ASUS finally sent me a repair quote for my broken Nexus 7
Well, it looks like the saga of my broken (but not dropped) ASUS Nexus 7 is near its end. To give you some background, I broke my Nexus 7 about a month ago without dropping it, but the digitizer completely stopped working, anyway. I was hoping to be able to repair the tablet, but found that replacement digitizers cost just as much as the tablet itself, and ASUS quoted $205 for the repair. Still, I sent the tablet back in the hopes that the failed digitizer would be cause enough for ASUS to repair the tablet under warranty. As I expected, the news I got back from ASUS wasn’t what I had hoped for. The email contained some information on payment, but the important info appears below:
Cost of repairs (all amounts are USD) – enter amounts on credit card form:
Parts – $85.00 (LCD)
Labor – $65.00
Shipping – please select one shipping method only on credit card form
Sales Tax** – please select one option only on credit card form
Now, this is actually less than the original quote, but still an exorbitant amount for a tablet that cost me $229. However, I’d like to draw your attention to the above image, sent to me of my tablet by the ASUS repair center. As you should be able to tell, the tablet is much more damaged than when I sent it in, meaning that either it was damaged at the repair center or by the post office. I packaged the tablet in a box quite securely, but the ASUS service center did apologize for their month-long delay in correspondence. While I would normally blame the post office for leaving my package at the bottom of a bin and crushing it, but it sounds like the ASUS service center may be at fault, too.
Either way, the new damage will make it even harder to get the $80 that I would need from the tablet to justify buying a new one instead of getting it repaired ($150+80), but at this point I’m just going to give up and cut my losses. I’ve requested that the tablet be sent back to me, and I’ll sell it on eBay for whatever I can get. Hopefully, that amount will be over $30, so that I don’t have to think I wasted more than $200 on having a tablet for a few weeks. I still have some concerns about the durability of these tablets, since I don’t think I subjected mine to any abuse at all, but I won’t be buying another ASUS Nexus 7. Instead, I’ll wait for the next Nexus tablet, and hopefully it will either be more durable, or I won’t break it.