Vive Pro 2 faulty for 5 months. RMA'd it 3 times to HTC Romania

[AmazingTechVR]

TLDR: 5 months to get a working VR headset that I paid £659 for. After 3 RMA's, my "new" replacement Vive Pro 2, it seems like a refurb, but at least it works.

 

I had the OG Vive since release April 2016. Added a deluxe audio strap, HTC wireless, then upgraded to Valve Index controllers. After a few years, starting to look at my next upgrade, definitely something with much better resolution. So I have invested in HTC over the years and a good understanding about VR, as I follow all of it before VR was even released. I like to keep updated with Tech.

Vive Pro 2 was announced and I pre-ordered just the HMD, as I had everything else for it. 12th May 2021 I placed the order and I received it on 4th June 2021, just 1 day after release. Suprisingly I got it very quickly!

I had numerous issues with it within the 24 hours of using it. Initially I thought it worked, but then the problems started with noticing audio buzzing in both headphones, green/red vertical lines, display glitches etc.

After a month of testing and putting up with it, then doing all the required steps from HTC support, I finally decided to send it in. I didn't want to, but I knew this wasn't working properly at all. This was going to be my 1st time ever having to RMA an item and I've had a lot of tech over many years. I heard horror stories about HTC support, so I went in hoping not to experience it first-hand.

• 1st RMA = Sent from UK on 1st September to HTC Romania it was received by them on 3rd September via UPS. Pretty damn quick.

9th September - I received it back. Not even taking 1 week! I thought DAMN that repair was crazy fast, as I heard people stating it taking a month or longer. When I unpacked it and plugged it in, the Vive Pro 2 was worse and not working at all. There was no display at all. I did further tests as advised by HTC support. It left HTC Romania repairs without actually being checked properly.

• 2nd RMA = Sent from UK on 15th September to HTC Romania repairs and arrived on 20th September.

28th September I received it back from HTC Romania repairs, stating they confirmed error 200 it was a connection issue with the display. Nearly all issues were fixed! It felt and sounded much better experience when using it. I was 10 minutes into the VR session and the damn black screen appeared again (for 1 second). The audio was fixed, the displays were fixed (no glitches), it almost felt a fully working VR headset. I checked everything, but now the pass-through cameras didn't work. Once again, not everything was checked by HTC Romania. I could put up with the 1 second black screen 10 minutes into every VR session, but I paid for a fully working device.

• 3rd RMA = Sent from UK on 15th October and arrived at HTC Romania repairs on 20th October.

Agreed with HTC before sending this back a 3rd time, this time it needs to be replaced. I have been over a month without a VR headset, due to the Vive Pro 2 being sent back and forth from UK to HTC Romania. So I was promised a brand new HTC Vive Pro 2. They couldn't just send a replacement, even though they can see that UPS collected my Vive Pro 2 and it was on the way, I had to wait until it got there, tested and then ship out the replacement.

• Received "new" replacement Vive Pro 2 on 29th October

In 1 more week and this would have been FIVE months since initally getting my VR headset on release day. I will admit I did delay sending the Vive Pro 2 for the 1st RMA, but I heard horror stories and never had to RMA a product before. I was weighing up my options about how much of a problem all of these issues were or just putting up with all the issues.

This "new" Vive Pro 2 that I was promised, it came from HTC Romania. I asked before sending this back, will this be a brand new Vive Pro 2? I was told yes from HTC Support. I opened the box, it was my original cardboard box, not a brand new commercial box. Inside was the Vive Pro 2 with cables and link box, all in bubble wrap. Before taking it out of the box, I looked at the foam and facepad foam, there was some hair and dirt. This is not a new device.

I took it out of the box, connected it to my PC... I got beyond 10 minutes and no black screen (great so far). I did notice the left screen flickered a couple of times, very briefly. I continued testing it over the weekend. No black screen at all, not a single time! AMAZING! What does this confirm? There are some Vive Pro 2 devices out there with this black screen issue. I spent 5 damn months and returned the Vive Pro 2 back 3 times, whilst all along it was a faulty device.

In this "new" Vive Pro 2, I had an instance where the screen was flickering white noise/static, but it only happened once and a restart fixed it. It started off with a very quick small flicker, then another, gradually small lines became some boxes of noise/static, then larger and more frequent. I should have recorded it, was funky as hell. Only had it the one time.

There is a dead pixel in the right display, very bottom left corner. It's a light green tiny pixel. Outside of my normal view and I sometimes lose it, as these displays being 5K, you can imagine 1 little pixel isn't a dealbreaker, but I did spot it whilst looking down towards my nose with my right eye.

Auto brightness seems funky too, if I look at a certain part of my image in VR, the brightness goes up and down. I've disabled auto brightness now though.

The experience...

After about 40 emails, many posts on reddit and HTC Forums lasting months, doing at least 10 SteamVR and Vive Console reports submitting them to HTC support. Tried everything possible to fix this. After nearly 5 months, the new Vive Pro 2 is working perfectly. I had a faulty device that went back 3 times.

The communication was good with HTC support, sometimes having to wait a day or two due to timezone differences, but I was kept updated with things, so thank you for that. However, nobody should have to go through this amount of troubleshooting. I do this as a daily job, but the amount of testing was enough to become frustrating. I can only imagine not so tech-savvy people just wanting a working VR headset, but instead having to do all these tests.

I have quite a few years technical knowledge from providing technical support in my career. I spent not hours, but many days testing everything possible on top of all the requests HTC support were giving me, sometimes repeating over and over the same tests.

It was obvious many people were having issues, YouTubers, reddit, HTC forums started to report similar issues I was experiencing. Instead of just replacing, we have to go the route of multiple repair attempts. All of these repairs, shipping costs (both ways) support staff costs, it just reduces the profit from each sale. I honestly believe HTC made a loss on my VR headset after all of this.

This isn't a massive rant, it's to point out the experience people warned me about and how long it took. Also for HTC to understand how much they lose when items are not properly Quality Controlled, it costs HTC much more with all of the above.

This is a 5K VR headset, so I was willing to keep it and then in the future, maybe 4 or 5 years, if I come to upgrade to a better VR headset... it doesn't look like I will be spending anymore with HTC after this experience, sorry.

Here is the thread to HTC Forums to show how much troubleshooting was done over 5 months (with Photos and screenshots)...

 

 

[GAMEDRIX]

It's the most absurd company I've ever dealt with, but no worries atleast you know you're not the only one in this tiring situation 

[cees]

So mine is going back again to romania..

I have problems with the displays too,like terrible scanlines etc

After my first RMA i did get the unit back but there was a message inside: no problem found....

I thought how is this posible???

So yesterday its going back again for rma,so lets see how it goes again!

I have a bad feeling about this...

[GAMEDRIX]

On 11/2/2021 at 9:42 AM, cees said:

So mine is going back again to romania..

I have problems with the displays too,like terrible scanlines etc

After my first RMA i did get the unit back but there was a message inside: no problem found....

I thought how is this posible???

So yesterday its going back again for rma,so lets see how it goes again!

I have a bad feeling about this...

You shouldn't have done it, for everyone the vertical scan lines remains in the end. It's within specs. They also don't have the competence and knowledge, deep connection with consumers as they don't know what the heck is pixel inversion so there's no way for them to fix something that they can't aknowledge. Atleast now I know.

Also there's a chance you gonna get your headset broken from the CTDI repair team in Romania as they don't test the headset and are just replacing the parts blindly. (happened to me and amazing vr tech and others) 

I'm really disappointed by HTC, I wanted to give them a chance several times but they clearly show that their goal is trying to scam consumers more than anything, it's purely disgusting.

I hope that with all their failings they are going to step up and do good in the future.

Good luck tho.

Edited November 4, 2021 by GAMEDRIX