Faulty ASUS notebook

Hi folks,

Approximately 2 months ago I bought an ASUS N50Vc notebook with the intel core 2 duo T6400 and all was working fine until I discovered that one of the USB ports was intemittantly faulty and another is looking like going the same way.

The USB port works for my keyboard mouse and 3 of my USB flash drives but doesn't work at all for my other USB flash drive (a Toshiba U3 eddition) and my external HDD. These items work fine in all other computers and all other USB ports on the same notebook computer.

I was going to take it back to the retailer for repairs until I heard some pretty terrible things about ASUS repair centres. First of all what do you think is actually wrong with the computer, USB port or the whole main board, (I already know that its not a software fault as I have updated bios and the USB devices don't show up in bios either) And do you think ASUS will attempt (and probably fail) to fix it or just replace it!

THanks in advance,
Luke