Razer Customer support reviews

I've heard stories that Razer has been stepping up their support game in light of years of poor reviews/rankings and I was curious what other Razer owners had experienced.

Here has been my experience with Razer support so far:

I purchased a 2018 Blade 15 Advance with the 9750H and 2080 (with the Elite extended care) however the battery is swollen.

October 13: I removed the battery, took pictures and opened a support case requesting they allow me to send the battery back and ship me a replacement.
October 14: I get a request for all of the same information that is already in the support request already.
October 15: I am told that Razer cannot legally ship batteries, but they decline to answer my question on how they ship laptops with batteries.
October 16: Still no response to my RMA request so I finally ask them what is going on.
October 18: I do another chat and ask that my case be forwarded to senior level support to see about just replacing the battery.
October 22: they tell me that razer parts are ONLY for Razer service centers and that I have to send my laptop in for diagnosis.
October 23: I still don't have an RMA number or any way to send the whole laptop back to Razer.
October 25: Razer wants to know if I would like to have my $3300 laptop repaired or if they can close the case. Seriously what are they thinking? Yes I want my laptop fixed, I've already stated it like 30 times in the dispute I've opened.

October 27: Razer is willing to make a "one time exception" to allow me to send in my laptop without RAM/SSD, even though their own RMA terms and conditions state "Remove all third-party upgrades to your SSD and RAM, adapters, cables, memory cards, and carrying cases before shipping the product."

October 29: I finally have an RMA number/shipping label. I'm dreading sending this in though, I hope it doesn't take them weeks to get it back to me. 16 days just to get to the point that I can send in a known defect so they can "troubleshoot" it.

November 2: Laptop received by Razer.
November 6: Razer created a return label but hasn't actually dropped it off.

November 12: Well I received the laptop finally. Razer made it difficult and specified that Fedex was not allowed to change the delivery location to a local fedex location to make it easy for me to pick up (requires a signature). Thankfully my wife was able to be at home yesterday and sign for it, otherwise I would have missed every delivery attempt because I do some weird thing called working. So far it works and the battery is fine. The laptop was SOOOOO dirty though, it's like they ate powdered donuts while working on the laptop, my dbrand skin went from black to white. I had to clean it with some rubbing alcohol just to get it off.

Not impressed with Razer's "elite" support to be sure. It took far too much effort and time just to swap a battery. The laptop came back in far worse shape than I sent it in.

 

For how much they charge you would figure they would have more people on the same page as far as their support is concerned.

Majority of the cases I have seen personally usually only got resolved when it had potential to become a PR problem on reddit or twitter.

Here's hoping they do you right, even if not in a timely manner...

 

Yeah the general conclusion here is that it's basically how it is with almost any Laptop Manufacturer outside of HP/Dell, Dell especially can be cool to work with, frustrating but they will throw money at the problem to make it go away and I have had them do this to me personally once, where they upgraded my system because of a problem.

Everybody else, and I do mean everybody, MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS ... all have hit or miss and sometimes miss BAD customer support.

I heard the rumor that Razer supposedly stepped up their customer support game in recent years but I think it's totally made up based on a few anecdotal experiences.

I needed a recovery flash drive for my blade 2018 base model. some one told me you can just write in and get one sent out for free while it was still under warranty, so I tried it, and got a very quick response, and i thought "Wow maybe they have improved?"

and then nothing happened for 6 goddamn weeks. I wrote in again and they responded like I had never written my first ticket. So i had to go through the whole process again, then I got to wait an additional two weeks, and i wrote in again and this time they said it was 'being processed' ... which i guess was better than 'sorry who are you again?' all in, i didn't get my flash drive for 9 weeks. It's a good thing I actually know how to reload windows/drivers on my own or my laptop would have been useless for months waiting for that.

The entire experience was very eye opening. I will probably never buy a razer laptop directly from them, and I believe that razer-care is a waste of money, 100%. I'd rather buy the retailers in house warranty than razercare (Microcenter's extended protection plans are pretty great).

Sadly, everything about the product is great, but the service is pretty garbage tier.

 

People like to rag on Lenovo as well, but I had a great experience with their Legion support. An older model laptop of theirs I had developed a fault in the AC adapter. Within 24 hours of submitting a support ticket online, they shipped a replacement via 2nd day air. They didn't even want the defective unit sent back.

 

I am genuinely shocked to hear this.

Perhaps I have misjudged Lenovo. They make enough hairbrained decisions in engineering their laptops I assumed they must be terrible. Perhaps not.

 

I wonder if that's how it's going to be for me. They keep responding with basically the same exact thing "You have to send your laptop in." but don't actually create an RMA or provide any information. The last guy recommends that I let them troubleshoot any potential software problems I have too. I don't think so, they are getting the laptop without the ram/ssd for sure...

 

Just bumping this up with an update. Razer just asked me if they can close the case or if I would like the laptop repaired. I have no idea where they were getting the idea that I would like to close this case as unresolved, lol.

In regards to MSI support, I bought a GS66 with a bad 2060 and 1 month of warranty left. I emailed their support, that same day I had a RMA, sent the laptop in the next day. In 8 days I had a repaired GS66 that I promptly sold for a reasonable profit, lol...

Oh, and here is their chat that Razer keeps asking me to use:

 

Sounds like classic Razer to me. Never ever rely on them for anything or purchase from them directly without having an authorized 3rd party able to service your needs or your machine aka buy only from Bestbuy or MS or maybe Amazon, with their extended warranty. Absolutely no where else should anybody buy a Razer blade. I asked Razer fir a recovery flash drive to restore the factory image on a 1TB SSD when I upgraded. Never got one, and they asked if they could close my case. SD card slot broke on my RBP, they never proceeded to fix it. Unparalleled incompetence when it comes to support. The only people that get “support” are YouTube stars, in which case they just send them a whole new machine instead of actually repairing the existing one. Normal users don’t get offered that option.

 

Hah I guess that's status quo for them, they've asked me about 3 times now if I still want to claim my warranty. I did mess up today in chat though, I told them I had upgraded my RAM and SSD. After looking at threads on reddit it seems they try to void your elitecare if you do any upgrades. What a mess, I may have to take this conversation to reddit and see if I can stir up some bad publicity for them just to get something so simple as their defect fixed.

 

I personally hate that approach on principle, but the fact is they never get their butts in gear unless they understand the tangible losses become more than just you.