So here's my experience with GentechPC (and MSI customer service). All in all I have to say that it's not satisfactory. Be ready for a long story, you've been warned :P
I will start with the negative(s) so as not to end with an entirely bitter note :)
First, some background on why I leaned towards gentech over other resellers. If you check resellerratings.com you'll see a very good score, 10 out of 10. Looking back there are a couple odd things, first, the latest review was written in July 2014 and it was about a computer bought way back in 2011. Two, the score is too good to be true compared to Xotic's resellerratings page, which shows a more balanced feedbacks as there are quite a few negative reviews. The only negative review of gentech I could find was written in poor English on NBR (NoteBookReview forum) and there are holes in both the guy's story and gentech's replies. However, I can now relate to that guy much better (although I still don't entirely agree with him).
So based on those reviews and someone on notebookreview.com saying it's a toss up between gentech and mythlogic (more about this below) I chose to buy a $2127.99 GS60 4K from Gentech and also because Xotic told me that they'd take roughly 10 business days to ship it and one other reason, I wanted to have a customization done on the laptop and no normal reseller (best buy, newegg) can do this.
Let's start with the smallest minus point, since I ordered a thermal repasting and an extra SSD, they had to open the back panel of the laptop. However, it wasn't put back properly, the left back portion wasn't snapped in tight, it's a minor thing, I just had to push it in.
Now to the BIG letdown, my unit came defective. One hour into playing with it (I was just watching twitch), it shutdown automatically and won't boot up when I pressed the power button, later that night it happened again when I was just listening to spotify. It was really disappointing since on their website gentech claims to perform a 72 hour test for units they ship. On top of that they didn't set the boot order correctly after installing the second SSD for RAID, during boot the BIOS will try to do a network boot first, resulting in an error message and then boots from the SSD RAID, it's a small thing but still a disappointing negligence on their part.
Next, a negative about their service, lack of communication, especially during the RMA process. I didn't receive any confirmation that they received my laptop (compared to newegg that sent me an email the day my item was received by them). The next day I called and was told to call back in 2-3 days. So after 3 days I sent an email and was told to call them. The next day I called and Ken (I believe he's the owner of gentech) told me that he couldn't replicate the problem, to be honest, I suddenly felt sick.
I was so glad that I took a video of my laptop shutting down by itself while running prime95 (I ran prime95 to consume the battery quickly as I wasn't sure when it was going to shutdown). After sending the video to him, I called again the next day and good news, he was able to replicate the problem.
The second and very disappointing negative, lack of initiative. I received my laptop on Dec 24, 2014, a Wednesday. I emailed them about the problem on Friday Dec 26. I called them on Monday Dec 29 and Ken told me to do an EC reset, I did, and it didn't help. So on Tuesday I called again. Ken said that he'd try to get msi to send me a new battery, I was OK with that but not thrilled since GS60 is an ultra thin laptop with an internal battery, opening the back panel is quite an adventure. Ken assured me that it would be simple enough to open the back panel. I obliged. On Wed I was told that msi would want me to RMA my laptop. I replied that I'd prefer that they send me a new battery as I don't want to be without my laptop for more than 2 weeks (shipping alone takes 3 business days each way). So Ken told me he'd talk to msi again. The following Monday Ken told me that msi still wanted me to send in my laptop, again I gave the same reply.
In the meantime I decided to call msi directly, turned out that they're not of much help either. After contacting msi multiple times I finally got a hold of a very helpful supervisor. He suggested that since it's a brand new laptop, the most sensible thing to do is to ask gentech to replace it with a new unit and he convinced me on the risks of replacing the battery by myself. The biggest risk is if it turns out to NOT be a battery problem and he told me that opening the back panel is tricky for a novice. So I decided to ask gentech for a new unit. And interestingly gentech was finally able to get msi to do a cross RMA to send me a new battery. However, I was convinced to get a new replacement instead. When I told Ken about my change of mind he persuaded me not to ask for a new unit reminding me that it'd take significantly longer compared to just getting a new battery (since my unit has a customization, an extra SSD).
However I insisted to get a new unit without the extra SSD, i.e., a stock configuration and he agreed (he also agreed to refund me the difference). He quickly sent me a shipping label, I have to give credits to him for this particular fast response.
This is what I meant by lack of initiative. I felt that gentech only acted as a passive middle man between msi and me. They didn't make enough effort to resolve the issue on their own rather, they just threw it back to msi. As someone on NBR noted, the value of a reseller is when something bad happens and whether they stand behind their services. They should have offered me a replacement/refund since it's a very expensive laptop that came DOA. On the contrary, I was persuaded not to ask for a new unit and had to go back and forth many times.
Back to the RMA. You'd think that since he could replicate the problem I'm home and hose, well, not really. He gave me some sort of nonsensical explanation as to why my laptop shutdown by itself. He said that I should've run the CPU at full load (as that is what prime95 does) as the battery wouldn't be able to handle it. It is quite ridiculous, the CPU is designed to run at full load, I even mentioned that in my video the GPU wasn't even running, so the battery should be able to handle the CPU running at full load since the design caters for both CPU and GPU.
I later asked him to run the same test on another GS60 laptop and see if the battery indeed can't handle the CPU at full load. Actually out of the 5 times it shut down by itself only once it ran at full load (when I recorded it, the two other times I was just running the battery callibration app). The next day Ken told me that he tried it on another GS60 and it also shut down automatically. Frankly I don't believe that he tried it on another GS60, the reason is that the replacement unit (on which I'm typing this review) is just OK and he didn't send me any evidence that he did. Then again, it was just my suspicion.
Since he could replicate the problem I asked as to what the conclusion would be, will he give me a refund or a new unit (our original agreement) or something else, his response was to call him again the next day, at this point I lost almost all confidence in gentech.
The next day he sent me an email that after replacing the battery the problem seemed to go away (this is the first time he took an initiative to contact me), I then called him and ask to when he would ship me the new unit. His reply was baffling, "oh, you still want a new unit?". I reiterated to him that the only reason I sent the laptop in was because he agreed to send me a new unit. He took quite a long pause and said "OK". So after asking him to email me a confirmation about this original agreement we had he dropped me an email saying that the new unit will be shipped in 2-3 days after testing is done.
This is in stark contrast to one of the reseller ratings feedback that mentioned how Ken took the initiative to sent the reviewer a better part after a part died within two days of receiving the laptop.
Obviously, in my eyes, their service did not warrant a 10/10 ratings, considering how often I had to call them and the unnecessary back and forth that took place.
That almost concludes the negative part, one more thing is that Ken told me over the phone that he'd refund me the difference when the new unit is shipped, but it didn't happen, the refund came late.
After receiving the UPS tracking number for the replacment, I asked them when the refund would be sent out, and the reply I got was that they would send me the refund without mentioning when. A week later I reminded them again and I finally got my refund. The whole RMA process (not including the refund) took longer than expected, 3 weeks in total (Jan 12 - Feb 2 2015).
Now to the not so negative part. Since the cyber december promotion includes a set of headphones and a mouse I would expect the box the laptop came in to be quite big. However, gentech managed to crammed both headphones and mouse inside the powerbrick box. Also, when shipping my laptop for the RMA, Ken asked me to not send in the manual and powerbrick (to reduce shipping weight). So, apparently they'll try to cut cost as much as possible. I don't really mind cramming things into the power brick box, but unboxing new items is part of the experience you want to have when purchasing something new, especially something that costs more than $2000.
We can now switch to the positive. One of the positive things about gentech is that everytime you call them, someone will pick up, you will NOT be put on hold. I know, I called them a lot.
Second, they shipped my laptop fast. I ordered it on Monday Dec 15 2014, with an extra SSD and thermal repasting and they shipped it on Friday Dec 19. Although I don't think they repasted my laptop. The temperatures are no different from the review videos with stock thermal paste.
Third, I didn't receive my game code and they emailed me the game code quickly.
Now to the mythlogic comparison, I don't think Gentech is as responsive as myth. I emailed myth and got a reply within 5 minutes. Another time I emailed them about SLI GPU with 4K display and was told that there was no such configuration so I said I'd wait, within an hour I got an email that it might not be wise to wait since such configuration might not exist ever. They did follow up actively, kudos to them.
I also tried mythlogic's online help, and within minutes "one smart nerd" attended me, as a comparison, I waited for 30 mins for Xotic's online help.
As for the replacement unit itself, it works but it brings more disappointments. First, it didn't come in the msi card board box, I was quite shocked when I first received it considering I sent the old one in its original packaging. Second, the keyboard bulges around the enter key which is directly on top of the RAM heatsink. Third, the CPU fan makes high pitched noises at 2900 RPM while the GPU fan rattles a bit at high RPM.
[Update] I don't think it's the CPU fan, I now believe it's a CPU whine caused by the idle state, when the fan is at 2900 RPM the CPU is at idle.
So, in conclusion, it wasn't worth ordering from gentech. One of the reasons I ordered from them was because I wanted some customizations, otherwise I'd just get it from newegg, and at the end I got a stock configuration after all. But the main thing is that if something goes awry you're pretty much on your own.
You might also ask, why do they have lots of positive reviews? My take is that most of the time you don't have a problem and you're on your way enjoying your sparkling new laptop, but, I can't reiterate this enough, the real value of a reseller is how they handle unforeseen circumstances, especially for premiumly priced laptops. Their handling of my case left me with a bad overall experience of the laptop, even though in itself the laptop is OK, but the experience left me wanting.
As for MSI, I'll post that on another blog, see ya ...
