RMA process with Corsair

[kawazoe]

Hello,

long time viewer here but today is my first time posting on the forum! (Yeah! )

 

I'm currently dealing with a very painful RMA process with Corsair. I wanted to know if anyone had similar issue in the past with them and maybe have some suggestions on how to deal with this.

 

I bought an H100i-v2 AIO about two years ago. The pump stopped working recently so I opened a ticket on Corsair's website. It took them 7 days to approve the RMA, and then an extra 31 days for my replacement to finally arrive for a total of 38 days of turnaround. That's over a month without a computer. I had to pay international shipping to them and custom fees for the replacement on the way back. In the end, I paid 93.11 CAD for a part I originally paid 119.99 CAD for. Their warranty covered only 22% of the original cost. They did not offer an advance RMA service, I had to ask, and when they finally gave me a link to pay for it, their payment system crashed with an HTTP 500 error. It took them weeks to even acknowledge the issue. They had already received the broken part by that point and still insisted that I pay for the advanced RMA. They were completely ignoring my messages, only answering with canned responses, until I wrote them a pretty rude email which got things going. In the end, 9 days had passed since the time they received my package and finally acknowledged it.

 

 

I found a few people online complaining about the slowness of their RMA process but no one really appeared to have had such a bad experience. Am I alone here? Any suggestions on what I should do next?

 

[Fakmykak]

Seems pretty typical of Corsair.

 

I had problems with a Commander Pro I purchased and it took them over a month to even respond to my initial support Email. After first contact it took them over a week for each subsequent reply. Treated me like a hot potato between different departments. I eventually got a full refund, but it was a massive pain in the ass.

[Corrupt_Liberty]

I RMA'd a H100i a couple years ago without any issues at all.  Being state side might make things easier though.  I didn't have to pay for anything.

[kawazoe]

8 minutes ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

I RMA'd a H100i a couple years ago without any issues at all.  Being state side might make things easier though.  I didn't have to pay for anything.

Yeah I'm from Canada so that shipping was brutal. I was honestly surprised that they didn't even had an office here to handle returns...

[dizmo]

Welcome to the forum!

 

That's unfortunate about your warranty experience, but having to pay for return shipping on an item like that isn't totally uncommon.

I don't really know what you're expecting to happen; you've already gone through the experience, and you have your replacement product.

You're in Canada, so the lengthy shipping times are both to be expected, and honestly, could be completely outside of Corsairs control.

You shouldn't, however, have been charged duty. Again, this has nothing to do with Corsair, and everything to do with the CBSA. There's paperwork you can print off and file with them, and they'll review your case and decide if they'll issue you a refund. You'll have to provide the appropriate paperwork, but they have pretty quick turn around; when I filed my claim for mis-categorized bike parts, it took them about 2 weeks to send me a refund cheque.

Most of the time it's not worth going through the warranty on parts like this; which, really, you should have known once you found out the initial shipping cost (which I assume is the bulk of the cost there).

 

I have to ask; did you try calling them? Or reaching out to them on social media? Might seem like you shouldn't have to, but, welcome to the real world.

 

Since it's already concluded, doubt there's much he can do, but @Corsair Nick might have some insight or at least a comment on the matter.

 

[aaradorn]

Was this out of warranty? or still within the warranty? Having to pay for a defect product seems a bit weird. 

[Corsair Nick]

@kawazoe - Customers shouldn't experience those types of delays when RMAing a product, unless there is something that we can't control.  Based on your post, it sounds like you've already received the replacement.  Is everything working normal now?  As far as the duties are concerned, you shouldn't be paying those.  Go ahead and PM me your ticket number, and attach a copy of the duty invoice to the ticket as well.  I'll escalate this with our Customer Service team to get you sorted out for you.  If anything comes up, I'm here to help the Linus community when things like this happen, and answer questions you guys have.

[kawazoe]

@Corsair Nick Hi Nick!

 

I honestly was not expecting company reps to be active on this forum. That's a very pleasant surprise! (also... why wasn't I, this place is HUGE!) To answer your question, yes, the replacement is working great! Though the change in wiring between the older h100i v2 and the h100 pro caused the setup to turn into a cable management adventure, I finally managed to get going again!

 

With the time it took to get through this, I initially considered getting a different cooler all-together, and maybe even go full custom loop. In the end though, I got really lucky. You see, that whole cooler isn't for my computer, it's for my boyfriend's. He's in first year 3D animation concentration and not having a PC at home to get through his homework was very stressful. Luckily for him, I had a spare laptop that he could use and the bulk of his homework during that last month was done in Photoshop. So, we managed to get through the wait without having to get a different cooler.

 

I'll still PM you to get that duties' thing sorted though.

 

As for the fact that this isn't a normal RMA experience, I would like to agree with you. From my past experiences replacing keyboards and PSUs, I've never seen this. Plus, the parts usually get shipped somewhere in Canada if I recall, not all the way in the US so it must have been different people handling the issue. From what I've seen online, it appears that this issue plagues only a few of your products, which is very unfortunate. Like Fakmykak said, he got a similar experience with his Commander Pro, and again, it's not even shipping time, it's just the week long wait between replies.

 

Anyway, I hope Corsair manage to get this sorted. It really isn't a pleasant or a trustworthy experience.

 

[KhandakeF]

I dunno, I had a single experience with Corsair recently and it went pretty well

 

Corsair Void pro was having issues where turning the volume knob on the headset would create crackling noises in the earcups.

 

I emailed them about it and within a day they sent a RMA slip and I shipped it out and got a replacement in ~3 days

 

For my first RMA with anything ever, it went pretty well

 

EDIT: Also I had my microcenter receipt as well, so

[Corsair Nick]

@kawazoe - Just responded to your PM.  Good to hear everything is working out for you with the replacement.  The PRO series is one of our newest designs, and overall has a number of improvements compared to the previous V2.  When I talked to Customer Service about your situation, I also escalated the experience and feedback up the chain, so we can review our process so there will be fewer delays.