EVGA refuses to offer warranty replacement on video card

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Happy Hopping
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EVGA refuses to offer warranty replacement on video card

Post by Happy Hopping » Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:51 am

http://www.evga.com/community/messagebo ... C_ID=25610

this is hot. They have a series of card that's defective. So they cook up reasons for those who bought it at ebay, not to offer warranty.

The guy who sell it is a powerseller, clearly a house office type dealer who bought in quantity from eVGA distributor.
Last edited by Happy Hopping on Tue Feb 13, 2007 6:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

rei
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Post by rei » Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:37 am

I'd side with EVGA in this.

DanW
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Post by DanW » Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:42 am

rei wrote:I'd side with EVGA in this.
without sounding rude...Why?

nzimmers
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not really sure why EVGA won't honor the warranty

Post by nzimmers » Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:39 am

I understand things like "non-transferrable" warranties - but it seems to me that this is a current card, recently produced, and it would be in the best interest of EVGA to examine the card and provide a replacement if there was a manufacturing defect.

This is probably a more likely scenario:

1) Evga releases the 7900GT to it's retail channels
2) Evga starts getting above expected returns via the Retail channel
3) EVGA determines that a large percentage of thier 7900GT stock is bad
4) EVGA start to unload 7900GT stock to secondary distributors (where power sellers on ebay buy from in bulk and sell)
5) EVGA doesn't make as much money from dumping them into the seconday market but they definately break even on not having to Warranty the Item

Just checking Newegg, teh 7900GT is not available there, big shock as they would have to honor returns from newegg. Any reason why I can buy a 7300GT and a 7600GT but not the 7900GT? they don't even have it listed as "out of stock" there's no listing at all - it's been pulled from the retail chain.

here's a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

usually the most likely explanation is the correct one

EVGA makes my list of manufactures to avoid for a minimum of 3 years

LazyAzN
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Post by LazyAzN » Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:53 pm

I was one of the posters in that topic...

The rule of thumb usually, is to never buy anything new off ebay, because they never come with any warranty to begin with...

In this case, EVGA acknowledged that rule of thumb, but they did not place it in their warranty policy. Therefore, as the LAST post of that thread stated, the OP of that thread had come to a mutual agreement with SEVERAL EVGA representatives because of this implicit policy.

But really now, only idiots expect warranties from Ebay. Ebay is like a flea market. Do flea markets give warranties? No. Return policy? Yes. This is why I only buy the stuff I know is cheap from there. This case, the person was from Israel, and had to buy it somewhere, which is EBay. If he really cared about a warranty, he SHOULD'VE tried harder finding a way to get a card from the US to Israel from an online retailer other than Ebay.

As for replacements of the bad batches of 7900GT's (I've gone through two 7900GT CO's), they finally gave me a 256-P2-N636 7950gt, which is now working fine.

JazzJackRabbit
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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:00 pm

Ebay or not that's a stupid ass policy to deny warranty because the card was bought via so-called 'unauthorized' reseller.

Who cares if it's ebay? All they need to know is whether the card was bought still shrink wrapped. What kind of lame excuse is this: "We cannot warranty Ebay purchases, because we cannot guarantee the condition quality of the products when sold, as we can with retail purchases." The card was bought brand new, in sealed box, so nobody could tamper with the card and the card was in exactly the same 'condition quality' as the day evga put it in the box.

Lawrence Lee
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Post by Lawrence Lee » Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:43 pm

That's rough, but I'm siding with eVGA as well. They're quite clear about their policy: no receipt, no warranty. You might not like it, but that's the way it is. Don't buy stuff from eBay that requires proof of purchase for warranty service. That's common sense.

nzimmers
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receipts..........

Post by nzimmers » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:53 am

there is one problem with receipts though.... I keep most of them but after 6 months to a year they are essentially unreadable - the ink deteriorates (especially the thermal transfer inks from credit card receipts)

I understand EVGA's policy, but it seems to me that they are unwilling to stand behind thier product, meanwhile they *are* selling cards to distrubitors that are known to be outside thier warranty chain.

What ever happend to the days when you got a warranty card inside a box?

I'm still going to vote with my wallet....there's alternatives to EVGA.

Happy Hopping
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Post by Happy Hopping » Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:35 am

EVGA has a no. of US/Canada wide authorized distributors, (listed on their web site) which in turn, sell their EVGA video card to resellers, such as the one this Israel guy bought from. Clearly from the large batch that this dealer bought, that they are brand new sealed EVGA video card from his distributors.

As such, household like this Isarel guy is the "Original Purchaser".

Because in view of the intent and contents of that EVGA warranty statement, Original Purchaser obviously meant the end user, otherwise the only ORIIGINAL PURCHASERS would only be circuit city, Best Buy, their distributors, etc. So the purchase from this israel owner and the sale from that ebay seller, in every way, is legi.

Aris
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Post by Aris » Tue Feb 13, 2007 3:19 am

no reciept no warrenty is bullshit.

it shouldnt matter how you obtain it. It should be based on when its manufactured, hence a "manufacturers warrenty". You get sale warrenty's from where you buy things based on when you bought it, you get manufacturer warrenty's from the manufacturer based on when it was created.

Well i'll never buy Evga ever again if this is how their warrenty works. I dont think i've ever kept a reciept for the entire manufacturers warrenty.

Like when my hard drive failed. I didnt need a recipet. I called up seagate, gave them the model and serial number, they looked up the drive and determined it was still covered under their manufacturers warrenty and replaced the drive. This is how all computer hardware manufacturer warrenties should work.


==============

PS: Can you please edit the link in the first post to be a shortened hyperlink so it doesnt stretch the screen please?
Last edited by Aris on Wed Feb 21, 2007 2:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ryboto
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Post by ryboto » Tue Feb 13, 2007 6:25 am

Aris wrote:
Like when my hard drive failed. I didnt need a recipet. I called up seasonic, gave them the model and serial number, they looked up the drive and determined it was still covered under their manufacturers warrenty and replaced the drive. This is how all computer hardware manufacturer warrenties should work.


==============

PS: Can you please edit the link in the first post to be a shortened hyperlink so it doesnt stretch the screen please?
Yea, Logitech and Acer work the same way. My keyboard failed, I call, they take my serial number, send me a replacement. My monitors power brick dies, I call acer, they see by my serial number that I'm under warranty, I get a replacement sent to me. Same can be said for Abit. I've never had to use the abit return, but my friend has once or twice. Fortunately I haven't had any other components fail on me so I haven't had to deal with any sort of return policy issues. I agree a waranty should cover only manufacturers defects, but the cards were bought new, so what's the difference in this case? The users should just have the Ebay seller do the RMA for them, what would EVGA say to that?

chdude3
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Post by chdude3 » Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:00 am

Aris wrote:no reciept no warrenty is bullshit.

it shouldnt matter how you obtain it.
Sweet... so when I come steal your EVGA card, by your logic I'll have a manufacturer's warranty without having any proof of purchase!

nici
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Post by nici » Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:24 am

Ooh, a comedian :roll:

Don't know about the rest of the world, but at least in Finland every product has something called "expected lifetime". If your TV only has one year warranty and breaks after two, it still has to be replaced for free or at resonable cost because the expected lifetime of a TV is at least five years. In other words warranties are only marketing, and for people who are not smart enough to contact the consumer protection agency.

ultrachrome
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Post by ultrachrome » Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:25 am

If you do a little googling you can see what eVGA may be protecting themselves from with denying warranty on product from unauthorized resellers:
- product might be defective
- product might be used
- product might be a knock off

Selling that product only benefits the seller and not eVGA who then has to expend manpower to deal with the issues that arise. Even refusing to honor the warranty costs them time/effort that could be otherwise spent on customers who bought their product legitimately.

As to why Logitech is so liberal with their policy, it could be that they simply can afford to be. They had $1.8B in sales last year.

AZBrandon
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Post by AZBrandon » Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:38 am

I own an eVGA video card, so it was with some trepidation that I clicked on this link to read what was up. When I read through all the facts though, I would have to agree that although it's a bummer, I feel they are in the right to stand by their terms of service. Personally, I don't buy ANYTHING of value off ebay anymore. I used it for a few purchases and ebay is only one step up from Craig's List in terms of quality, IMO. People should know by now that ebay is the #1 scam magnet site on the internet, and never to purchase anything of value on there without the full understanding that it is very likely damaged goods in some way.

merlin
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Post by merlin » Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:40 pm

I'd have to go with EVGA as well. My first rule is never buy anything you need warranty or service with on ebay. I'm still utterly amazed how many people are willing to buy secondhand electronics. I'd never trust that because of the huge number of dangers. It could blow out, it could be no good in the first place, or the worst...it could just be unreliable and fail randomly. If you want good service, spend the money on the real product from an authorized dealer. Services and warranties cost money.

At least if we buy something from spcr, we know it's been well taken care of and tested.

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Post by qviri » Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:39 pm

merlin wrote:I'm still utterly amazed how many people are willing to buy secondhand electronics.
I buy second hand electronics. (Well, computer parts.) It's not that bad if you know what you're doing. You can get nice price/performance on older stuff. No warranty of course, but it's usually guaranteed not to be DOA, and in my experience electronics rarely just break in three months.

About eVGA... if they have a clause saying so and so, then they're in the clear. No questions asked exchanges are very nice, but I can definitely see why companies aren't keen. I've heard stories of people ordering three identical Thinkpads from IBM, then choosing the one with the best screen and sending the other two back. Ouch.

cmthomson
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Post by cmthomson » Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:48 pm

The epitome of "no questions asked returns" is Fry's Electronics.

Buy something, open it, try it out, decide you don't want it, take it back, get full refund or store credit.

Of course the consequence of this is that a very large fraction of the stuff on the shelves has gone through this process. You have to dig around to find a box that hasn't been opened.

Kinda like eBay.

Happy Hopping
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Post by Happy Hopping » Tue Feb 13, 2007 6:41 pm

Here's a simple question, what if it is a simple christmas gift from someone?

What then? Call your friend and said, "Hey, I'm really sorry, but the christmas gift you gave me last year is defective, and in order to have warranty, I need the original receipt."

You know what EVGA will then say? I bet they'll say it's not "Original purchaser", as that person who bought it is the original purchaser, not the receiver of the gift.

ultrachrome
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Post by ultrachrome » Tue Feb 13, 2007 6:45 pm

Happy Hopping wrote:Here's a simple question, what if it is a simple christmas gift from someone?

What then? Call your friend and said, "Hey, I'm really sorry, but the christmas gift you gave me last year is defective, and in order to have warranty, I need the original receipt."

You know what EVGA will then say? I bet they'll say it's not "Original purchaser", as that person who bought it is the original purchaser, not the receiver of the gift.
I doubt it. If they did, just RMA it in the name of the original purchaser.

Happy Hopping
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Post by Happy Hopping » Tue Feb 13, 2007 6:51 pm

but as they said, warranty are NON transferable. See in all RMA I dealt w/ in the past 20 yr., the serial no. tells if the unit is under warranty, so it doesn't matter whether you have that receipt or not.

Imagine it's one of those corp. purchase, the big co. bought a batch of say 200 video card, some use in a subsidary co. in another city, one of them fail, you think w/ today complex's corp. structure, they can really find the original receipt?

You know what they would do: they just buy another one, and because they have to standardize the whole co. IT structure, they are forced to buy back the same brand name.

So co. like EVGA wins just because of this. It's very unfair to customer.

===========

I re-edit the link width, sorry for stretching it

nici
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Post by nici » Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:01 pm

Corporate buyers don't buy separate components, they get their computer from someone like Dell or HP. If something breaks you call them and they will repair it. And the seller most likely has every serial number written down, and they have a contract which says what is covered and at what cost and how fast. And yes they would still have the original receipt, they have to keep it for accounting purposes. So it's very different from a normal customer.

I guess each country has a different level of consumer protection.

ultrachrome
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Post by ultrachrome » Tue Feb 13, 2007 8:59 pm

Happy Hopping wrote:but as they said, warranty are NON transferable. See in all RMA I dealt w/ in the past 20 yr., the serial no. tells if the unit is under warranty, so it doesn't matter whether you have that receipt or not.

Imagine it's one of those corp. purchase, the big co. bought a batch of say 200 video card, some use in a subsidary co. in another city, one of them fail, you think w/ today complex's corp. structure, they can really find the original receipt?

You know what they would do: they just buy another one, and because they have to standardize the whole co. IT structure, they are forced to buy back the same brand name.

So co. like EVGA wins just because of this. It's very unfair to customer.

===========

I re-edit the link width, sorry for stretching it
I don't see what this has to do with your situation. You refuse to take any responsibility for a problem that appears to be entirely of your own making.

You purchased a product from an unauthorized seller while living in a country that is not supported by the manufacturer's warranty.

Bottom line, you took a risk and it didn't pay off. You don't have to love eVGA for not helping but they never said they would, in fact they clearly said they would not in their warranty terms.

Happy Hopping
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Post by Happy Hopping » Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:20 pm

Read the thread: I wasn't the buyer nor the seller

ultrachrome
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Post by ultrachrome » Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:44 pm

Happy Hopping wrote:Read the thread: I wasn't the buyer nor the seller
My bad.

The buyer took a risk and got burned. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? And what does this have to do with Cool and Quiet VGA?

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Post by Konnetikut » Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:32 pm

wow that's a hot topic. Too bad it got locked.
I think that the posters are forgetting that the buyer lives in Israel... warranty isn't covered in Israel...

nanobot
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Re: EVGA refuses to offer warranty replacement on video card

Post by nanobot » Thu Feb 15, 2007 4:41 am

Happy Hopping wrote:http://www.evga.com/community/messagebo ... C_ID=25610

this is hot. They have a series of card that's defective. So they cook up reasons for those who bought it at ebay, not to offer warranty.

The guy who sell it is a powerseller, clearly a house office type dealer who bought in quantity from eVGA distributor.
Yeah, good reason not to buy computer gear from ebay, trying to get warranty replacement/repairs done is difficult, if not impossible. I love ebay and use it to buy many things, but not computer gear. Once the sale has gone through, than there is no obligation for the seller to fix any problems once you have given your feedback.

DonQ
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Re: EVGA refuses to offer warranty replacement on video card

Post by DonQ » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:24 am

nanobot wrote:Yeah, good reason not to buy computer gear from ebay, trying to get warranty replacement/repairs done is difficult, if not impossible. I love ebay and use it to buy many things, but not computer gear. Once the sale has gone through, than there is no obligation for the seller to fix any problems once you have given your feedback.
You are correct about the seller not having to fix problems but I've bought a lot of computer equipment through ebay and I have to say that altogether I've been very satisfied. One time I got a Soundblaster Live Value instead of the non-Value card like the seller posted and one time I got a faster, 256MB instead of 128MB video card (yeh!), but otherwise I've gotten about 50 items that worked great, either much cheaper than retail or unavailable new. (A never sent Audio CD from Brazil should be held against me for getting it in the first place... it was shady).

I knew I was taking a chance and we are every time but I was rewarded almost every time. Some of the equipment did stop working later but it was over a year later. Of course, I would never buy a hard drive or an LCD monitor through ebay.

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Post by jhhoffma » Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:15 pm

I also agree with the manufacturer on this. If the product leaves the retail supply channel, there's no telling what has been done to the card before it is re-sold.

Anyone remember back in the day when Intel started locking their processors because unauthorized resellers were changing the multipliers to sell cheap, lower-speed processors at a higher, faster-processor price. Then when the chips went to crap a couple months later, there was no warranty to be had because they were sold sans retail warranty.

People need to remember the capitalist's creed: Let the Buyer Beware.

If you're buying something expensive (or delicate) from eBay for cheaper than it sells in the retail market, it's for one of several reasons:

1) The original owner doesn't want it anymore because it doesn't work or it doesn't work like they want. In either case, it's not new anymore, and in some cases is highly used.

2) The original owner can't sell it anywhere else. If the seller is a store, either it costs too much to run their own webstore, or they are afraid of having a brick/mortar basis to be tracked to.

3) The product is knowingly defective and was bought from a distributor at a very low price and sold at a premium without regard for the consumer...this is called a scam.

Vendors/Manufacturers all have to abide by strict rules to ensure that the consumer gets a quality product from reputable vendors. This is to protect the consumer as much as to protect the manufacturer. Think about it, if you want to sell a car still under warranty, the manufacturer may allow a transfer of the warranty, IF an application is made to do so, which requires a trip to a dealer service center to make sure everything is in stock condition. Otherwise, the manufacturer would be liable for damage to the product and damage by the product because someone modified the product beyond manufacturer specifications, resulting in product failure.

Learn your lesson, don't buy from Ebay if you can't afford to lose the money. There's a reason things cost more in retail, and it isn't (always) greedy men in suits filling their pools with money.

If a deal looks too good to be true, it is.

Happy Hopping
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Post by Happy Hopping » Mon Feb 19, 2007 2:25 am

ultrachrome wrote: The buyer took a risk and got burned. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? And what does this have to do with Cool and Quiet VGA?
Just a warning for those who have their eyes on EVGA. I don't believe this kind of management deserves customer

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