

4:10pm (8/27) – After almost a month without hearing back, I am calling ASUS to request update

4:29pm (8/27) – ASUS support informs me that the warehouse claims no cable and adapter was received with the package, so they cannot fulfill a replacement request. Since I know I packed it, and provided plenty of documentation stating that I had a problem with both the adapter/cable AND the dock, they should have received it. The technician repeats his original claim, and states that he can only authorize a replacement if I send the original in. I told him I don’t have it to send because I already sent it. I asked, and the technician confirmed there was no report of damage to the package on the warehouse file. I claimed that in that case, I’d like a replacement, since any loss would have occurred at the warehouse. The technician said they could not do so. I asked for an escalation and was placed back on hold.

4:44pm (8/27) – After taking me off hold and initially repeating the same thing and denying a replacement, I repeated that I’d like the case escalated, please. The technician comments that I did reference the adapter in my initial RMA request, so he’s escalating the case, and said I should hear back in 48 hours.

5:04pm (9/03) Seven days later I receive a call from ASUS asking if the issue was resolved, which obviously it was not. The representative informed me that he would escalate to have Premiere Support and the Customer Service Division check on this, but he could not promise that I would be sent a new cable. He said I should receive a call back on Wednesday or Thursday.

Short of providing pictures of the box during packaging (which I didn’t take), I don’t have anything else to prove that I sent the defective cable. So far ASUS has simply claimed that they never received the part, thus stealing my cable. I don’t have any confidence that the Premiere Support and Customer Service Division will prove any more helpful.

It’s hard to believe that we, as consumers, have to resort to documenting what’s in the box before we send our gadgets in for repair. Isn’t it?

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