Because the Antitrust Authority has fined Asus
What emerges from the Antitrust resolution on Asus. Antonino Neri's article
The Antitrust Authority has imposed a fine of 1,500,000 euros on Asus for unfair commercial behavior.
In essence, the Taiwanese electronics giant – which produces PCs, notebooks, video cards, smartphones, computer accessories and more – resorted to illicit conduct with consumers who brought products still under warranty for assistance. Among the most recurrent practices used by Asus there were up to 15 days for a repair, up to three repair attempts before arriving at the replacement of the original defective product and unjustified charges against customers.
ASUS'S ILLEGAL CONDUCT
In the resolution of the Agcm contained in the bulletin n. 23 of 07/06/2021 it states that "the Authority has ascertained that the Italian company ASUSTeK Italy Srl and the Dutch companies ASUS Europe BV and ASUS Holland BV have committed the following illegal conduct: 1) inadequate information on the legal guarantee and conventional; 2) obstacles to the recognition of the guarantee or imposition of an excessive wait for the performance of the same, through the non-recognition of the guarantee […], the systematic recourse to repair, through repeated interventions that led to excessively long times, in place of replacement or reimbursement and failure to reimburse the purchase price of the product deemed unrepairable within a reasonable time; 3) charging of unjustified expenses to consumers for the provision of the legal guarantee through the request for payment of a lump sum against the rejected estimate ".
PREVIOUS OF 2019
The Antitrust Authority had already issued a resolution in 2019 in which it ascertained that Asus had carried out the same illegal conduct regarding the guarantee of its products.
The resolution states that "Asus quantified a total of between 100,000 and 200,000 repair authorizations for each of the years from 2015 to 2018".
The sanction was therefore taken because, in May 2021, it was ascertained "the continuation of the illicit conduct put in place by Asus, consisting in the adoption of obstructive and dilatory behaviors to delay in particular the replacement (Swap) of the products sent in assistance, expanding the timing through the use of repeated attempts to repair the product under warranty, in relation to the management of the problem of multiple returns, ie the return to assistance of the same product following such ineffective interventions to restore functionality ".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/perche-lantitrust-ha-multato-asus/ on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 06:04:49 +0000.