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We're secret shopping like we've never secret shopped before, our sponsors! Just how good is the customer service for brands we've worked with in the past, like Dbrand, UGreen, Asus, Manscaped, and iFixit? Time to send in Secret Agent Rush.
Discuss on the forum: linustechtips.com/topic/15219...
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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova
Video Link: • [Electro] - Laszlo - S...
iTunes Download Link: itunes.apple.com/us/album/sup...
Artist Link: / laszlomusic
Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High
Video Link: • Sugar High - Approachi...
Listen on Spotify: spoti.fi/UxWkUw
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Intro animation by MBarek Abdelwassaa / mbarek_abdel
Monitor And Keyboard by vadimmihalkevich / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/PgGWp
Mechanical RGB Keyboard by BigBrotherECE / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/mj6pHk4
Mouse Gamer free Model By Oscar Creativo / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/Ps3XfE
CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:40 Asus
6:28 Dbrand
7:30 Jackery
10:00 iFixit
12:25 Manscaped
13:51 UGreen
16:45 Conclusion
18:47 Outro - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
As someone who's worked in a call center never underestimate human stupidity. Also 3 stars to ASUS was way too generous in my opinion.
For me to. That's a one star support...
I don't know what happened with them, my first experience was great and the rest were just outright meh or wtf (I guess some employees wfh because there was a SCREAMING TODDLER in the background lmaooo)
agreed, that's more like 1 star on the part of Asus, lol.
To be fair to Asus, they had to fix a technical issue rather than some shipping damage. That's a lot harder to train support personnel for.
@@simoncaspa Nah. LTT's experience here was definitely 3 star. Wish I could ever get that from them. My personal 1 star ASUCKS experience involves a motherboard RMA, lost in shipping, tracking number errors, a pre-approved RMA for a known defect being returned unrepaired, send in a second time, and being told it's now out of stock, and being given (without consultation) a "free equivalent upgrade" to a different CPU chipset that was not compatible with my system.
That Asus score was VERY generous. The first person clearly knew nothing, and even the subsequent people seemed to be getting nowhere until you just told them the answer.
Specially considering the price of the product.
Agreed, they didn’t even resolve anything.
1. You had a hard time finding support on the site.
2. The manual was straight up wrong due to laziness.
3. TWO hour long support calls with incompetent technical support.
4. No escalation when they couldn’t fix it.
Each one of those should be at least one star off. They shouldn’t get leeway because their customer happened to be slightly technically competent.
Yea that score was very out of line compared to the others.
I completely agree. Communicating with the customer how to actually use the product is such a basic requirement. The fact that Asus has been selling products like these for decades and they still don't have a clean process (documentation and customer support) is a clear argument against using Asus products for me.
@@maxbls16 Right. All of that to get a score only half a point lower than Jackery who was very good but took a while to respond. The scoring system is straight out of "Whose Line is it Anyway"
Rolling my eyes at the score you gave ASUS. Support was completely incompetent until they were basically given the answer. For such an expensive product, that level of support is just unacceptable.
Linus offered some kind of explanation on Wan show for it, but sorry they had to be told the solution by the caller, how often is that going to happen?
@@grandetaco4416I would really love to hear that. It would have to be *some* explanation to excuse this level of BS.
A sponsor is a sponsor.
Tbf the score is not as important because he showed everyone what they can expect from Asus so you can draw your own conclusions
Having knowledgeable support staff over the phone is always a bonus, but I think it is also important for the caller themselves to not be a dumbass. Like come on, what are you expecting from an outsourced call center? Just because they are tech support doesn't mean you get to sit there and do nothing. A support call is a mutual exchange.
You need to help them help you. LTT purposefully went in circles to give their support a hard time as type of test. The likelihood of this happening organically when someone just wants to plug in their GPU to the power supply properly isn't going to deliberately give them the run around to get it fixed.
This by no means excuses ASUS from the poor customer support knowledge. It just seems counter-intuitive to have an exchange over the phone like this (nearly an hour and two separate phone calls for a flippin' PCIe power connector) to get it properly connected to the PSU/GPU. Even for a layman that knows nothing about computers shouldn't take an hour to plug it in. Eh, what do I know? There probably is some schmuck out there that can't tell his foot from his ass about computers so I guess a situation like this could happen.
Just seems unlikely. As for the rest of the other products, LTT was more scathing so I think it offsets his "rating" on Asus. You can give constructive feedback without resorting to the "damn you to hell for your insolence" type of condemnation. It is possible to be critical and fair at the same time, but I forgot about today's black & white era. Its heretical to have a middle-of-the-road opinion without getting shouted at by everyone around you.
I feel like DBrand can afford that next-level customer service, because their product is generally not expensive to make, so they have huge profit margins.
What they can afford to do, and what one should expect a company to do are two different things, and I think d-brand did more than what could be expected.
Never take anything for granted, Dell Alienware also has insane margins and their support is the worst. Just because the margin can afford the extra support doesn't it's there.
@@hamcha more like if they have more profit that means they are more greedy bcuz they cuts corner to hit such level of profit
not only that but they're just amazing all around. i have a steam deck and pixel 7 pro case, both skinned, and accessories for the steam deck, and it's just so good. pile that on top of their support, and i'm a huge fan
Dbrand customer service is great, and honestly, I dont mind paying so much for their skins. Long ago, I messed up really bad and ruined the skin i got for my Nintendo switch. I literally emailed them asking if they had any advice to try and salvage the skin, and instead they just sent me 2 replacements "in case I fuck it up again" and a set of skins for the joycons. Its WILD. I wanted to throw money at them after that.
Can't wait till Dennis does a full secret shopper on LTT and Linus one day.
Oh man, that would be so awesome. Didn’t they kill channel super fun though?
I think it would be funnier if Dbrand decided to do a secret shopper on LTT xD
@@sjoerdvanbavel6043they did??
I thought Dennis was just on vacation. though he would need to hire someone cause there is no way the staff don't recognize dennis
That could be good
I bought an iFixit kit several years ago. Right out of the box, a bit immediately chipped and broke. I contacted them expecting just the replacement bit. They asked for a picture, and upon seeing it, they sent an entire replacement kit. The whole thing. 10/10 customer service.
Good to hear... and... I believe iFixit deserves a revised score from Linus. It's standard practice to verify packaging integrity, verify dimensions and weight, if for no other reason than simply it's exactly what the shipping carrier will ask for when filing a claim. Policies exist for a reason and businesses can't just go with an honor system.
I mean they also took ages to get back to them
@@thomasphillips885 Probably for internal review reasons. The claim was in a gray zone, not cut and dry and LTT dilly dallied withholding complete information (packaging).
@@thomasphillips885 They probably thought them was a scammer, thus ghosting them to fend them off.
You don't want to waste your time on someone that couldn't fulfill your request because of made up reason. Better spent that time to something else, like a real customer that can provide you with what you need.
The high extra premium you pay for the name also includes a warranty
iFixit asks for a picture of the packaging, because if an item is missing because the box was damaged, they can file a claim with the postal carrier (for instance, in the US, UPS automatically covers the first $100 of the value of a parcel, even via Ground service.) Source: I used to work a UPS & DHL shipping counter in a retail store.
EDIT: this isn't a justification of the service that you received, the lack of communication and slow response times weren't great, just telling you how the policy might work on the fulfillment side.
It's still an incredibly bad policy. People throw away packaging if there's nothing left in it, and "please send us a picture of your packaging or we won't resolve your issue" is not a common policy, so most people wouldn't hold onto that packaging for the sake of customer service requests.
I would bet there is a decent number of ifixit customers that got basically scammed out of their products because something was missing but they threw out the empty box everything came in.
I think it's a decent policy provided they provide AMPLE warning that you should keep any packaging in the case something is missing before ordering. @@AuraMaster7
I hope you let these companies know what you were up to after the fact. I really hope the person who packed the order at Ifixit didn’t get in trouble for somehow “missing” items in the order.
Knowing Linus he probably told them and paid for the replacements.
@@Alcoholic_Nerd yeah, hopefully it wasn’t too late for that person that was just trying to make a living.
@@Twodog20012000 No one would be getting fired for doing their job, even if someone does mispack an order you don't get fired for one mistake.
If that did happen, that would probably be a good reason to cut ties.
@@Twodog20012000I've been on a tour of iFixits HQ in San Luis Obispo and they're definitely not the type of company to 'punish' someone for making a mistake. They have a really good work culture and they take care of their employees even though they are a small company.
The ASUS one was so incredibly lenient. I would have them at 2 stars at best
Agree. 3 stars is the lowest passing grade and with the website issues, lack of easy to find phone number and taking that long on the phone asking irreleevant questions is a fail. Had they not been coached into the right answer I doubt it would still be solved.
How? 2 stars is borderline malicious intent. There was nothing malicious about what they did. The GPU was perfectly fine and they had to invent their own issue.
@@bitslammerutterly unacceptable the asus support individual had almost no knowledge of the product and how to set it up.
they dont want to lose their sponser 😂😂
2 stars for the effort.
Can't blame the support when ASUS hires clueless people and gives them a script to work through. Many businesses do this because its cheaper than hiring knowledgeable people who could knock out problems like a baseball player. Then they'd have to pay a higher rate for the employee and shell out more for refunds and returns.
I fail to understand how ASUS received anything but a two star here, with one given for responsiveness. Unless the editing made it unclear, ASUS didn't solve the issue whatsoever. The person reaching out literally had to tell them the answer over two calls and at least an hour on support. By my metrics, that's a two star, and absolutely representative of my own experience with ASUS in Canada.
He obviously didn't want to fracture their partnership. He knows it was a 2 star he's way too smart
All of these are way too lenient. Solving a problem is the bare minimum. Not at all worthy of praise.
At 2 stars I would say a company is getting into malicious territory. Unless you're doing something to actively hurt my wallet you stay above 2.
@@Hougeki69 They released motherboards that were blowing up CPUs and then pushed out a BIOS update that they then underhandedly denied people's warranties for using.
@@superslash7254 they never actually denied the warranty claims
I can see why the iFixit and UGreen support ask for some evidence, my sister used to work at a local portal called Linio and scams for extra items and refunds were a real problem. To this day people call me paranoid when I take unboxing vid and keep shipping packaging for 30 days, has saved me 2 times and will keep doing it.
yes, keep unboxing video as prove, so it saves me a few time too especially on expensive stuff
Since I would make a r eview of product I ordered, I always take photo by habit. I didnt take a vid though because it is difficult to do unboxing with camera in hand.
@@Vysair unboxing alone is sometimes difficult, I have a small portable tripod (cheapest of the cheap) that I use if there's no help around.
A good practice is opening expensive, smaller electronics (i.e. Laptops, etc) in the store after purchasing. Especially any packaging that isn't wrap sealed as they're easy to reseal and look unopened. Recording is worth it for shipped used stuff, high-value new from online or packages too big to open in store (TVs, etc.). Higher-end power tools are also commonly swap scammed. You are fcked if this happens to you otherwise and they're almost always going to assume you're trying to scam them.
I can't recall being burned badly but I also usually only buy local used for electronics. Celophane-wrapped is far less likely to be a return scam as relatively few have the equipment to reseal decently enough, yet I opened Skyrim for Xbox 360 as a christmas gift to find it empty with no disc despite the seal looking factory perfect and fully wrapped. I vaguely recall exchanging it at the specific Target because I think they had caught some employees resealing the packaging.
As someone who works in CS, the Asus call is painful lmao.
Also the ratings you hand out are very very generous.
3 out of 5 for that Asus support? that was... really generous
Not really. It was a pretty fair assesment. YOu have to remember that it's a call centre you call that handles support cases for Asus, asus then provides a flow chart of sorts and a FAQ of questions and that is what they are trained on. This is often a department or a group of people that work at a call centre that asus hires. If this were actual asus employees they wouldn't need to guess. you could clearly tell she had little knowledge about tech and felt unsure about it too but she tried her best and that is saying something.
They still need their LTX sponsor
Agreed they basically gave Asus a free pass here. A real test would have been to actually RMA the GPU but that would have shown just how bad things really are.
@@MrHendrikje All of those things are not the customer's problem though. I just want help with the problems I have, I don't care how asus has set it up. If I call asus with a technical problem and there is nobody available with any techincal knowhow that's just bad customer support.
Totally, thats was not a 3 by any metric, didn't find the number had to get it themselves, had to go through 2 calls the CS agent was 100% clueless and he gave her the answer, how is that a 3 idk. Definitely gave them a free pass.
I have been waiting for this. Im so glad Linus makes sure that we dont end up feeling scammed by a sponsor.
Even though they’ve scammed us😂
manscaped is trash
@@tropicalshadow3817when?
@@BenSwoloest The ball shaving company is ok
@@fatiguedjust a guess, but probably that water cooled bed
This HAS to become a series forever. Thank you.
Definitely. Things like this and GN's pre-built 'secret shopper' videos are absolutely invaluable for consumers.
Yeah Linus just needs to be honest and transparent, unlike how he was with Asus.
Paid for publicity.
Linus: We do a secret shopper for out sponsors
Actual Linus: This is how to scam our sponsors
@@sphinx3r Well it was terrible but they did get the answer... that they gave themselves so i'd rate it about 2 at most.
it really gets me that Linus actively damage the product himself to “test” customer service, asked for a free gift and got one. This is only encouraging people to do the bad things. I can already see how people brag online saying how they got free gift or refund by lying.
@@noobhere2176 Theres a whole market of scammers and dipshit people like that who buy stuff and claim they never received it in the small chance that the seller ships them another one. Or deliberately break the thing then ship it back for free replacement. Although lately shipping back costs money to discourage this. Or replace the item in the box with something of exact weight so when the item returns to a warehouse and gets weighed no one notices for a long time. Hopefully those huge e tailers check every box... at least scan them with x ray or something. Automate it somehow.
@@noobhere2176 True, somewhat. Still, how else are you gonna test customer service and return policies?
New title: "Linus commits mail fraud and goes to jail"
ASUS got a golden glove treatment from LTT. That was a solid 2 at best. 1.5 would be my ranking, but I'm biased from my own nightmarish ASUS Canada support ticket.
For real, he even gave them what the problem was
me too, had a few issues with asus.
They should've just had a consistent methodology.
All other support requests were basically "my product was damaged" (in one case lost) and seeing how they deal with that.
That's a very straight forward and standard support request.
Would be a 1 star from me, and I would have been getting very irritated with them.....
It was a Canadian three stars.
By American standards, it's a sawed-off goat's head in the CEO's car.
The way this channel becomes more and more self aware of its relationship with sponsors is amazing
agreed it is really good ting the're doing
Prefer no sponsors overall but ok.
Eh, I want them to get paid what they deserve. A short ad, that we can easily skip, is well worth it.
@@MasonH24 My brother in christ this whole video is an ad.
meta content is the future
My experience with dbrand was awesome. I lived in Canada and Indonesia, and they treat customer support the same. I forgot what kind of support I needed, but I remembered they were awesome at handling whatever problem I had. They sent me a handwritten Post-it note of a quote, "Sometimes happiness is a feeling. Sometimes it's a decision."
DBrand is the goat I can’t remember which mail carrier it was but they folded one of the larger skins instead of using our overnight documents slot on the mail box and I reached out to them they had a replacement for that and a new one of my iPhone one I had ordered in the past shipped out with some stickers and a hilarious note mocking me that said “don’t get all bent out of shape” in less than 3 hours.
In the email I had asked if they thought I could salvage it and they said “it might require a higher intelligence life form than you :)”
My biggest problem with the dbrand one is that it basically shows the bullying the support staff gets better results/more free stuff. It would be much better if they were firm but fair with this type of customer and instead if you were a very kind and easy customer they bent over backwards to help you and send you stuff to encourage this type of behaviour. dbrand is the type of company with the 'marketing attitude' that they 100% would see a brand benefit from firmly encouraging kind behaviour from their customers
Customer support is not for the people that knows what they're doing, it's for the people who don't.
So having skilled people on support is really important, as proven 🙆
Yeah, but none of these companies want to pay for it, which is really annoying.
Can you rephrase what you just said? I'm not getting you. When you say "the people" do you mean the customer? Hence why it's important to hire staff that know what they're doing?
Basically, mostly people that are clueless will reach out to support. So having skilled people on the other end is a must.
Customer support is very often outsourced. These subcompanies put their guys in a call center for minimum wage and give them a database where they type in the issues the customer states and get pre written instructions from said database for how to fix issues. No one has ever seen or had the actual product in hand.
@@carlosn894yeah, and that's what most small to medium size companies do. For the bigger ones that hire tech support, I think they have 1st and 2nd line of support. 1st line support is mostly clueless and have no idea what they're talking about when troubleshooting with you. Everytime I contact my ISP it's like a battle trying to explain things to the front end support team
You were so lenient on Asus. You only 'got there' because you fed them the answer. 2 stars
1 star. If they're going to sell PC components and provide support, train your staff so they actually know how to support customers.
I seriously can't be the only one thinking this... If you sell a thing, make sure your support team knows how it works, and that they can walk you through setting it up with their eyes closed.
Everyone knows Asus support is terrible. That's just a given. None of this was surprising. Great products, but terrible support if anything goes wrong.
@@Deja117 can't agree more. How does 2 calls and still unable to get the answer without being spoon fed it by the 'customer' get 3 stars? Any slightly knowledgeable person would go "Yea you need to connect 3 8 pins into the adaptor then the 16pin into the gpu, the quick start guide is vague". Feels like they don't train their staff and 'fix' issues by frustrating people enough that they go online to forums/reddit for support.
@@Deja117I think they use BPOs for their tech support. We usually only rely on knowledge articles. I work on mostly software troubleshooting so that's not an issue for me but I understand how that can be frustrating for hardware end users.
Yeah I think it would've been more entertaining to have kept the call going until THEY gave the correct answer to the problem.
I hope you removed the protective film before starting the tests... 🤣🤣🤣🤣
If you continue with this series in the future I would really prefer to see only aesthetic products judged by responses to aesthetic issues. I don't as a consumer care if Ugreen cares about whether my wall wort is scratched. I want to know if they'll help if it doesn't work and I still don't know
I'd say Asus support was a fail. They didn't get there Rush had to give them the answer 😂
Right, how was that 3 stars?
And the problem should have been the simplest thing ever! He just wanted to clarify a part of the manual!
Simple, sponsorship money. The rating was for sponsorship money, not for their customer service which deserved a zero.
It's like little Jimmy going to an admission test and scoring a zero, but because daddy gave the school $$$, it's now 60% and he passed.
That first rep was embarrassing
Dbrand is pretty amazing with their customer support
I told em I messed up on the skins as I have the dexterity of a child, told em specifically I didn't want a replacement but just a link to how to get a skin for that specitic iteration (killswitch compatible)
They walked me through the entire purchasing process. They're awesome
They are awesome. I once got a case for the wrong phone as a gift and it was the smoothest return and refund experience ever.
I have contacted dbrand twice (I have been using them since 2012). Once my skin went a bit funny after a few months of being on my phone, I contacted them, they only took a day or so to reply but they released a new skin since that I told them not to worry and bought a new design. Another time Aramex (worst shipping company ever) didn't have my house number on the packaging, this was an issue at the time as if a company used Google for address verification it would drop the house number for everyone on my street.... dbrand uses Google.
I tried contact Aramex Canada, they told me to contact Aramex Australia, Who then told me to contact my local depot, who then told me they can't do anything until it arrives in Australia. Contacted Aramex Canada again but they wouldn't budge.
Contacted Dbrand and they just sorted it. Sent me a new skin.
Also I love how all messages I have seen from dbrand are signed off by robots.
That's standard
I gotta agree, I've had nothing but great experiences with Dbrand. They're products are great too.
I had to send in my Joy-Cons in for repairs once, asked if their skins could be reused, and while they said no, they offered to send replacements for just the price of shipping. Passive-Aggressive marketing aside they're really good about customer support.
This video didnt age well lmao
I never realised how much I took for granted that LTT does their own stock footage until I saw LTT using actual stock footage from a library 🤣
TBH, having experienced ASUS "support" before for a DOA GPU , I feel like that three out of five was incredibly generous. It got RMA'd eventually, but it was nuts. Dbrand is just always awesome in every way... no surprises there.
Asus is literally just for frustrating to deal with on support, I sent a motherboard in for a “bios reflash” and they ended up just trying to charge me almost 200$
@@karjihn8944 They tried charging me 700$ for advanced RMA/replacement for almost 2 months. For a monitor that has been sent back twice before that. It was a 2 year endeavor, never offered to give a upgrade or even something to make it right. Not even a coupon. It was just a new-old stock version of the monitor I bought 2 years ago. That's it.
I don’t think I’m ever buying another Asus product. I’ve been a pretty diehard Asus fan, I have Asus monitors, Asus motherboards for my like 5 builds, an Asus gpu, and an Asus laptop. But my laptop really sunk my opinion of them. I bought it from best buy because I needed it fast and easy, and within a few months I had some really wonky issues with the screen that I only found 1 other person online on the Asus subreddit also had. I contacted Asus to start an RMA and they told me to go through Best Buy. I contact Best Buy and they said the warranty is through Asus and to contact them. And I got sent in circles and circles and circles until my coverage ran out. Honestly really sunk my opinion of their brand because up until now all my Asus products have been 100% reliable with no failures. But their RMA process is a nightmare. Maybe it’s better if you bought the product directly from Asus and non a store like Best Buy- but either way it was ridiculously hard to even talk to a representative let along try and start an RMA- which I still never got!
Had many interactions with asus in different countries. Issues are related to software side and I just don’t have the technical knowledge to solve them. What asus supports do is ask you to provide many information and describe the issues, then tell you to send your products to their service points or factories straight away, without any replies regarding the issues. Three out of five is indeed too generous. I remember when I first got my zephyrus 17 and I ask dbrand if they have a plan on making skins for it, dbrand does not ignore my stupid email and actually explained why wouldn’t they do so. It’s just built differently.
In Vietnam, they are called "Asuck" for a reason too....Many horror stories of them denying RMAs over here......
The iFixIt ghosting is... strange to me. I got the Pro Tech kit and I actually broke the nylon-tipped tweezers by mistake. I sent an email to support, and almost immediately had a response. All they asked for was a photo of the kit and a photo of the broken tweezer tips.... they promptly sent out TWO PAIRS of replacement tips, AND a brand-new pair of tweezers. I was thoroughly impressed with the customer support. Of course I probably dealt with a different support center because I'm in the states.
You had actuall issue, not trying to lie to them.
Unlike Linus, you sent your picture sooner.
I really do think they went about the iFixIt order wrong. I'm a computer hardware tech and I have used a ProTech kit as my daily tool set for years. My original driver that I bought in 2018 came apart a few weeks ago; I opened a ticket, they asked for my original order number, which was in my email inbox still, and they wanted a picture of the broken driver. I sent those, and three days later I had my new driver.
Their website specifically states not to throw away packaging until you're sure you have everything, that's a pretty simple request. iFixIt was just following policy at that point since it's already stated online.
That’s probably because you didn’t loose anything. Like Linus said if they’ve been having problems with people not checking their packaging properly then asking for a picture of the box gives them a way to ask you to check the box without implying that you can’t look in a box properly
Did you bribe them with a picture of packing material? They seem to love those a lot.
Secret Shoppers used to be a real thing for Retailers in the 80s-90s maybe early 00s, but now that most of the services have moved online, it's harder to validate these sellers, resellers, warranty, customer support, etc.
So I greatly appreciate these episodes. I used to work at Geek Squad before Best Buy bought them out and we had several secret shoppers hit us up and graded our location. Thankfully we did great on our scores compared to other location, but it's important for consumers to know they're being honest, reliable, helpful and straight up faithful.
Secret shoppers are very much still a thing for brick and mortar stores and online a friend of mine freelances in secret shopping as a side hustle, basically she goes in, shops, pays, sends a report, and 24-48hrs later she is reimbursed and usually gets a little extra most of the time she gets to keep the merchandise but sometimes she has to return it then the company will pay her
I had a Manscaped trimmer go wrong about 13 months after purchase, and it hadn't seen all that much use. To their credit, it took one email to arrange a free-of-charge replacement with no need to even send the genuinely faulty one back. It arrived two days later. Fantastic experience.
dbrand is always just so chad of a company, so I'm glad they flew full-stars through the secret shopper experience.
well, when you're charging 5 times what other brands, it's expected to have way better customer service.
@@ViXoZuDo I think if you can afford it, paying 5 times more (or well, not 5 times but premium none the less) doing that for great customer service would not be a bad idea :)
at least people at happy
Given that I generally need a phone skin every couple of years, I can afford their heavy markup. Their products are top notch, and their copywrite is second to none, well, well worth the extra money for the entertainment alone. Trolling LTT is just the cherry on top.
@@zwerko You don't just save some money after spending $1k+ on a new phone by buying a cheap chinese case?
In the scheme of things, spending $50 or so on a dbrand case that I know I'll use for a few years is well worth the markup
It would be hilarious if D-brand tried to contact linus’s support 😂
i mean, if they read this they probably will, or maybe someone will send it if thier twitter or whatever.
I've had to contact the LTT store support and it was outstanding.
same
@@JordanNeenan
Yeah, my LTT screwdriver arrived on fire, can I get a warranty replacement?
@@JKSSubstandard trust me bro amirite?
We're more interested in what LMG is hiding.
I thought ifixit would surely get a 5/5, I asked for replacements for a couple worn hex bits in my 64-bit kit and those guys literally sent me a full pro tech toolkit, what an upgrade! They said it was a gift for being a long time customer (all I've ever ordered from them was the original 64-kit, and then the uograded one shortly after it came out). Outright amazing customer service! They did ask me for pictures of the bits though, which is reasonable, as I still had them unlike the packaging.
Gives them the lowest rating. The one brand that they happen to compete with hmmmmm.
@@viking9442 not to mention they complained about them being overly cautious about fraud, by requiring pictures, while he's doing the exact thing that caused them to have that policy. How u gonna be upset about someone not believing u lost a product, when u had it sitting right beside u. Lol
@@viking9442 ifixit sells a lot more than just screw drivers... That's not much competition.
@@verakoo6187 Plus, he gave Jackery a 4.5/5, yet they had the same issue in response time.
@@verakoo6187 They are doing an EXPERIMENT, simulating what could have happened to customers with missing items in their order. Be honest, do you keep every packaging of items that you purchased ever? If you do, you have a hoarding problem. Your disposition (and possibly iFixit) is every customer is a scam and out to take advantage of you, whereas sometimes it can a genuine, honest mistake. You are not going to get many returning customers if you run your business like that, there are plenty of offbrand tools I can get from vendors on Amazon with much customer-friendly policies.
Something that I can tell from experience, a lot of my classmates actually scammed amazon and various other merch stores by claiming missing items. This happened approx 4 years ago, and they each scammed the websites for hundreds of dollars.
Since then, it has become a kind of rule here in India that you must record yourself unboxing anything and everything to be able to claim warranty or returns.
that's messed up. not as much of an issue in north america / europe.
It's very commonly done but the profit loss to places like amazon is so minimal that they should just suck up the cost if that means generally better customer service. In Europe they definitely can't make you do those things anyway because of consumer protections, luckily.
Amazon India still doesn't require unboxing videos, but smaller sites definitely do
Amazon basically does the same thing. When somebody orders a package and something is wrong with it like it cant be delivered and no return address or some shit idk they have these fat ass palletes with like 200-300 packages that they just sell to people. Like not stuff they offload to a DSP, actually just lost and found packages just loaded up on palletes and sent off to whoever buys it.
I imagine they just tell the company it was 'lost' or something and then either the insurance covers it or the company sending the item just has to eat the cost and send another. Or the customer is just fucked
@@Artcore103 it's a fairly common practice in Asia, China especially, I wouldn't be surprised if Ugreen will expect you to do some sort of that for warranty claim
Hey Linus explain why you can secret shop but someone reviewing you and your company has to get in contact first. Seems like you dont practice what you preach
Different goals, secret shopping is to find out what's the consumer experience is like, telling them first would defeat the idea, while GN's video have a more investigative/analytical approach, contacting the person of interest is crucial to get information, obviously don't take it at face value, the journalist should expand on the answers given, and find out whether it's accurate, skewed, or a straight-up lie, it could also give missing context to present data.
@@haniffaris8917 in the end they both have the goal of accountability, my point is that it isn't the reported on parties right to be contacted first, it may occur for additional context or content but it isn't guaranteed.
Imagine that. Having challenges with a large scale corporations QC and information accuracy.
I know right! These Corpo should(n't) take a page from ltt imo.
Linus, from my time in a call center years ago, I spent an hour and a half explaining a four piece curtain rod bracket (wall mount, adjustment plate, nut, and bolt) to a customer. Your comment on "This really can happen" is absolutely spot on.
Yes, but but how easy would your/our job have been if you/we said to customers (or info supplied with the product). If you go to their website, there's a video tutorial. Like a young child, everyone learns from pictures easier than trying to absorb, interpret speech or text.
@@Lana_Warwick this was literally a 4 component bracket, including the nut and bolt. There were picture instructions included with them, and during training every employee had to go through the install process of the products. Keep in mind, my point is that these situations DO happen, across all industries. I worked with that customer until she had the mental "click" and understood. The call center used that call in training for new hires as an example of staying calm and patient with customers instead of getting frustrated for over a year after.
@@etyrnus I get it, but even I have a hard time (especially now I'm very old), keeping up, comprehending, most who've explained something so many times, it rolls out their mouths so fast, I can't mentally keep up, like some of these tech youtubers, 100mph (linus, nexus). Thankfully with a video, I can turn on subtitles, replay.
Flip-side - I've been building PC's for ~30yrs, recently installed a cheap tower cooler for someone, screws didn't line up with the plate, was ready to throw it, flame online.
Sitting down having something to eat, I realised there were instructions on the other side of the paper (initially thought it was another language), realised I was following intel for an amd install. So regardless how simple it seems...
I'm 100% sure that DBrand knew that LTT were going to do something like this and decided to pull a fast one on them
Plot twist they sent them the broken glass protection in the first place.
Dbrand is actually really really good at support. I got a free replacement (and upgraded to the newer version) grip with the skin for a phone they didn't even sell cases for anymore. After 2 years of usage.
@@tinsucevic can confirm they have good support. I bought their first gen screen protector years ago, and they sent me a replacement no questions asked because the plastic protective layer wouldn't peel off and it ruined the protector
sure = could be? How would they know?i mean one might know, but they are more than just one customer service person. idk
@@hendrikseemann8407 yeah dbrand are always generous with replacing damaged items
I just had a suspected warranty issue with jackery. Their response time was excellent, with them even responding on the weekend. In the end I didn’t need to send anything back, but they were ready and willing to do what was needed. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Maybe they're hiding the Billet Labs prototype that you auctioned off?? 😂😂😂
I'm from Indonesia and it's a policy in most online shops here that you have to record an unboxing video to have your complaints processed. It's quite inconvenient but we get used to it. It's so refreshing to see someone from a first world country get surprised over that policy lol.
what is indonesia? is it india?
@@kaimojepaslt how hard for you to google a single word?
@@kaimojepaslt it's a little village in vrindavan
@@kaimojepaslt ain't no way this man does not recognize a whole ass country
@@kaimojepasltNo. It's just... Indonesia.
Really hoping to see a "Sponsors React" video to see what they have to say about their own customer support.
Pretty easy to predict, it'll be a very corporate "this is OUTRAGEOUS, we will fix this AT ONCE" and nothing will happen
@@MrToastyYT Except dbrand. I am pretty sure they will end up pranking Linus.
@@randomghost1080 Dbrand will probably order something at LTTstore and be majorly douchey at the support people, claiming their water bottle that was run over by a truck needs replacement for free, but the DBrand HQ will be in the background so they troll linus like "the writing was on the wall lmao"
there's not much for them to do, what would they say other than some corporate apology like the other guy mentioned, or make excuses which would just make them look worse.. no reason for them to
@@randomghost1080 dBrand will probably make a point of firing somebody for giving Linus good service.
The first transition to the sponsor was amazing. I really appreciated this one head and shoulders above the others in some other videos. 👌👌👌
"Operating with integrity, and putting the needs of our community first. Unless of course theres something shady going on of course". Well this aged like milk.
I feel like a lot of these scores were VERY generous. Companies that were unable to help after 1hr on the phone, or that make it extremely difficult to even connect customer support should not be getting 3+ stars
Maybe most people from US are expecting no questions asked from amazon. But for others this seems fine. In my country this would be even great 😅
@@ligametis Yeah as a fellow Canadian I think some people just have unrealistic expectations when it comes to basic customer support when dealing with 90% of companies lol. Yes, Amazon will do their best to just please you however possible (especially if you're a prime customer) but that's not realistic of everyone else. You have to give ratings based on realistic customer support experiences, not idealized ones that almost never occur (although I will say Dbrand really did seem to manage A++ support, going WAY above and beyond, so I'm guessing their margins are so high it really doesn't matter to them). All the ratings seemed relatively fair to me, and pretty inline with various support experiences I've had, both with companies in the video and companies that aren't.
I think the *consistency* of support quality would also be interesting to test, for example I've had multiple support tickets with the same company and some experiences were excellent while others were just okay - despite the issues being almost identical.
Ditto
If it where to be an only "certain county" producer i would expect quick responses but international corporations? Idk feel like i would give them more time to response
It's getting worse and worse over the years in Canada. Consumer protection is basically non-existent other than in Quebec. CAA for instance is killing me right now. I moved out of province and apparently signed up for auto renewal and set a pin up on the account. They make you call to make changes to auto renewal and won't let you remove a credit card online. Call them and they demand a pin number I don't remember setting up, without it I can't cancel renewal or remove my credit card, I have to show up to a CAA location in person to do so now. I'm over 3000KM away from the closest CAA. I'm literally pulling my hair out 😭🤣
Even internationally, dbrand is incredible for support, even when it is clearly user error they are still so helpful
Loved the video and please keep up the secret shopper series. I would love to see how Secret Labs handles issues. Maybe different parts that fail out of the box and/or if the QC was poor. Also how to do they handle issues when the purchase date was more than a year ago. 3D printing companies would also be great.
Companies have been getting worse and worse over the last 10 years with hiding contact details. But since the pandemic they have got a lot worse and their services and support have really deteriorated.
I had an issue with my dbrand case ages ago, and support was unbelievably nice. The contrast of how they act online externally vs the lovely support internally is quite amusing.
Hey you're the color palette guy
Yea I didn't realise I bought a skin at dbrand and not a case and they were really nice and just let me buy the case for the normal additional price instead on a complete new order
They are sassy on social media but they do really love their customers and always find a solution for any problem you have with them, even if it's your own fault.
I mean you pay for that. The plastic sticker is vastly overpriced but in return you get excellent service
i guess you can do quality support if your product has 500% markup
I had to go through dbrand customer support once and it was by far the best support I have ever received. Glad to see they haven't changed
Same my order got lost in shipping they just sent over the replacement skin no questions asked
I had to go through dbrand customer support once and it was by far the best support I have ever received. Glad to see they haven't changed
glad for you my experience with them was dogcrap :D
@@nopucks I lied
@@nopucks What happened to you?
Imagine everyone start doing this and unboxing video become mandatory for starting a support session, thanks linus
These customer support calls are the exact reason i will always miss EVGA in the graphics card market. Dealing with their customer support was always such an easy process. Frankly, the customer support issues you had with Asus are exactly why I stopped buying from them. Any other brand I've dealt with has been a better experience and I'm disappointed that Asus hasn't improved since I stopped buying their products almost a decade ago.
I knew DBrand would be good, kinda nuts how far they went. Didn't expect that at all
makes sense cause their products come at a cost
@@serceband He announced it after they already filmed it, this was months ago and they had no way of knowing (that's the point), other than it seeming fishy for someone to be that clingy for free stuff.
I had a display failure on my Z flip, and after forwarding them the RMA confirmation they sent me a replacement skin for free. They have some of the best customer service I've ever seen.
@@jayeh1443 nah, dbrand customer support is truly great.
Fun fact: I always request a drawing with my order and they give me one everytime.
DBrand products have huge profit margins, allowing them to spend a ton on sponsorships and handle customer complaints well. That's common for these types of companies.
My favorite thing about Dbrand is they call themselves overpriced and call their customers idiots for buying their overpriced stuff. Does that discourage me from buying their stuff? Hell no. Also, they are very easy to work with.
@@1206549lol imagine paying like 3 times for the product, you wouldn't buy a gpu for paying 3 times over just to have great customer support experience in case of a faulty product
@@drinkwoter put it into perspective, a GPU doesn't need to be triple in cost to also pay for customer support staff, it could be 10-15% of a top of the range GPU, (if even that, these are bs numbers)
On the other hand, a skin that has a low MSRP compared to the GPU, needs a higher profit margin to pay for customer support,
So no I wouldn't pay 3x for gpu's, but would pay for a premium skin,
@ellasoderstrom5407 you just reposted the comment.
This is true, their product is relatively inexpensive and easy/cheap to ship . However - they don't have to provide good customer service. There are plenty of companies out there that provide horrible service, even with products that are inexpensive. So I say credit where credit is due.
I got to say, the ltt customer service is pretty nice. I ordered one of their screwdrivers from the Netherlands and I had to wait very long for it because they were still being made. 1 email to the customer service and it was pretty quickly explained to me why it was taking so long. Keep it up!
I agree. LTT has great customer service. I messaged them about an item (the issue wasn't with quality), and it was resolved in less than a week.
This was by far, the smoothest transition to a sponsor ever
Find yourself someone who looks at you the same way Linus looks at his sponsors.
critically and with suspicion?
Yeah although he gave Asus a three out of five when they couldn't solve his problem at all for an hour and eventually the person who called just answered it for them.
If that's a passing grade then I don't get the point of all this
Umm...
@@michaelcorcoran8768 Just looking at how some of the others were handled I think it's an overall score but they're just focusing on the support factor more in the video. Conveyed a bit weird but probably to do with how the video was pitched and written. You're right though, that support was muff cabbage.
You mean how he looks at 0:12? 😂
I'll also vouch for dbrand's stellar customer service. I had an atomic grip case for my S22 Ultra for over a year and it started warping and didn't fit properly on the phone anymore. I opened a support ticket, sent photos and they immediately gave me a coupon worth the full value of the case as they no longer produce that specific case anymore. I used it to order a new case from them. Stellar customer service and I definitely recommend them.
What LTT experienced with Ugreen is pretty accurate. Had a pretty similar story a while back.
For me Ugreen was the go to for USB cables and chargers a few years back. They offered great quality for reasonable prices and all they did had a "we want you to be happy and order again vibe".
Since then theier prices have gone up a lot, they entered a lot of product categories they don't seem to know much of and I feel like they shifted from quality to design over quality. They don't even ship cable ties with their USB cables anymore. I moved on to brands that don't have a brand recognition to rely on/or don't milk it...
Dbrand support is amazing. My grip case was falling apart after about 7 months of use and sent them a question wondering if maybe I could get a replacement or discount to rebuy it. They not only sent me a replacement for free but they also included a replacement robot 2.0 skin because that's what I had on the case!
Is the replacement better or the same? Was looking to buy one, but saw a lot of posts on their subreddit complaining that it falls apart in a year.
my skin was lost in shipping and they sent me another one, their support is actually very nice
I'd like to give a huge shoutout to Linus' team for actually practicing what they preach. I opened a support ticket about my LTT screwdriver, and the support rep sent me a new screwdriver within a day, no questions asked, and it arrived 5 days later. Absolutely a 5 star support experience from me and I cannot wait to order my backpack from LMG in the next few weeks.
Same, noticed my water bottle was missing the LTT logo a few days after I got it and after messaging support expecting something like the ugreen's 5$ discount they instantly offered a full refund or free shipped replacement while keeping the one I got, A+.
Used mine yesterday it’s a cracking driver!
Best buy in my experience has a great warranty program. I once spilled beer on my keyboard, took it back and told them i spilled beer on it and they replaced it anyway.
That unboxing thing is actually very common here in the local marketplace in my country. It's somehow become a "standard" if you want a refund. Almost every store has that policy, like maybe 99% of them, including the official store.
lmao not to mention your warranty is off if you rate the seller other than 5 stars
Which country?
Pretty much SEA things, I guess.
💯
Also you need to keep the box, people told me how stupid I am until they have to claim a warranty because seller wont accept returns without boxes.
They need to do a secret shopping for their OWN product, where no one in creator warehouse knows it's them and then manufacture a problem and see what the response is.
Uhm, they don't need to do that. As it makes absolutely zero sense.
If there wasn't a major conflict of interest issue that'd be a great idea, but the community would roast them if they did well because they obviously faked it, and roast them if they did poorly for obvious reasons.
That's an... Awful idea, not because it actually makes no sense for a self assessment and self rating, but it would backfire quickly
Nah, that is something GN should do for the Linus products.
You can't investigate yourself after all.
Don't give Europeans more ideas, we have regular check ups at stores as is, with a bonus at least though.
I like how Linus called out the Ugreen support rep name "Hugh Green", but completely missed/didn't question the Jackery support named "Jack Urie" lol.
This could be linus' best and well integrated sponsor segway yet! So beautifull to witness this moment
The best recent memory experience regarding customer support I've had was with dbrand. I bought a skin for a laptop and was missing the microfiber cloths (of all things) lol. I told them that, but also added after inspection that the top skin had some weird adhesive issues (it wasn't bubbles - the bubbles went away after a day). they said they'd normally replace the skin for free sans cost of shipping which was already cool enough but since I was also missing the microfiber they'd just send it all for free. I was expecting the cloth and top skin but they pretty much replaced my entire order. also, they said my death will be swift when the robots finally take over the planet. woot!
Dbrand valuing the consumers happiness to make sure they keep him as a customer
Be more like Dbrand, I just feel bad for them now when everyone will be asking for something extra
I am am always happy to see videos like this from LTT. Highlighting the significance of vetting the product you are spending your hard earned money on is important but vetting the companies support eqaliy important. One thing I am curious about was the hold menu experience. While I feel like this videos aim was not to focus on the negative, outside of the email delays the on hold time and the over all experience of calling is a big part of frustration I have when calling for support these days. Overall I am always please to see LTT performing these types of audits on people the are associating with and event them selves.
Dang, you guys are doing a great service for these industries and their customers. If only other sectors had a Linus Tech Tips.
The packaging thing with IFixit is likely to do with them claiming their costs with the delivery partner.
Could also be the weight to see what was in the package.
seems like when trying to claim a warranty UFixIt
But that's still a 💩 response.
If they just asked for a picture and if you don't have the package anymore they still help you, then that wouldn't be a problem.
But refusing to help you without the picture is just 💩
@@Jehty21 but linus didn't have any proof of the ordered items actually missing. should the company just blindly trust the customer at all times and send out replacements?
@@JocheProHD10 the only way to proof that an item is missing is by making unboxing videos.
IFixit didn't want an unboxing video. They wanted a picture of an empty package. What exactly does that proof?
So the company either has to require every single customer to make an unboxing video (I would never order from a company like that) or just accept that some customers are lying.
And the latter one is what every good company is doing. They don't make their customers jump through hoops. They just price the products accordingly.
Can't fault dbrand. I have always loved their customer support. When I made an order, I tweeted them about having serious cardiac issues and in the order they sent a hand drawn picture or a broken heart and note saying: "F**K YOU - Don't take this to heart" and the note was NOT censored, only doing it for YT comments haha. Loved it, as did my wife. Think I even tweeted a pic of it, I know I still have it as I just need to search the full f u in my iPhone photos search and it brings it up lmao
They fucked my order up 6 TIMES (I wish I was kidding) but the support was great the entire time, refunded me the whole amount, accidentally sent me 6 extra skins in the process, sent me a pack of microfiber cloths and shipped me a Tesla Roadster art made from scraps of skins (including discontinued ones). While I was disappointed, they made it right
I can definitely agree, even when it was my fault for ordering the wrong skin, they swapped it for the correct one, no questions asked.
Top tier customer support.
iFixit support has also treated me fairly well. Luckily I didn't throw the packaging. But it probably has something to do with their internal processes.
I had an amazing time with manscapes customer service through email. I saw on reddit that if you email them that you lost your charging cable and would like a new one they'll send you one for free. Not only did they email me back the next day and say they'll send me a new cable for my old version of their manscape shaver, they are went ahead and mailed off their Newest version of their main razor for free. I was blown away by this amazing customer service just for being a loyal customer of theirs. I understand that this is to keep me being a loyal quarterly subscriber of their refills but they absolutely didn't have to send me anything extra for free 10/10 recommend Manscape.
For Asus, your very right about the motherboard issues. Am in Kenya and bought their Zenbook Pro Duo 15 OLED (UX582, 12th Gen Intel) laptop from their certified resellers here and it has been 6 weeks since they started repairing it under the warranty and just kept finding more problems each time they replaced a part and having to wait for parts from China and US to be shipped to Kenya!
That was actually the best sponsor transition ever. I always see them coming but this one was outta left field and was funny
I skipped it immediately because I am a loser.
not really
About iFixit: I totally get where they are coming from. In most cases, people who just try to squeeze something out of it, usually give up once they get ghosted. I mean 70% that is. Hence when you started sending pictures, they went all over the place to make sure you are satisfied. 100% agree with them and that's exactly what we are doing with a very good success rate.
Yeah but packaging??
It's pretty normal for me to get home, open my packages, throw the boxes down to trash chute, then get comfy and start working with the contents.
Eh, I know a couple of people how'd give up if ghosted, even if they're in the right, unless we're talking about a noticeable amount of money. And I know people who'd have trouble getting away pictures.
Besides, what do they want with the pics? To see if a scammer is dumb enough to take a picture of the items they say aren't there, or a picture of the package, lacking the items the customer said they didn't receive?
@@PsRohrbaugh I mean sure, but you don't throw away the packaging when you're missing items, at least not mindlessly (and this gives you another reason to keep it until it's resolved). Same for damaged items.
@@PsRohrbaughsame here, especially nowadays the packaging is so secured that I have to break the whole packaging into trash. Luckily I use platform that can reject payment of the product if there is any missing items if no replacement is send in time.
But you get it wrong and you have a person who will actively steer customers away from you for years, causing you a higher loss than if you just let the scammers win and increased the product price to compensate. It's also fairer to treat people as if they are honest until proven otherwise. If customer service is going to treat me like a scammer until I prove otherwise, they can go suck a lemon.
Ha! Linus screwed me out of an opportunity to use his support or exchange portals by making that backpack of his so good. How about this for a use challenge?! My 15year old boy stole it from me, used it for school and soccer (and you know how careful teens are), and at the end of the year… it still looked so good that I am now using it instead of a briefcase at my law firm (where I’m asked constantly where I got it)! I will never need another backpack. Great job to the team. We desperately need trustworthy reviewers.
It would be good for you to have a follow up video with the sponsors themselves and the customer service leads in those departments to review the cases and see where they could have done better. Sometimes it is just luck of the draw, but always good to investigate incidents like this. Also, you should get your sponsors to secret shop YOUR merch in return and then try and contact your team ;). Dbrand, up for it?
Imagine being on a level you get to choose who’s on your shit. This video is the biggest flex of all time in a good way. It’s using your power the way you should. Your looking out for your people who got you here. Your the best Linus!
my respect for d-brand has skyrocketing after watching this good word you guys
I hope these are followed up quickly with the respective company, imagine being a packer in the shipping team that gets fired for not shipping out the correct order... when they actually did
i friggen love secret shopper videos, gimme more
The iFixit customer service interaction is exactly WHY i always keep my packaging for new tech for...probably way too long.
I still have the box my Nokia 5310 came in. Just in case...
you're only going to get asked for photos of the packaging if something is missing.
I always apreciate linus being completly honest with us
An confirm. This is why my next laptop might be a Framework. I love the idea, but I trust Linus to be honest about it all too.
Isn't this more of a list of which companies are the easiest to take advantage of?
Open your eyes you think he being honest lmao
@@thesamsungexperiance8853 maybe you don't know what that word means.
I, too, believe at face value that he is being honest with us, a pseudonymous creator on camera trying to make money by roasting sponsors he doesn't care about, yes, very honest person.
It's not the level of honesty it's the level of dishonesty we can't possibly enumerate.
What are *_you_* hiding?
I'll be honest. Dbrand had great customer support, they gave me the wrong skin once for the S21. The thing is that I ordered a skin for the S21 ultra. They replied within the same day and shipped the correct skin at no cost to me.
I think for global brands like ASUS the quality of the support varies greatly by country. I live in Japan and had an issue with my Z13 and ROG Mobile. I filled out the Japanese repair request form in English and a guy came to my home with packing materials to pickup both devices after 2 days. The estimated repair time was 7 days, but in 2 days they delivered my device with the mobo and battery completely replaced.
An actual person came to your home to pick it up instead of just having you send the old devices through the post? That's honestly the most Japan thing I've heard in a long time. Wish we could have that kinda service over in the west.
That's japanese customer service, can't expect that elsewhere honestly.
@@Crawfishness thats very normal here in Portugal...
@@Crawfishnessdell also does that
That's Japan for you. There isn't any other country where you would get that kind of customer support because Japan is the last country on Earth where they value their customers.
Honestly I think Ifixit deserves better. Customers can be total Karens sometimes and even try to outright scam the company. The fact that they sorted it out immediately after he sent the picture shows that they're just being cautious. If anything, people should be educated not to throw away packaging and anything that could confirm their purchase at least until they've tested the product.
In some countries, not having packaging is not a valid reasons for refusing warranty. iFixIt deserves a bad score for the ghosting and the requirement. Receipts exist for a reason.
@@DanCojocaru2000The packaging was apparently because some carriers pack things into the same box, so apparently people have thrown away some products on accident in the past.
Still though, they should just send one no questions asked, I can't imagine it would be a huge cost for them.
@@tbuk8350 Sounds like a problem with the packaging not being obviously containing items.
The score was okay. It was just that the Asus score set a terrible baseline. Asus should have gotten 1 star.
There's nothing wrong with them asking about the packaging but if you threw it away you threw it away. Them outright refusing to provide service if you didn't keep the packaging isn't reasonable.
The sponsor segue for this video was the smoothest they've done in a bit
for manufactured issues, your results went very well !
Hmm. Not sure how I feel about this one. I think some of the issues presented being so minor (like a scratch on the charger) and then being upset it wasn't a priority weren't shown in the best way. Asus really should have gotten a lower score (they literally didn't solve the problem) and the whole setup felt kinda icky. I feel like if you want to test customer support, test the on things that really matter, ask for assistance setting up a device, ask for help swapping parts or getting a refund for something that ACTUALLY doesn't work (not just something that was scratched). Overall a good concept, just feel like the execution wasn't all there. Keep at it!
Well there are problems with that, their sponsors are very varied. How could you ask for assistance setting up o swaping parts on dbrand skins? Or ifixit?
You could do different things with each sponsor but my guess is, the idea for this video was to be unified in method of testing and that meant only missing parts or minor broken things.
But yeah it was kinda skimming the surface and it almost looked like they do not want to test them too much.
Manscaped has mechanical devices, why not test them, say they broke or something? Is it reasonable to actaully damage working jackery? I mean yeah it's not reasonable to just order them until one is faulty but... It looked wasteful.
My biggest gripe is that it's only their customer service. When secret shopping pc's they tested and compared them on many fronts. Is manscaped worth the price, arent they overpriced? Many people say dbrand is heavly overpriced (that's why they have so easy time sending extras) so maybe they should be tested on durability? Has jackery any rivals, do they do things better? And I don't even know how to test ugreen when they have many many different products.
I don't know, customer support does not sound that much important for me, not more than getting actually good product.
This is one of the only ltt videos I have thumbed down in >10 years
But they *did* try things that were relevant to the products, like jackery's customer issue was a problem that people had been dealing with.
All I can say is good job dbrand because they did it super good. Make me want to give them money just because of that.
I was completely unsurprised to hear that dbrand does so well for customers. It really had no reason to be that nice to a whiny entitled person, but they were. Knowing dbrand, though, they'll take this and find a way to prank Linus in the future based on it. I look forward to it.
@@sireuchre yeah they will, lol I didn’t even think of that
@@sireuchreoooohhhh, I’m waiting with baited breath.😂😂😂
It helps that they sell products with insane margins and really cheap shipping. If anything I'm more surprised about Jackery; like, sure they didn't really have many other options but holy crap it gets expensive fast to ship heavy crap like that around the world.
a dollar spent on good customer service gets you more customers than a dollar on good advertising. Word of mouth gets you way different/better customers with a higher propensity to spend.
Ifixit - I've had three issues with their stuff:
1 - I had a tiny torx bit twist the tip off and they replaced it with a picture of the broken tip
2 - I bought the old kit and noticed they had replaced the tweezers with better ones in the next generation of the kit. I wrote them asking about buying the new version and they answered by sending them too me for free... This was not a recent purchase either.
3 - My wife through away the poster that I purchased with my second kit... She thought it was packaging material. No - I didn't ask for a replacement.
That was the best sponsor segue I’ve seen in a while
Pretty damn excited about this, and hoping it goes past LTT sponsors.
That was an idea mentioned on WAN show, but said it depends on if the video does well or not
I mean they already have a secret shopper series of some prefab computers aswell.
@@ogs5276 That's what I'm hoping for. This is overall a solid idea.
For IFixit, I had no problem (or charge) getting a bit replaced when I broke it trying using force as an alternative to thread locker. The replacement even came with stickers. This was years after purchase.
I've had same great experience with iFixit: 3 torx bits, tweezers, and pry bars all replaced years after purchase under their lifetime warranty, including shipping US to Australia (was close to 7-8x the cost of parts total).
Parts were basically worn out due to daily use. Provided photos and new parts were on their way!
I love that Linus does this. We all hate these garbage outsourced call centers that barely speak English and know less than nothing about the products they represent, but us normal people can’t do anything about it. I appreciate that Linus uses his platform to help us out.