Razer after sales service experience, as notoriously bad as others have highlighted

Now I know why Razer is legendary for their bad customer service. I had read about it and still went ahead and purchased the new Razer Blade 14 and now I had truly experienced it.

About a few days into my purchase I noticed that there was a loud buzzing/static when my Nommo's were plugged into the 3.5mm jack. This was a consistent sound that would be present when there was no audio being played through the laptop. It got even louder when I touched the body of the laptop.

Troubleshooting took over 4 days, and I was asked to send videos and do unnecessary system resets and reinstall. Every single correspondence was picked up by a different representative, and the communication breakdown was terrible to say the least. Finally when I had gotten through the ordeal they informed me that I would need to send across the laptop to the head office in order to get it replaced.

Knowing that sending the laptop would require at least a week or two, including the shipping - receiving - dispatch of the replacement laptop, I asked if I could do a one-to-one replacement with the local reseller (as I had purchased it locally).

Eventually another week went by in which I was on call (averaging at least an hour) every single day and passed to a different representative, I was eventually escalated to the VIP response team. I was promised that they would send me a replacement laptop and then upon receipt, I could then send back the defective laptop.

At this point, I thought that finally I had gotten to a point where I was able to rectify the situation.

This was just the beginning of the struggle.

The replacement laptop was shipped from Razer's warehouse from HK to where I live in Malaysia.

I received a call from Fedex and I was informed that I was importing a laptop and needed to be responsible to appoint an agent to get certification and documentation to clear the laptop through customs. I was shocked as this would require additional charges and also for me to deal with the customs/logistics side.

Firstly I wasn't importing a device, I was merely getting a replacement for my current laptop, so I feel it is not my responsibility to clear the "importation" of a laptop. All my previous experience with other manufacturers such as Apple or Dell shipping across either new devices or replacement devices from other countries have never required me to be responsible for this.

When I relayed this to the VIP response team, they said they will look into it. And told me they would cover the fees of the certification/documentation by gifting me a Razer peripheral. I said this meant they were forcing my hand to purchase yet another Razer product (when actually I had already purchased another 3 peripherals at the same time, so I saw no reason to purchase yet another - basilisk, huntsman, nommo).

Eventually I was escalated to a manager called Phil. He was probably the worst person I had spoken to across all of the clueless customer service representatives, and he is supposed to be the manager. First of all he was extremely condescending, and told me that there was nothing that Razer could do. When I told him about my past experience with Apple, he actually admitted he's an Apple user.

I was hoping he would understand my predicament and would be able to provide any options. Again I asked him if I could do a transfer of stock with a local reseller, if I could get the item shipped via ground from Singapore to Malaysia, or if the local Razer office was able to assist. I never got anywhere with my conversation and basically hit a dead end.

He would not entertain any further conversation and said that it was my responsibility as a customer to deal with customs and since I was not going to do this they would be rerouting the laptop back to the warehouse.

At this point I had reached out to the reseller and thankfully they had agreed to process a return/refund for the laptop. I was then given the contact of a local Malaysian Razer representative called Roy Foo. The reseller had told me he could help me out with my case.

When I reached out to Roy, he just said that all my feedback had been taken into consideration and eventually the RMA process would be improved.

I shudder to think what would happen if I repurchased a Razer Blade 14 and it had an issue, and not being able to get decent after-sales support or even something as simple as a replacement device.

This experience has scarred me for life.

On top of this, they refuse to let me get in touch with the management team, I am only given one point of contact which is their central help email that leads to no resolution.