Company RMA Experiences?

[dean_5234]

Hi guys!

I recently got back an MSI Aero 1050 TI that I bought in 2018 in around 20 days from RMA. I received a working refurbished one and am honestly overjoyed that I got a new one even though its been so long since I bought it.

 

Anyways, getting to the point, I was wondering how the members of the forum's experiences returning or RMAing products with different companies has been. Personally, MSI is the only company I have now had to RMA and overall it was a swift and positive experience. To keep in mind when recommending and purchasing products, I was wondering if you guys have ever had any positive or negative experiences with companies?

Thanks!

[WhitetailAni]

I've only had to RMA one thing - a 140mm RGB fan from Enermax.

I wanted to use it as a regular PWM fan with a 4-pin RGB connection, but it used a custom connector and the fan didn't come with a controller.

I got a full refund (minus shipping, but it was $3-4) and that was that.

[Moonzy]

Strictly RMA? Or customer service?

 

Strictly RMA:

corsair RAM: excellent, they responded in adequate time and shipped my replacement RAM as soon as they got mine

Gigabyte GPU: duck them, literally told me to go to my retailer and they held my card for a month for a vbios update, they could've told me to do it in email but no, no contact or anything available, just send your card in for a month for a vbios flash, double duck them because their 3090 is also shitly made too

Acer monitor: duck them, took four months and the 'technician' didn't even know what frame skipping is

 

Customer service:

Bequiet: excellent, sent me the am4 mounting kit even though it's way past the request window

Fractal design: excellent, sent me my meshify c screws that were missing (purchased new) without asking me to go to retailer

Nzxt: wants me to send my case back to my retailer because of a slightly defective panel, so I'll end up without a casing for potentially few months while they get it sorted, duck them too

[Arika]

I've only had to RMA 2 things in my life. So I can only compare them to each other

 

Lenovo: easy start but slow to return

Dell: fast to complete but difficult to get service started 

[TempestCatto]

G.Skill was a great experience for me. I had failing RAM that was several years old, and while not exactly an RMA, still a warranty claim. It was easy and painless. Plus it was a rather quick turn around time.

[Skiiwee29]

I've never had an issue with RMA processes myself in the 16 or 17 years I've been buying/using tech from online. I believe I've only ever had to RMA 3 items if memory serves me correct? I had an EVGA GTX 760 with failed memory chips from Epilda. Was around a 2 week turn around I think? 2nd was an MSI Z97 board that had a faulty BIOS flashing tool causing bricked BIOS when flashing. RMA again was around 2 weeks? Lastly was a failed pump on a Swiftech H220. Again, around 2 weeks. These were all like 5-10 years ago so my memory on turn around time could be off/bad, but in general 2-3 week turn around time is the expected in the industry if you can't get cross shipping. Out of all the RMA experiences, MSI's was actually quite quick in terms of starting the ticket and completion since it was a known BIOS bug and easy to diagnose. Same with the failed pump. EVGA's as always was a dream since they are known to have one of the greatest customer service teams in the industry. 

[Meowster]

I only had to RMA something 2 times

 

Once it was a Dell XPS 17 something (2 years ago) Process went smoothly but had to force the process out of them

And the other time it was with my Galaxy S10e, it had damaged in shipping and the OLED display was shattered, they were all polite and Samsung apologized for the issue and sent the replacement and it arrived in 4 days

 

 

[it_dont_work]

Only had to return a couple of things over the last 30 years. 

 

To the retailer, and walked out with a replacement because Australia. 

[teh]

Gigabyte - had to complain to our department of consumer affairs about them. Terrible. I refuse to buy gigabyte products anymore. TLDR: Took them over 1 month to replace my gpu with another DOA gpu, and said it would take another 1-2 months to get another one. This was 280x days so no gpu shortage problem. Ended up with a full refund thanks to Australias strong consumer protections. 

 

Gainward GPU - Excellent. 

 

Corsair PSU - Excellent. I didnt have a reciept and they still swapped an old TX850 with a brand new RM850. I just had to pay for shipping to singapore (not cheap, but a lot cheaper than a new psu).  

 

WD HDD - Excellent (even sent a fedex person to my house to pick up the hdd). 

 

Lenovo laptop - Excellent. 

[X-System]

APC = Excellent and fast replacement

 

SanDisk = Excellent and fast replacement

 

Gigabyte = very long replacement... I didn't contact Gigabyte service. I sent my Gigabyte motherboard at my retailler and my retailler sent my motherboard to Gigabyte after testing (it takes a few days). It takes more than one month to get my motherboard back...

[LogicalDrm]

There are tons of thread discussing about this. Usually when its gone horribly wrong.

 

RMA here is usually handled through store. Some things excluded. Like my on-site warranty for Lenovo business laptop. Or the international warranty I had with some Sennheiser gear (sent to local supplier instead). I have had only one bad experience with RMA process as a whole, and that was only because of the store was handling it badly.

[ETJAKEOC]

I'm in the process of trying to RMA an MSI B550i gaming edge that the NVME fan header ripped off the motherboard while trying to unplug it, and Newegg is stripping out all the HTML in the emails so I can't even file my RMA with the company.

 

It's really aggravating, you would think they'd want to help their customers and not make the process more difficult, but it seems to me like Newegg is just a major scam company and is one day going to be busted open by the SEC or something and shit down for unfair practices and just screwing customer over

[OCNewbee]

I RMAed a GPU back in 2003. It was GPU from gainward. They sent me two faulty replacements so they gave me a higher tier one. I want to buy gainward and support them but their heatsinks are far too thin. 

[dean_5234]

Seems to be a trend of bad Gigabyte service, lol

[Uttamattamakin]

HP sent them a PC that broke while working.  No problem I'd muddle thorugh  1 or 2 months pass NOTHING.  Turns out they lost it but were looking for it.  Got my PC replaced.  Then surprise they sent me a replacement.

 

Microsoft had a surface pro 3 that stopped charging.  They tried to accuse me of having jammed metal into the charging port because of the clicking sound when it would mag lock in. This was at a microsoft store. Had to buy a replacement.  The wound up having to settle the matter for me and many others because the batteries were going bad early.  Were apologetic.   

Similar experience in the 90's with an OEM called Tandy.  Factory returned for repair then lost then got a replacement .    Component manufacturers on self built PC's.  I've been lucky both back in the day and presently I've never gotten a dead CPU or GPU.  That must really suck.  

 

 

[teh]

On 4/2/2021 at 4:21 PM, teh said:

Gigabyte - had to complain to our department of consumer affairs about them. Terrible. I refuse to buy gigabyte products anymore. TLDR: Took them over 1 month to replace my gpu with another DOA gpu, and said it would take another 1-2 months to get another one. This was 280x days so no gpu shortage problem. Ended up with a full refund thanks to Australias strong consumer protections. 

 

Gainward GPU - Excellent. 

 

Corsair PSU - Excellent. I didnt have a reciept and they still swapped an old TX850 with a brand new RM850. I just had to pay for shipping to singapore (not cheap, but a lot cheaper than a new psu).  

 

WD HDD - Excellent (even sent a fedex person to my house to pick up the hdd). 

 

Lenovo laptop - Excellent. 

I remembered another

 

Sandisk Microsd cards - Okay. I had to pay for shipping to a local australian address. Wasnt happy about that. Paying $10 shipping for a $50 microsd card. Also had to do this several times as i've had 3 microsdcard failures with sandisk (literally every microsd card ive ever bought from them). They did upgrade the 64gb ultra to a 64gb extreme after having to RMA a card that i had previously got from an RMA. RMA experience is fine, but poor quality of products has put me off ever buying them again.

[morps]

I sent a 5700 to XFX on October(heating problems and then full black screen after 1 year of use +-) and so far got only promises and no card. No loaner, no replacement, no offer... So I paid the shipping and probably got a card "stolen" by XFX... After 6 months I decided to look on forums and stuff, checked /r/XFX on reddit and there were also really "nice" experiences there as well... XFX is really trying hard to be greedy right now... So, I guess this counts as a terrible experience so far.

[espantapajaros]

El 4/18/2021 a las 10:25 PM, morps dijo:

Envié un 5700 a XFX en octubre (problemas de calefacción y luego pantalla negra completa después de 1 año de uso +-) y hasta ahora sólo obtuvo promesas y ninguna tarjeta. Sin prestamista, sin reemplazo, sin oferta... Así que pagué el envío y probablemente me robaron una tarjeta "robada" por XFX... Después de 6 meses decidí buscar en foros y cosas, comprobado /r/ XFX en reddit y también había experiencias muy "agradables" allí también... XFX realmente está tratando de ser codicioso en este momento... Así que, supongo que esto cuenta como una experiencia terrible hasta ahora.

Envié un radeon VII por rma y sólo me ofrecen un reembolso con 499 o cerrar mi boleto meses, ¿dónde ha podido hacer una queja?

[morps]

7 hours ago, espantapajaros said:

Envié un radeon VII por rma y sólo me ofrecen un reembolso con 499 o cerrar mi boleto meses, ¿dónde ha podido hacer una queja?

Estoy pensando en organizar una petición conjunta contra XFX, ya que no están respetando las RMA. Pero es posible hacer una queja en https://www.econsumer.gov/en/FileAComplaint#crnt.  Sería mejor si algún medio de noticias cubriera este caso. (escrito por el traductor de google)

[Tech87]

I had 2 Seagate hdd' fail on me within a very short time frame, and sent them both back for RMA service. This was a very long time ago, and I don't recall exactly how long it took them to send me replacements, but I remember the experience being okay overall.

 

I had an old mobo die on me, but I can't remember the brand for the life of me. It was at least a decade old and had one of those LED troubleshooting displays, which was quite handy. However, when it went kaput, I don't remember exactly why I never RMA'd it. The mobo may have just fallen out of the warranty period.

[patiencehasleftthebuilding]

Most recent RMA I had was ASUS moterboard. I have documented the condition in every detail since it was an intel system a z97 deluxe wifi  board. MB cost over 350 usd retail when I bought it years ago. Anyways, 2 weeks into the RMA Asus decided to break the board by bending socket pins which I had pictures of before sending it in for repair. They wanted to charge me to repair the pins that were in perfect condition going to their RMA. I ended up sending them high resolution photos as proof of condition it was in when it was sent as well as timestamps from security cameras WHEN those photos were taken I was furious they do this to customers. I have read about this problem on forums and I was prepared for it. Ultimately they had no choice but to fix their mistakes and get me a refurbished working board. After 3 months of use on the product they sent back the board started having anomaly problems with sound with Ethernet as well as wifi then other sensor glitches directly from Asus software suites hangs and taking 10 mins to boot during bootup due to asus sensing software issue which was never resolved. That board was purchased in many quantities and I wasn't alone in that boat. Asus simply gave up and played the long wait game for the hardware to be outdated to be able to do any thing with. So yea tossed it in the trash. Poped an outdated ASROCk board in worked flawlessly after that. AVOID ASUS! I have been steering clear of all MSI products due to bad experience dealing with MSI. I was an early adopter of MSI "red" boards back when they just came out all other boards looked plain and these new MSI red boards were the sheeet. So after about 6 months of use the caps blew up like balloons since I wasn't expecting anything to go wrong with brand new hardware I wasn't checking the physical board at all also it was before the windowed case craze. As I was saying, the caps blew up VIOLENTLY! It sounded like popcorn poping inside my case then the whole thing burst in flames. I was not doing any overclocking or playing games even. Was BROWSING the internet on slow 3Mpbs DSL. In the end, there was nothing left to RMA. THE END OF MSI FOR ME. The only thing I was able to salvage from that system were hard drives which I did not trust anymore due to smoke and later after I got my data off them they started having read errors and crashed.

[Alan G]

On 4/2/2021 at 11:26 AM, davemc said:

Seems to be a trend of bad Gigabyte service, lol

I RMAed a Gigabyte NVIDIA GTX 1660 super two weeks ago.  It developed video artifacts all of the sudden that were not driver dependent (deleted and replaced drivers three times including rolling back to previous driver).  I provided full documentation of the problem and they gave me an RMA number two days after I requested. They 'repaired' it the day it was received and it just arrived back by UPS this afternoon.  They gave no indication of what the problem was other than it was repaired.  I have not put it back in my system yet as I have another GTX 1660 GPU that is working just fine.  My main use for the GPU is photography (no games) so I'm not in a hurry to check out the repair.