Asus Tech Support - does everybody else have bad experiences?

Last weekend, I tried to get on to the Asus tech support section of their
website. For part of the weekend, the forums were down. I tried sending in
a "Technical Inquiry" and from Saturday, Feb 3rd to Friday, Feb 9th, the
Technical Inquiry function was not working; I got an error message "Internal
Server Error - please try again later". On Thurs, Feb 8th, I did find a
part of their site that had the equivalent of an "Instant Messenger" service
and sent my inquiry through that channel, but never heard back. On Fri, Feb
9th, the Technical Inquiry service was apparently fixed and my message
finally was accepted by the system with a promise to reply to me within 48
hours.

So, it took me from Saturday the 3rd to Friday the 9th to merely submit the
Technical Inquiry. In the meantime, I found out that they had a "Live
Support" service at http://livesupport.asus.com/
On Thurs at 2:30pm CST, this was operational. Since I was at work, I
decided to wait until I got home to try and use this service; after all, the
posted hours are 5:30am to9:00pm PST. I got home at 4:30pm and went to the
site only to see the icon reading "Offline" some 7 hours early. It never
showed online at any time on Friday nor over this weekend. But finally,
today I came back from running errands to find a reply to my Technical
Inquiry, aleviating my need for the "Live Support" that Asus so generously
provides.

How useful was the technical support reply? Folks, even Microsoft is not
this bad. I clearly explained that I have assembled a brand-new computer
and I have not yet installed the OS which, when I do install it, will be
Vista. I explained that I have not gotten that far yet, that I am having a
problem with the BIOS not providing me with an option to enable BOOTROM when
I select the "Configure Serial-ATA as" option and choose "RAID". I
explained that the Asus User Guide says that when I choose the RAID option
from the "Configure Serial-ATA as" section, at this point there will be an
option to enable or disable the BOOTROM, but for some reason that option
never appears. It is supposed to appear, but it does not. So check out
their reply to me, which was as follows:

"Due to the recent release of Microsoft Vista we at this time may not
have all driver's available for all our Motherboard's. Check
http://support.asus.com/download for latest driver's. If they are not
available you may contact Microsoft or the chipset manufacture to see if
they have one available yet."

Apparently, this technician thinks that since I have the *intention* to
install Vista, that fact alone keeps the computer from properly displaying
information in the BIOS. This computer, which does not have an Operating
System yet installed, can apparently read my thoughts and, knowing that I
recently purchased Vista, it has decided that it will not allow the BIOS to
show me the BOOTROM option until I load some, as yet unspecified, Vista
drivers.

It would be bad enough if the Asus tech had simply misread my inquiry and
did not realize that the OS was NOT YET installed and had pointed me to
specific drivers that would have been a fix for someone with a new Vista
installation. But he did not even go that far. He just sees that I have
Vista, that SOMETHING is not working, and sends me off with a vague
instruction to download some drivers. Which drivers I should download he
does not say. Of course Vista drivers are not the fix for my PC since I DO
NOT HAVE VISTA INSTALLED but merely INTEND to install it ONCE I CAN SET UP
THE RAID ARRAY!!! AARRRRGGGHHH!!!

Is this typical of the support from Asus? Should I give up on them and
simply try other fixes without waiting for an intelligilbe reply from their
tech support? What are your experiences?
Alan

"The poster formerly known as Colleyville Alan" <nospam@nospam.net> wrote in
message news:45cfa087$0$24525$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
<snip!>

> Is this typical of the support from Asus?

YES

"John A" <e455gkf@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:45d02c16$0$8714$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
>
> "The poster formerly known as Colleyville Alan" <nospam@nospam.net> wrote
in
> message news:45cfa087$0$24525$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> <snip!>
>
> > Is this typical of the support from Asus?
>
> YES
>
>
Let's just say the customer opinions I've seen in many forums don't exactly
paint a rosy picture of their customer support,it seems the more successful
they get,the more complaints I hear.

"Gojira" <none@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:AaaAh.3225$5M1.1401@trndny01...
>
> "John A" <e455gkf@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:45d02c16$0$8714$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
>>
>> "The poster formerly known as Colleyville Alan" <nospam@nospam.net> wrote
> in
>> message news:45cfa087$0$24525$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>> <snip!>
>>
>> > Is this typical of the support from Asus?
>>
>> YES
>>
>>
> Let's just say the customer opinions I've seen in many forums don't
> exactly
> paint a rosy picture of their customer support,it seems the more
> successful
> they get,the more complaints I hear.
>
>
Follow-up: Asus replied when I told them that they misread my email and
that the BOOTROM option not showing up in the BIOS was my problem. The tech
told me that the system would boot even without this option appearing and
being enabled and that I should go ahead and install the OS.

Even though previously I was not able to enter the Intel Storage Matrix
Utility, I tried again and this time it worked. Perhaps the previous times
I had tried I hit <Ctrl+I> too early or too late. At any rate, this time I
got into the utility, set up a RAID 5 array and installed the OS and Windows
Office 2007. Everything works fine now, but Asus could have saved me a week
by putting in clearer information in the User Guide or having a website that
works.