In my time investigating Gigabyte / Aorus’ tech support, I received one correct answer and one wrong answer out of six attempts to reach out to Gigabyte’s support team. What happened to the other four attempts? I was ghosted.
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Gigabyte / Aorus tech support
Every year, we ask several support questions to vendors and one of those is a control question. For Gigabyte / Aorus, the two brand-specific questions I asked were, “How do I change the Azure AI settings?” and “How do I change the performance on my laptop?” The control question is simply, “How do I change the touchpad sensitivity?”
Web and social support
Through this website, you should be able to easily find the model of your laptop as well as a list of frequently asked questions associated with it. You’ll also find any drivers or software that your laptop should come with via the site. However, if you’re searching for specific answers, you might have a hard time. Gigabyte / Aorus doesn’t have a live chat, so I had to submit my question via a website prompt, which forced me to log in. Before you submit a question, you must choose a question category, a product category and a model name. Then it asks you for the CPU model, memory size and operating system. After all of that, it lets you ask a question, but before it does, it warns you that it’ll take three to seven business days for you to get a response. I asked, “How do I change the Azure AI setting?” They responded with the correct answer, albeit 14 days later. However, this is no optimal choice to get in touch with Gigabyte / Aorus. You won’t find any other contact info in the support section of the website, but you can find info in a separate section labeled “Contact Us.” There, you’ll find the phone number (626-854-9338) as well as links to their Facebook and Twitter. Oddly enough, the Aorus Facebook account and the Gigabyte Twitter account are the only ones with open DMs, while their counterparts are closed. I tried Twitter first, and asked, “How do I change the performance on my laptop?” at 12:29 PM on a Wednesday. I am still waiting for a response. I moved over to Facebook next, and asked, “How do I change the touchpad sensitivity?” at 2:10 p.m. ET on a Wednesday. There was an automatic message stating that they’d get back to me within one business day. Fortunately, I received a response the same day at 8:37 p.m. with clear instructions on how to do it correctly.
Phone support
If you’d rather have a direct conversation over the phone, you can hit up Gigabyte / Aorus’ customer service line at 626-854-9338, which has call centers located in California, USA and operates 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. ET on Monday through Friday. My first call was at 1:39 p.m. EST, which took a while to connect, but I was warned that call times would be longer due to COVID-19 safety rules. However, after about seven minutes or so while waiting, I was offered to either leave a message or be placed in a call queue so they could call me back when my turn came up; it’s a nice option. I decided to stay on the call to see how long it would take. It took 47 minutes to get someone on the phone. I finally got to ask, “how do I change the touchpad sensitivity?” It took 4 minutes of the representative jumping me through hoops in the Gigabyte Control Center before they eventually said they didn’t know how to help. Then they explained that there’s another laptop expert not currently available, but they forwarded me to the expert and let me leave a voicemail, which I did. I am still waiting to hear back from this person. My second call was at 11:35 a.m. the next day, which is right when the call center opens; I was on hold for 1 hour and 27 minutes before I decided to hang up. No one answered the phone, and there was no way a queue of people that long formed right after they opened. My third and final call took place at 5:00 p.m. EST, and guess what happened? I was on hold for 1 hour and 25 minutes once again without a representative in sight before I decided to hang up. I’ve never experienced anything like this in my time doing our Tech Support Showdown reports.
Warranty
The Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED comes with the same one-year limited warranty that all Gigabyte / Aorus laptops come with. Since Gigabyte doesn’t have an onboard app connected to your laptop’s warranty and information, you’ll have to provide proof of purchase when you register your product via the product registration website. If you don’t provide a receipt, then Gigabyte / Aorus reserves the right not to provide any service to you. As far as what’s included in the warranty, your laptop and its AC adapter are covered for one-year from the date of purchase (not arrival). There’s also a one-year limited warranty on the battery shipped with the laptop from the date of purchase as well. Gigabyte / Aorus does not offer accidental damage protection. If you’re looking to get your product serviced, you have to pay to ship the product for warranty service and Gigabyte / Aorus will pay to ship it back to you, but only if it’s still under warranty. If you upgrade your RAM and storage, it won’t void the warranty on the laptop, but Gigabyte will only offer warranty services for stock components originally shipped with the unit. As far as warranty services go, this is frustrating. First of all, there’s no app to assist you with your warranty on the machine, so if for some reason you lose the receipt, you’re out of luck. Secondly, paying for shipping is a tough ask in 2022. If you’re paying for a $1,000 to $3,000 product, the least the company can do when you have issues is refund you the money for shipping.
Bottom line
If you own a Gigabyte or Aorus laptop, you’re better off going anywhere else for help with your tech support issues. The only reliable response I got from a Gigabyte / Aorus agent was through Facebook, but that still took over 6 hours. I don’t know what is going on with Gigabyte / Aorus’ support team, but whatever is happening, it’s not working. Gigabyte / Aorus arguably has the worst tech support we’ve seen in a while, and as good as its laptops can be, they may not be worth buying if you’re not going to receive any help should something go wrong.
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