Stuck in an infinite RMA loop, what do I do?

[MVP Teku]

First off, I'm in Australia, so all of this was through ASUS' Australian branch.

 

Anyway, I have no idea what to do. I've been beating my head against the wall with this for weeks now. My RTX 2080 Strix card started freezing and crashing during games and graphically intensive applications like Blender. It would also display weird artefacts all over the screen, lock everything up and from there have a 50/50 shot of just the game/application crashing or it giving me a full BSoD restart. Someone linked me this video here:

 

 

Which is for RTX 2080 Ti's but that's the exact same issue I get. Steve also says it could easily apply to the 2080 as well and it stands to reason they were manufactured in the same factories, using the same silicon, at the same time, side by side.

 

So I RMA'd the card through the retailer and got it back from ASUS, checked the serial number and... it was the same one. "Ok", I thought, "maybe it was a different issue and they managed to fix it", so I boot it up and it seems fine. For a couple hours. Then the same issues started coming back. Slowly at first, could get no more than 30 seconds before a crash before, now sometimes I'd get an hour. But then it started deteriorating again back to where it was, couldn't run games at all and eventually could even boot the system with the card installed because the screen would be super glitchy and pixelated and would lock up eventually. Once I got the card back and realised it was still having issues, I ran Heaven. Only got it to complete once (it crashed about a minute after completing, the application wasn't even open anymore) and the score was 1817, with an average FPS of 72.1, a min of 8.7 and a max of 139. I don't know a ton about benchmark scores, but I'm almost positive it should've been higher.

 

So naturally, I emailed ASUS and told them and they tried to tell me it was a software issue. I told them that before I'd even RMA'd it the first time, I'd already tried reinstalling all the drivers, using hotfixed drivers, older drivers that I knew worked before, even tried reformatting my whole drive and reinstalling Windows to get everything installed as cleanly as possible to rule out software issues. None of that helped. After I told them that, they actually admitted that they were able to recreate the issue in the first RMA and I was welcome to send it back again. I asked them if I was getting a replacement this time and they said they couldn't give me one, that I'd have to go back to the retailer. They also wanted to me to pay shipping which seems super wrong. 

 

Anyway, clearly wasn't getting anywhere with them and they were taking days at a time to get back to me, so I got back in contact with the retailer and explained it all to them. They said that they're just a middle man here, they just pass the cards on to the manufacturer and the manufacturer decides everything from there. I'm not sure how that process actually works but that makes sense to me, this would be ASUS' fault for giving them a bad product, not their fault for selling it, so surely the replacements would come from ASUS? It's not like a retailer can just afford to give away cards just because it received a batch of faulty ones from the manufacturer. But maybe I'm wrong, and they are supposed to supply the replacement.

 

Anyway, since then I've tried to get in touch with other facets of ASUS' customer service department hoping that someone will be able to give me a more reasonable response, tried calling, using their main support email address, their live chat service, and all of them just say they can't do anything, GPUs aren't their department and then just refer me back to the same email address that said they couldn't replace it.

 

Just feels like I'm either stuck with a $1200 brick, or doomed to infinitely RMA this thing until my warranty runs out or I just go insane. What can I even do about this?

[Xaring]

13 minutes ago, MVP Teku said:

First off, I'm in Australia, so all of this was through ASUS' Australian branch.

 

Anyway, I have no idea what to do. I've been beating my head against the wall with this for weeks now. My RTX 2080 Strix card started freezing and crashing during games and graphically intensive applications like Blender. It would also display weird artefacts all over the screen, lock everything up and from there have a 50/50 shot of just the game/application crashing or it giving me a full BSoD restart. Someone linked me this video here:

 

 

Which is for RTX 2080 Ti's but that's the exact same issue I get. Steve also says it could easily apply to the 2080 as well and it stands to reason they were manufactured in the same factories, using the same silicon, at the same time, side by side.

 

So I RMA'd the card through the retailer and got it back from ASUS, checked the serial number and... it was the same one. "Ok", I thought, "maybe it was a different issue and they managed to fix it", so I boot it up and it seems fine. For a couple hours. Then the same issues started coming back. Slowly at first, could get no more than 30 seconds before a crash before, now sometimes I'd get an hour. But then it started deteriorating again back to where it was, couldn't run games at all and eventually could even boot the system with the card installed because the screen would be super glitchy and pixelated and would lock up eventually. Once I got the card back and realised it was still having issues, I ran Heaven. Only got it to complete once (it crashed about a minute after completing, the application wasn't even open anymore) and the score was 1817, with an average FPS of 72.1, a min of 8.7 and a max of 139. I don't know a ton about benchmark scores, but I'm almost positive it should've been higher.

 

So naturally, I emailed ASUS and told them and they tried to tell me it was a software issue. I told them that before I'd even RMA'd it the first time, I'd already tried reinstalling all the drivers, using hotfixed drivers, older drivers that I knew worked before, even tried reformatting my whole drive and reinstalling Windows to get everything installed as cleanly as possible to rule out software issues. None of that helped. After I told them that, they actually admitted that they were able to recreate the issue in the first RMA and I was welcome to send it back again. I asked them if I was getting a replacement this time and they said they couldn't give me one, that I'd have to go back to the retailer. They also wanted to me to pay shipping which seems super wrong. 

 

Anyway, clearly wasn't getting anywhere with them and they were taking days at a time to get back to me, so I got back in contact with the retailer and explained it all to them. They said that they're just a middle man here, they just pass the cards on to the manufacturer and the manufacturer decides everything from there. I'm not sure how that process actually works but that makes sense to me, this would be ASUS' fault for giving them a bad product, not their fault for selling it, so surely the replacements would come from ASUS? It's not like a retailer can just afford to give away cards just because it received a batch of faulty ones from the manufacturer. But maybe I'm wrong, and they are supposed to supply the replacement.

 

Anyway, since then I've tried to get in touch with other facets of ASUS' customer service department hoping that someone will be able to give me a more reasonable response, tried calling, using their main support email address, their live chat service, and all of them just say they can't do anything, GPUs aren't their department and then just refer me back to the same email address that said they couldn't replace it.

 

Just feels like I'm either stuck with a $1200 brick, or doomed to infinitely RMA this thing until my warranty runs out or I just go insane. What can I even do about this?

Roast them in twitter till they listen unfortunatelly only public attention tends to get this things fixed.

[MVP Teku]

1 minute ago, Xaring said:

Roast them in twitter till they listen unfortunatelly only public attention tends to get this things fixed.

But I am right in thinking it's their responsibility to replace the card, not the retailers, right? And also the shipping thing, that not standard for the customer to pay for surely? Just wanna make sure I'm roasting the right people and not being totally unreasonable with this.

[Stahlmann]

Australia seems to have very good consumer protection laws. You should be able to claim a refund if they can't fix your issue. At least thatt's what i'd do next.

[cacoe]

You could try reaching out to GN on their discord, I spoke to some guy on there who was in the same situation and GN offered to try and diagnose an issue themselves when a manufacturer repeatedly sent back the card saying there's no fault. (obviously causing a stink about it at the same time, featuring it in a video) Only problem is the manufacturer had the card and he was waiting for an actual age to get it back again and I never heard what the result of everything was in the end.

[Stahlmann]

7 minutes ago, MVP Teku said:

But I am right in thinking it's their responsibility to replace the card, not the retailers, right? And also the shipping thing, that not standard for the customer to pay for surely? Just wanna make sure I'm roasting the right people and not being totally unreasonable with this.

Your purchase agreement was made with the retailer, not Asus. So the retailer has to stand by the warranty they provided to you. How they resolve this matter with Asus is not your problem. If they cannot fix the issue and can't give you a replacement, they have to at least offer you a refund and take the defective GPU back.

[MVP Teku]

12 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Australia seems to have very good consumer protection laws. You should be able to claim a refund if they can't fix your issue. At least thatt's what i'd do next.

Yeah, even that's a pretty huge issue for me at this point. Bought it back before the GPU pricing went completely off the rails, so if they just refund it, in today's market, there is absolutely no way I could afford to replace it. They'd pretty much be giving half the price of another one and who knows when pricing will return to normal. It's not like it's a decades old card, surely someone should be able to offer a replacement?

[MVP Teku]

13 minutes ago, cacoe said:

You could try reaching out to GN on their discord, I spoke to some guy on there who was in the same situation and GN offered to try and diagnose an issue themselves when a manufacturer repeatedly sent back the card saying there's no fault. (obviously causing a stink about it at the same time, featuring it in a video) Only problem is the manufacturer had the card and he was waiting for an actual age to get it back again and I never heard what the result of everything was in the end.

Sounds like it's worth exploring at least.

[Pixelfie]

2080's aren't produced anymore. They would have to do one of these things:

- Repair

- Replace with equivalent or better card from 30 series, in this case a 3060 TI would be good. It's actually a small upgrade

- Refund

 

I'd ask for one of the last 2 things. 

 

The retailer sends the card to Asus and they decide what to do. Since repairs don't help ask the retailer if they can get a replacement or refund from Asus. 

[MVP Teku]

3 minutes ago, Pixelfie said:

2080's aren't produced anymore. They would have to do one of these things:

- Repair

- Replace with equivalent or better card from 30 series, in this case a 3060 TI would be good. It's actually a small upgrade

- Refund

 

I'd ask for one of the last 2 things. 

 

The retailer sends the card to Asus and they decide what to do. Since repairs don't help ask the retailer if they can get a replacement or refund from Asus. 

The card is with the retailer now and I've asked them to ask for a replacement, but past the initial message where they basically said, maybe they'll give you one, maybe they won't, I haven't heard anything from them. It's been three days since I last messaged them and I got a notification saying they'd received the shipment two days ago. Can't really get a word outta them, least of all a definitive one.

 

And like I said above, a refund isn't really a great solution for me at this point cause I bought it before the GPU prices inflated to the moon. Even with a full refund, I'd still only have half the money needed to replace it. Really hoping they can give me a 3060 Ti in that case.

[StDragon]

As pricey as GPUs are, maybe buying a protection plan 3rd party isn't a bad idea. 

I looked on SqureTrade and covering a GPU (classified as Misc. Electronics??) valued at $599 for 3 years costs $149. Maybe there's something similar of a service in Aus?

[MVP Teku]

5 minutes ago, StDragon said:

As pricey as GPUs are, maybe buying a protection plan 3rd party isn't a bad idea. 

I looked on SqureTrade and covering a GPU (classified as Misc. Electronics??) valued at $599 for 3 years costs $149. Maybe there's something similar of a service in Aus?

Seems a little late for that, surely. It'd be like trying to insure an already wrecked car and immediately trying to do a claim wouldn't it?

[StDragon]

13 minutes ago, MVP Teku said:

Seems a little late for that, surely. It'd be like trying to insure an already wrecked car and immediately trying to do a claim wouldn't it?

Yes, true. My bad. I should have clarified that more broadly for those in Aus that already have a GPU and worry about finding themselves in a similar situation in the future.

[Montana One-Six]

I don't know anything about the laws down under (I heard they are pretty good in terms of consumer protection probably on the level as they are in most of Europe).

I had a similar issue with a MSI GPU a few years back in Germany. I bought a 980ti from MSI which has 2 years of warranty by default in Germany. At around 1,5 years of use it started to act up and crash.  After testing with my other 980ti it was clear the GPU had problems. I never ever called MSI nor wrote them an email. I just went to the next MSI certified store (not the same I bought it from) and gave them my card and they sent it to MSI (I had to pay for shipping). After about a week that PC shop called me and told me my card just came in. I went to them, opened the box and had a brand new 980ti (at that time 900 series was no longer produced and 1000series was current gen). Usually they keep stuff from older gen just for things like that.

 

3 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

Your purchase agreement was made with the retailer, not Asus. So the retailer has to stand by the warranty they provided to you. How they resolve this matter with Asus is not your problem.

In my experience it really doesn't matter where you bought the item as the retailer is not responsible for the RMA process (since they usually don't have anything to do with failures of a product) they are only responsible for returns in the first x weeks regardless of reason. Yes you can RMA it by returning it where you bought it but you don't have to. Any other certified partner of that brand works. As long as you have a proof of purchase and it is still in the warranty window you can RMA it.

 

I don't think twitter or GN or whoever should be involved as In my experience RMAs are pretty straight forward. Never had any problems with multiple brands (MSI, Acer, ASUS, HTC, ...) .

 

2 hours ago, MVP Teku said:

It's been three days since I last messaged them and I got a notification saying they'd received the shipment two days ago. Can't really get a word outta them, least of all a definitive one.

Because they probably don't know. In my experience RMA usually take about a week sometimes you hear from them a little later or sometimes a little earlier.