My parents sent their 1.5 year old RT-AC88U in for warranty repair and......got a new one in return

[Gregory Phillips]

Now you would expect to hear about a lengthy repair time and lack of spare parts...all of which are true. However, Asus said that the repair was completed and returned a router to them. Well I say a router because it wasn't the repaired broken unit that they sent them rather it was a brand new unit which came today.

I pulled my AX88U down and put this one in along with updating its firmware to the beta as well as restoring our settings and everything is working as expected so thank you Asus for doing them right.

 

[toaruScar]

I think it's cheaper to replace than repair now.

 

[Gregory Phillips]

Man this thing has been disconnecting on us multiple times a day so it has to go back. I reinstalled my ax88u and put it back in its box. What are the odds of getting a dud right out of the box?

 

[ColinTaylor]

What are the odds of getting a dud right out of the box?

Probably quite low, but not zero. Maybe you shouldn't have installed a new beta firmware and restored your settings from a different router that was not working properly.

 

[Treadler]

Man this thing has been disconnecting on us multiple times a day so it has to go back. I reinstalled my ax88u and put it back in its box. What are the odds of getting a dud right out of the box?

Yup, install latest ‘stable’ firmware.

Then:
Do a full factory reset.

Do not use any previous saved configurations, that just brings the previous problems to the new router.
Configure everything fresh.

 

[HWDan]

Go back a few versions, and set it up from scratch. Then upgrade in step after each one appears stable enough. New might even be a minor hardware revision so if you actually restored previously saved settings, that might be suspect.

 

[Gregory Phillips]

It is running 41700 and I've factory reset it more than once already.

 

[Gregory Phillips]

Today Asus tech confirmed that the hardware is bad and its being RMA'd again. While on the phone with them the stupid thing just dropped out forcing me to reboot it. Hopefully the next replacement will function properly when we get it.

 

[Gregory Phillips]

They received the replacement today and it was sporting a firmware version that is not available on the support site but judging from the numbers its from sometime in early 2019. I flashed it to the current beta and loaded the settings back in (I keep them stored by firmware version). I ran some speed tests on both the wired and wireless channels and everything seems to be in order.

Now only time will tell if this unit is good or not. I did notice that it came with the old style one piece power supply and cable rather than the brick with separate power cord.

 

[routerq]

They received the replacement today and it was sporting a firmware version that is not available on the support site but judging from the numbers its from sometime in early 2019. I flashed it to the current beta and loaded the settings back in (I keep them stored by firmware version). I ran some speed tests on both the wired and wireless channels and everything seems to be in order.

Now only time will tell if this unit is good or not. I did notice that it came with the old style one piece power supply and cable rather than the brick with separate power cord.

HI, can you give some overview on the repair / RMA process you followed.

I called the Asus CC and asked told them that the 5ghz on my ac5300 (out of warranty) has gone kaput, and the guy wanted to sell me $50 1 day premium tech support and when I asked the process / cost to get it repaired, his answer was ... " send it in repair center and they will email back with estimates" ....

I can live with reasonable repair cost, but not even getting an estimate is challenging.

Guidance will be really appreciated ...

 

[Deleted member 22229]

It is very unlikely Asus will do any circuit repair on any returned router. They are disposable to Asus. Paying any qualified tech to do this would cost more then the penny's Asus has invested to any single unit. Just not worth there time.

 

[Gregory Phillips]

We contacted Asus via their support number and obtained a case number. Then I submitted the router logs from the router menu attaching the case number so they would have it on file. I spend time on the phone with their tech who walked me through some steps during which the router failed prompting them to issue another RMA.

Overall we had to contact them several times including to get them to provide a prepaid shipping label since they are at fault for shipping us a defective replacement in the first place. This time they shipped us a good unit, fingers crossed, that is still working without having to reboot it nightly. If it fails during the remaining warranty period we will do this again.

Otherwise they will purchase a more recent unit when it goes the next time.

 

[Tech9]

I can live with reasonable repair cost, but not even getting an estimate is challenging.

They can't give you an estimate over the phone. The repair could be from cheap single VRM replacement to costly entire PCB replacement. I do electronics repairs mainly for fun and recently had to throw back for recycling one AC5300. It arrived completely dead, I was successful enough to boot it and load the firmware, but just to find both 5GHz radios are unrecognized along with WAN + 2 LAN ports not working. This router was struck by high voltage on WAN. There is no point wasting time with it, the PCB has to be replaced. Your repair may range from $100 to the cost of a new AC5300.

 

[Gregory Phillips]

I just wanted to follow up that this is the first 88u that we've had that did not show any activity under the AIprotection malicious site blocking. We go to the same sites as always so I'm suspicious of its function. At least each machine has its own firewall and antivirus software running.

 

[Gregory Phillips]

Lately this router has started overheating and dropping connections so back in goes the ax88u until they can get a new router.