New Grey screen on Vive Pro

[Nejtun]

Hey all , I know people have had issues before but I would like to point out my own situation and the progress so far so perhaps it can be resolved. 

First my specs

Vive Pro bought at release in April. 

I7 6700k 

16 gig DDR4 ram at 2666mhz

Nvidia Titan X Pascal with latest drivers 

All VR related things on Samsung 500 gig SSD

 

So, at the beginning of October my Vive pro Sudeenly went to grey screens, this happened on every game I played after any time between 5 minutes to around 30 minutes. Depending on the game I was playing , some of them crashed but most of them just continued running, even the desktop mirror still had the game fully playing but just grey screens in the HMD. The steam vr status window told me the headset was no longer tracking, please make sure your HMD can see  a base station. 

 

My basestations have been in the same location mounted on the wall since the original vive (which still works perfectly)  so no issues there. I went direct to online chat to try to get a solution and followed the agents instructions so we could try to fix the issue. we checked drivers, reinstalled steamVR , made sure the usb ports were disconnected and re instated from steamVR with no joy. 

 

For the record, the room I am in is painted white, and empty of furniture apart from my sim chassis and a computer desk, my standing  play area is around 2m by 2.5 m  the window and doors are covered with blackout curtains so noi daylight can come in unless I open them. 

 

Here is where it got difficult, after a week or so of each agent telling me they would get back to me either the same day or the next day ( they never did I had to always initiate a new help request) I eventually managed to get permission to send my Vive Pro off to the repair centre. I was told it can take up to 5 (business) days to get the repiars done after the repair centre received the hardware, as we didn't know what part was causing the problem I sent off all the parts , so HMD, Link box, all the cables. I put it all in the original packaging as it was delivered as that is pretty sturdy abd sent it off to Romania.

 

1 full week passed after the package arrived at the repair centre and apart from the confirmation I got from UPS,  I had heard nothing about progress so I contacted the online help again at Vive. 

I was told that they hadn't heard anything yet but would contact the repair centre for an update and get back to me (yes I had heard this promise before) when I was not contacted the next week as promised I again went to the online help and they said that they had not heard from the repair centre and would escalate my ticket and get back to me the next day. Again nothing. 

 

Each time I got in touch, I was promised a call back either the same day or the next day to let me know the progress of my vive pro, eventually I got the number of the contact centre and phoned to get some progress.  This process went back and forth a few times and eventually someone managed to get the repair centre to get in touch. 

 

I got an email from the repair centre which was extremely vague, but the gist of it was that *random part number*  (aparantly  a piece of cracked housing) needed to be replaced because of misuse by the customer. 

Now as far as I am concerned there was no physical damage to my Vive pro before I sent it off and the phoitos they eventually sent to me showed nothing that I coudl even see. 

The most frustrating part about this was I was told I could either pay for the labour charge for the replacement , the replacement part and the cost for it to be returned  OR I could just pay for the item to be returned without the part being replaced. 

 

When I Enquired about this with the customer service people, they said they had no control over the repair centre and their charges.  

As my unit and hardware were being held hostage I agreed to pay as I wanted my HMD back by now as I hadn't seen it for a month. Even more problems arose, When I asked the repair centre how I was supposed to pay them , they only gave me the option of a bank transfer so on top of the 63 Euros for this phantom repair, I also had to pay my bank £25 to transfer money to an bank in Romania!

 

5 Days later the UPS courier arrives,  " at least I have my vive pro back"  but no, too easy,  the HMD and 3 in 1 cable were in the box but the link box power supply and usb cable were no where to be seen the vive was in two pieces and the cable detacthed, perhaps it was too much effort to reassemble it?. I did get an email from support showing me how to reassemble the HMD . This would be an interesting situation if I sent my car to be worked on by the same people and they sent it to me back in pieces with instructions on how to rebuild it.

 

I get back in touch with the online help and they tell me they would escalate my ticket and ask me why I sent those parts. 

 

1, if we don't know which part is at fault then how do we choose which parts to send ? 

2, we agreed to send all the parts ( remember I used the original packaging so it was all in one neat package ) to prevent the problems of not knowing which part was sent! 

Again lots of promised re calls but nothing further, two days later I recieve the rest of my hardware which frankly looked as if it were never out of the box i sent it in. 

 

I finally get to plug my Vive Pro back in after 5 weeks of not being able to use it, Just to be sure I reinstall  steamVR , reset the USBs and so on to make sure there are no conflicts. Great ! It works....... for 20 minutes... Back to the grey screens and no tracking message ( my orginal vive is of course still running perfectly )

 

I call the customer service again on Thursday the 15th of november and I am told once again that my ticket will be escalted and I can send my Vive to the repair centre. I was told that the agent I spoke to would handle this personally and if he couldn't get back to me on thursday then he would call me on Friday without fail. 

 

I don't know if i dare send my HMD off again to Romania for them to not only not fix it or clearly even test it but will they come up woth something else that "the customer broke through misuse" even though it has had no more than 30 minutes use since the last time? will my unit be once again held hostage until I pay them for doing nothing at all, not even diagnosing the problem it came to them with?

 

When I asked if HTC would simply replace the HMD as it is still under warranty I was told that they would not consider replacing my unit until it has been to the repair centre 3 times !!!!  without them being able to fix it. Are they hoping they can drag this out so long the warranty will expire by April 2019? 

 

Now , don't get me wrong at all about the customer service, I belive they tried their very best to get my issue resolved through both chat and on the phone but it seems their hands are tied with what they can do regarding the service centre itself which have done nothing except a phantom repair, a false charge , loss or misplacement of customers hardware and a complete failure to fix or even diagnose the problem the hardware was sent to them for. 

 Incidently, nobody got back to me from the customer service centre as promised (again) 

If I could get the Samsung Odyysey plus here int he UK, I would take my chances there but unfortuantly it is only released stateside  and the Vive Pro is still the best VR hardware available right now. Its an excellent piece of kit, just a shame mine isn't working. 

 

After all this messing about I would like HTC to simply replace my malfcuntioning Vive Pro, no more "sending off " , no more shoody repair centre work. Just replace it, my money was taken efficiently enough when I pre ordered. 

 

My Vive Pro is once again packed up in its box waiting for customer service to "get back to me" . 

 

Unhappy customer.