I'm a relatively experienced computer tech working as a systems administrator for a small company. One of the owners approached me to build a computer for him. He wanted a killer gaming rig but was willing to balance performance with a RAID 10 (YES RAID 10!) configuration for data redundancy. If purchased by a name brand hi-perf company, i.E. Alienware, the box he wanted would have come in at almost eight grand and that is w/o the RAID 10 setup.
The box I ended up building for him came in around forty-five hundred, most of the core components were purchased through Newegg. I went with an Asus MB that had rave reviews at the time from both professional sites and Newegg's users. As it turned out, age proved the MB to be a POS. It became known for the chipset fan failure that killed my boss' computer and worse, hosed his RAID. Yes, it was his fault for not having a backup of the thousands of digital pictures he lost but my point is that this was not an isolated incident with the MB in question.
I had written several positive reviews for items purchased through Newegg and some are still at the top or near the top of list when reviews are sorted by helpfulness (even though one was edited by someone who's native tongue was not English).
I would not be writing this complaint if Newegg did not post the following on their site: Your helpful insights, both positive and negative, are warmly welcomed! I was obviously not going to give the MB a good rating and to cover my bases I read and followed the Newegg.com Policies regarding reviews.
Except for the obviously facetious parts, every word of what I typed is easily verifiable. Unfortunately and without explanation they declined to publish my review.
Here is the one-star review deemed too offensive to post:
Before You Buy Asus
PROS: Fast on those occasions when it worked. Found that taking it outside with an extension cord, setting it near but not too close to a fire and dancing around while waving a sacrificed chicken with its head removed so a little blood would spatter on it would usually get it up-n-running for a week or two at a time.
CONS: Listen friends to my tale of woe. I put together a dream System for my boss, total cost was close to 5K with the Athlon FX-55 and A8N-SLI Deluxe at its heart. No OCing on any components. After 3 mnths the chipset fan died. Asus replace at no charge. 1 1/2 mnths l8r, the Si I RAID died, which was prolly living on borrowed time since the chipset overheat.
Tech support, while helpful once you get someone, takes a long time to get through (you pay for the call) and if they offer to call you back don't count on it happening. Also, once the tech gets your information and agrees that a part is defective, guess what: they can't give you an RMA. No, You have to call a completely diff number and again wait on hold for that dept, which seems kind of hit-n-miss sometimes they pick up in a few mins, sometimes they tell you they'll call back but don't. Please remember to be nice to the support peeps as these problems stem from corp. Decisions not phone answerers.
OTHER THOUGHTS: By far the worse thing about Asus is their website. Before you buy, DO THIS: Go there and download anything related to the product you're interested in. For the US server, they throttle the speed to such an extent that some test downloads I did averaged UNDER 5KB/S!!! The same download from the European server might average 14 KB/S. Woooh Freakin' Hoooo. A 7.59MB file from the US took almost 27 minutes to DL while the Euro server did the same file in only a little over 9 minutes. I would think such a high-tech company could afford to upgrade from their 14.4 modems to 56K. This is unconscionable and is enough to convince me to NEVER buy from them again.
Buy from Newegg but support other MB manufacturers that act like they care about your time.
I'm VERY interest in what Newegg supporters have to say about this but first let me say that I understand that Newegg has the right to censor or refuse to print whatever they want on THEIR website. My entire point is that they post guidelines about posting reviews that are meaningless and they claim that both positive and negative reviews are warmly welcomed. This could, did, and will lead people into a false sense of security regarding products sold by them.
Take Care All,
Dan
PS Keep in mind the context of the post in that since the review would have been placed under the particular MB, it would have been obvious that complaints about the manufacturer would not have been confused with complaints about Newegg.
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