I have tried (via my company) to replace several PSU's, Antec fail to respond to faxes, or e-mail's by any means.

I have had this problem about a year ago when I had to replace 5-6 faulty PSU's, I ended up persuading a friendly e-tailer to replace them because Antec's support it worthless.

This time however the e-tailers are not so friendly, and currently I have 3 PSU's that are useless, and cant seemingly be replaced until I get a response from Antec.

Terrible service is to be expected from un-branded goods, but Antec should know better, currently their 3-year warranty is 1-year and is replaced via the e-tailer.

This is made even worse by the fact that my company (via me) has been using huge amounts of Antec cases (with PSU's) for over 2 years now, so there are lots of PSU's out there that I dread may fail, and I have to then fight to get replaced.

I contacted "AntecRep" best part of a week ago, but he might be on holiday, as I have not had him contact me back yet.


Andy

Sorry to hear your tale. It doesn't come as any surprise.

The best I can say about their support in the UK is, it's none existant. Antec are simply uncontactable in any way, shape or form to illicit a response that bears any relation to the questions asked.

Having had a problem with several Fusion Max cases I simply had to give up. Support emails are ignored, complaint's emails are ignored. In the end I had to phone international and call Holland, but still didn't manage to get anywhere. There is no-one available to talk to who is able to find out what's going on.

As a last resort I spotted that Antec rep's use the community forums at Hexus.net, so decided to see if I could get anywhere with that... Unfortunately no joy. Initially the reps were clearly ignoring my post, choosing to respond to other, later posts.

After bumping it for a couple of weeks someone from Antec finally responds saying they'll find out what's going on. Unsurprisingly, a few days later I'm informed that infact they can't help, and are going to be out of the office for the forseeable future. No further contact.

The thread makes pretty sorry reading, it can be found here:-

http://forums.hexus.net/antec-care-hexu ... e-max.html

I've been buying Antec cases for my company and personal use for many years and have never had any reason to contact them before. A satisfied customer. Quite an eye opener to discover just how bad their service is.

I've seen plenty of posts from people who seem to have had a good experience, and I really can't explain how that can be since I haven't managed to get any response to any of the issues I raised. The process simply fell at the first hurdle and can't continue as Antec won't respond in any way.

Fortunately, I was aware of the unreliability of Antec PSU's so I don't use them. I was able to return all the cases via the retailer, since they were obviously faulty to anyone who isn't blind.

Didn't lose anything other than lots of time and effort. It probably cost the retailer more in shipping costs from repeatedly replacing them than the price of the case in the first place.

Sorry to hear. I have had success with their support, however that is the US based portion though. Perhaps you could try contacting them and see if they could wake up their UK cousins?

Dear AndyB,

I am truly sorry to hear of the experience you have had. At Antec we pride ourselves on our support and always try to resolve any outstanding customer issues as quickly as possible, so i am a little perplexed as to how your request for help has gone unanswered.

Please can you tell me of the fax number and email address that you were using to send your request over please so I can investigate the issue to make sure that nothing like this happens again.

In the meantime, the correct way to contact Antec for warranty replacements is to raise a ticket in our RMA system under support and then our RMA dept will contact you to arrange a suitable solution.

Please visit this area of our site and fill in the form so we can sort out your replacements ASAP. I am unable to post any links on this forum for some reason, but if you visit antec dot com and then make sure you are in the right region (top right corner), then click on Support in the top tabs. Once you have done that click on Global On-Line Support and fill in the form. Once you have done this someone from our RMA dept will contact you to arrange a replacement for you.

Once again, sorry for any inconvenience you have experienced, we do answer hundreds of technical queries every week so need to investigate why yours was not.

Regards.
Antec Rep.

Thank you AntecRepUK.

The RMA procedure seems to have changed somewhat, no more printing off a PDF, and then faxing it to Holland.

A much simpler procedure, except that I have to fill out one form per PSU - except I didnt, I filled out one, and then manually added the other 2 PSU's details in the notes.

Now I have made first contact (in the new way) I hope the procedure actually works now.

I will post back info on how good your service now is.

BTW, you cant post links in your first post, and also you want to put yourself down as a "Vendor".


Andy

Well here we are, another month goes by, and I am still trying to RMA 4 PSU's.

Antec simply sent me an e-mail saying that you need to get in contact with a supplier, I did, I am still trying to get these damned things sorted out.

But I have just bumped into another problem, I only know for sure where 1 of the 4 PSU's came from (Titan 550), and this poses a problem because I need to find a product that the PSU "might" have come from, and the PSU's are not dated, and Antec have failed to even tell me whether they are even likely to be under warranty.

So now, I have the daunting task of finding cases that I bought that are under warranty that contained those PSU's, then I have the problem that I bought the cases from several suppliers, and I suspect that the suppliers wont take back PSU's that were not sold by them.

This totally stinks, and I suspect that on this basis (and my previous very bad experience) of returning dead Antec PSU's I will stop buying Antec cases with PSU's. And as I have little need for Antec cases on their own Antec are going to loose out in a big way.

As it is a few months back (best part of a year now) Antec case prices went through the roof (I suspect due to a poor £/$ exchange rate) and we started buying Coolermaster Elite cases + OCZ Stealth Extreme PSU's because they became cheaper overall than the NSK 4480B.

The Coolermaster Elite case is not as nice as the 4480B, so I would prefer not to, but considering the amount of time taken, and the probable loss of one or more reoplacement PSU's, I conclude that antec is not going to get any more of my business uless the following changes.

1, A UK based contact for Antec.

2, A simple easy to use RMA procedure direct with Antec.

3, A UK address I can send my faulty Antec PSU's to.

Until then, goodbye Antec, its been a mostly nice experience that has covered most of a decade.


Andy

A month or two back I set up a support ticket about the silicone grommets pushing through on a brand new p180 mini - got a reply back, sent in pics to an email address. Nothing ever again.

Just buy somewhere you can return it if it comes out of the box defective.

I used to buy antec psu units, but have since gone corsair, still use antec cases though.

I am sure I can return the items, but its a pain in the arse to do. It was actually easier and less trouble to return "Hanns. G / Hanspree" monitors, and that was not at all easy - we now refuse to buy anything with their name on it.

As mentioned before, I am sure I can find the products that we bought, that contain the PSU's that are faulty, and I really dont care which supplier I send them back to, or whether the item did actually come from that order - like I would be able to tell anyway.

We have bought dozens of Antec cases over the years, and we have bought them from 5+ different suppliers. I have tracked down the order that the 550W PSU from the Titan came from (or at least thats an order that had a Titan 550 on it). That is now being processed, only 3 to go.

My new supplier of PSU's is looking likely to OCZ, the 400W Stealth Extreme, is a pretty nice PSU, its quiet, reliable (used about a dozen so far with no problems), has a 3-year warranty, and is cheaper than any other PSU of its spec and quality that I can find. I just suppose I will have to wait for one to die before I find out how much easier it is to get replaced than an Antec PSU - unless anyone reading this happens to know.

The thing that annoys me (second most) about this whole affair, is that a supposed quality PSU maker who brands their products with a 3-year warranty simply doesnt care about their customers once the product has been sold. That I can understand from an unbranded manufacturer who tries not to exist, but this is Antec, I would expect more from them.

They may as well just drop the 3-year warranty and sell the products for a fraction of the price and go underground.... more underground.


Andy

This is disturbing really. Antec has had one of the best customer services and that has been why I have now 4 computer's with Antec cases and or PSU's. This summer something really happened in antec. right before summer everything worked fine when my P18x's plastic support broke for now reason. I got replacement with-in week from the contact. 1½ month's later, the 2nd plastic gave off too (this case have had a lot weak plastic, broken 4 plastic pieces in regular use) and I contacted normal way before june... I am still waiting the response...

This is not good. Antec has built its reputation over the years and something like this can easily ruin its reputation. Luckily I still have excellent Customer's service with Kershaw's products (they make excellent cutlery).

Andyb, you're quite pissed off to even change your sig (and from reading, rightly so...).

As thejamppa puts it, something has changed. I was impressed by Antec's former services: sending a front panel when one was broken, without charging anything (I happened to notice that in more than one thread here).

Maybe it's because of the "crisis", did Antec had to let go some of their employees?
It is indeed not a good sign.

Well I thought it was just the UK (maybe the rest of Europe as well) that had bad Antec support, as there is a long line of praise from the American market.

The next thing I need to find aq good quality PSU with a decent RMA procedure (i.e. direct with the manufacturer, and in the UK), 3-year warranty, and costing about £30 - £35. I was using the OCZ Stealth Xtreme 400W which was £30 - £35, but seems to have vanished from most etailers in the UK.

I was buying the Elite cases + the OCZ Stealth Xtreme 400 for about £60 - £65 for both, which landed it in the region of the Antec NSK 4480, this looks like a decent deal though.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135101

I have seen this exact deal before, but I have skipped it because the OCZ PSU was better, and ended up costing the same.

This is looking bad for Antec, as I have heard good things about the RMA procedure of Coolermaster stuff (although I have never had to deal with them, so I have no personal experience). And its cheaper than the Antec by a few quid.

Glad to see that my new Signature is having such a good effect on the number of readers, and Antec are still ignoring their customers, but not for long, give it a year and they would have lost thousands of loyal long-time customers. Come on Antec, sort yourself out.


Andy

I wish corsair would make a more reasonable sized version of the 800d, or some company start making something to compete with antec. I'd GLADLY buy it.

I have an update on the 3 remaining PSU's.

I have tracked down 2 of them to an order from a company where they are under warranty. But like most companies their website wont even let me RMA the PSU's. They simply state contact Antec.

So here we go again with e-mails, arguments and frustration.

The final PSU is now out of warranty by one month, I am going to argue my case that the PSU was within warranty when we wanted to RMA it, and we have e-mails that we sent to Antec to that effect. But as we are not dealing with Antec (or rather, they are ignoring us) this could be a rather difficult process, as the supplier doesnt even want to deal with the RMA's for Antec goods, let alone Antec goods that are out of warranty currently.

Feel free to drop suggestions to "AntecRep", and "AntecRepUK" about how to improve their company's dire RMA procedure, it will be good for Antec, and this is good for their customers. They might even claim back some of the customers that they have lost as a direct result of this, so please help Antec by giving them suggestions.

There is one bit of good news that has come out of this, we have oficially decided that we are not going to use any more Antec products. We have just topped up our stock of Coolermaster cases, we have already got a few OCZ PSU's, and have added a Coolermaster PSU to test.


Andy

I've been trying to get any sort of response or solution to faults in their products for 6 months+.

Tickets are simply ignored or take weeks/months to come back and bear no resemblance to the original problem, so you have to follow them up, which again takes weeks or months if you get a response at all!

It would be a compliment to call their standard of customer support total crap, as it's way way worse than that. Essentially non-existant.

andyb, sorry to hear of your terrible experiences with Antec. I learnt a long time ago to avoid their PSUs. I'm almost kind of feeling the same about their cases now... it's a shame, really. They were once such a dependable product. Looks like times have changed.

It's not just Antec. It's a lot of companies across a whole range of industries worldwide. Put it down to economic rationalisation, globalisation, competition and financial pressures. Cost cutting to keep companies afloat and to keep investors happy, yet still charging a luxury price for a mediocre product.

If at all possible, maybe it's a good idea to find a good local shopfront retailer in your city whom you can deal with directly in person. There should be at least one retailer with a good reputation for customer service and policy for warranty and returns. Most online vendors don't want to know you once you've made the purchase. Yes, I know Consumer Law in Australia (and I assume that in the UK) gives us some rights in this regard. But having to fight for it over a considerable time tends to wear oneself out.

Keep us informed of how your alternative solutions pan out. Like you, I will most likely look elsewhere in future and probably save a few dollars at the same time.

I've posted some comments in the other recent Antec customer support thread. Looks like these aren't just isolated cases, particularly for users outside of North America.

Indeed I have, unfortunately it doesn't help if the entire product line has a fault in production.

*All* Fusion Remote Max's have faulty LCD's (I've been through 7 of them so far), so returning them for replacement simply gets you another faulty one.

Antec refuse to make any comment on it whatsoever. Soundgraph (the LCD manufacturer) claim that the fault is with Antec, not the LCD. Seems the LCD should have a filter but Antec neglected to include it.

Their warranty really isn't worth the paper it's printed on and the standard or lack of support would be hard to beat without getting up early to practice (at least, in the EU).

I will never be buying Antec again, a bunch of dishonest, lazy chancers.

That is true.


Looks like many of us have had a less than rewarding experience. I don't know if I can say right now that I'll never buy Antec again -- but it's not looking very positive, especially with their recent products being aimed at the Transformers "revisited" generation, with all its plastic fantastic appeal (or lack thereof).

Dear Andyb,

I have not seen these threads and so apologise that your RMA was not dealt with, I am really perplexed why it has not been dealt with and really need to look into your individual case. Looking in the RMA system there are no outstanding RMA's going back any length of time, meaning that your request is not here. However, i am unable to check properly as i do not know your name or details.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL SERVICE THAT ANTEC DELIVER. We do offer a very good customer service normally and there are a lot of very satisfied customers who have had to use this service.

I can see customers submitting support tickets one day and getting a resolution the very day or next day so clearly something is not right here.

Despite what some people are speculating here, nothing has changed at Antec and we have not let ANY staff go what so ever. In fact we are moving forward nicely with some very exciting new products just coming out and around the corner.

We also do have UK support, that's me (Dan Reeves), please give me a call Andyb on my mobile 07932 221710 so i can get your details and then I can check in our system and get you sorted out. This number is on from 9am till 7pm.

Thanks.
Dan.

Thanks for the reply Dan.

As I have pointed out within my posts, I have a serious problem with any "High Quality" computer part manufacturer that does not deal directly with their customers.

To give you a couple of examples:

Kingston RAM: I deal (very rarely) with them, I contact them, they ask some questions, I send my faulty part to them, they send me back a replacement part.

Samsung monitors: I phone them up, give them a description of the fault, they then ask me when is convenient for them to drop off a replacement and collect the faulty product.

Samsung Hard Drives: I deal directly with a company called "Rexo" (who Samsung have appointed to do their returns and fix faults), I log into their website, I type in the serial and model numbers and a fault, I send it to them, they send me a replacement (very quickly).

Brother Printers: The same as Samsung Monitors.

The experience of dealing with Antec is on par with my experience of dealing with "Hanspree", a pretty crappy monitor manufacturer (that we vow to never use again). We contacted them many times, until they eventually got back to us, they then swapped out (at no cost to me) the monitor. The refurbished monitor they replaced the faulty one with did not have the internal speakers wired up, they again swapped it out, this one worked. It took a month in total. Samsung took 2-3 days and got it right first time - I would reccomend buing a Samsung monitor to anyone BTW, and this level of service help.

The list goes on and on. Companies who really care about their customers once they have their money deal directly with the customer from start to finish, they dont ask the customer to contact the company they bought it from.

I would strongly suggest that Antec buys a small warehouse in the UK, staffs it, and starts dealing with UK customers directly (and not just by phone and e-mail, the whole replacement procedure. This entire problem would have been sorted out months ago if Antec were already doing that. Even if you did what Samsung have done with their hard drives, and handed it out to another company that does that for you (so long as the service level and ease is like that of Rexo, you will find that your customers are satisfied).

I am sure that many small businesses like mine, buy products from many suppliers, keeping track of those where those products came from can be time consuming and costly. When in reality all everyone else wants to know is the model number, the serial code and the fault.

On a slightly different note, I have some faulty Crucial RAM, I will post here my experiences with getting that replaced.


Andy

It's actually much much worse than that, having now read a few reviews of other Antec products it appears that this issue is present in *all* Veris components that contain this LCD.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews ... mier/2.htm

The promotional pictures for this device on Antecs page clearly show this LCD as a white foreground on black background, but you will see from the link that infact they're cyan on pink. (exactly like all the Fusion cases I have recieved).

*All* Veris components that include the Soundgraph LCD are faulty.

How on earth did these products make it to retail? Is everyone at Antec visually impaired?

Despite AntecRepUK's post above, there is clearly something very very wrong at Antec.

Hi, I'm a little distressed to read that Antec's support in UK isn't what it might be. It makes me wonder about the value of the 5 year warranty on my Signature 650 PSU. This is not a good thing as the PSU is now the loudest component in my PC and if the warranty isn't worth that much then a fan swap is rather tempting.
Then again I did vow with this expensive PSU I would not mod it.
But I got a good deal on it, was £80 so not that much. I don't know now
On a related note about 3years ago I bought some very expensive G.Skill RAM, (with lifetime warranty) ~£200 for 2GB and at some point one of the sticks flat out failed and I got them replaced through the etailor (overclockers.co.uk) with no problem. One of the sticks has recently failed again and this time had to deal with G.Skill directly. Got an RMA fairly quickly (with 2nd email to them) and had to post back to Taiwan! Only cost few ponds as memory is light. Heard nothing until replacement chips arrived about 10 days later, so was fine but not reassuring.
Seb

If it fails within the initial year you should be going to the company you bought it from. If they say contact Antec and Antec don't help, complain to the supplier. If the supplier still brushes it off as being an issue you should be contacting Antec about, threaten to take the supplier to trading standards. In the UK, it is the supplier who is legally obliged to honour the first year of any warranty as it is with them that you have had a contract for the sale of goods or services, not Antec.

The fact that Antec's customer support is crap should not be your problem within the first year, it is legally the problem for the supplier to deal with. They should be sitting on a pile of broken PSUs banging on at Antec, not you.

Europeans be aware - Samsung only wants to deal with OEMs and Dealers on mainland Europe.

I dealt with Samsung in Amsterdam and had 2 drives replaced - when a 3rd later failed I was sent a snotty email saying that they don't deal with end users.

Bad policy move Samsung as it's Seagate for me from now on.

PS I had 5 bad Samsung drives out of 12 purchased.

Yup, run to the land of faulty firmware and unreliable drives, good plan.

And when they offer a refund because all the cases in their stock suffer the same problem, as does every one ever manufactured, you end up with no case.



Unfortunately they have no choice but to return to Antec, who appear to not give a crap about end users.

Getting a refund for faulty gear is not the issue, all the retailers have been happy to refund since they can't source a non faulty case.

The issue is that if you want that fault fixed because in principle, you like the case, you can't!

so did the antec power supply issues get resolved back in november, when you posted that? there have been no follow-up posts to this thread.

Better still, then you've got money to buy a product that's well designed rather than having a stream of failures.

Indeed, I won't be touching Antec products again, not even with yours

A shame though, "well designed" and HTPC cases appears to be mutually exclusive.

Wish I had seen about the Fusion Remote Max case LCD... I just purchased it online after looking at the photos on Antec's website and a review at a few different places (none of which mentioned anything about the LCD, let alone problems with it).

That said, Soundgraph at least posted some info. Looks like it was meant to be used with a half mirror (i.e. one way mirror) glass/acrylic faceplate and possibly a color filter to adjust the output spectrum. While it is totally unbelievable the threads over on Soundgraph and Hexus about this and that Antec should have said something by now, it shouldn't be a hard fix now that we know what the issue really is. Going to your local glass/plastic supplier and buying some scrap pieces should be able to fix the issue.

Heck there are places online which sell samples which might be able to be cut to fit for just a few dollars...

Just a follow-up to let everyone know. At least for my Antec Fusion Remote Max, the LCD seems to be fine. I am in the USA so I am not sure how this affects world-wide. The case I got has the black/white LCD, and as such, does not suffer the blue/pink box issue that many are reporting.

The backlight is still way to bright with clear acrylic, and really should get toned down, possibly with some tinting film or a voltage mod. It also suffers the same bone-headed design as to keep the full screen on even when the PC is powered off (you have to unplug the power supply or flip a power supply on/off switch to get the screen to turn off when shutdown).

Aside from that, it seems to be working as advertised. My case was Quality Control checked in 9-2009. Looks like Antec USA seems to have a least one QC guy with eyes and made sure they used something that was human readable. I haven't fooled with the software yet to see if it can tame down the backlight.