Is XFX ending their lifetime warranty?

TaintedSquirrel

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I just got off the phone with XFX.

The Radeon R9 Fury cards WILL NOT be included in the lifetime warranty program.

This program has also recently ended a few days ago. This means that no cards will have this option in the future, whether it be R9 Fury, 300, 200, or HD series.
I got off the phone with them as well. The rep made it sound like the new cards arent getting it. But the old cards are grandfathered in

Any official word? This is troubling.
 
Did you get on the phone? Where are these quotes from? Sounds like they're just getting rid of the lifetime warranty thing. Lifetime warranties are costly, and they probably weren't selling cards for them as well as they thought they would.
 
Did you get on the phone? Where are these quotes from? Sounds like they're just getting rid of the lifetime warranty thing. Lifetime warranties are costly, and they probably weren't selling cards for them as well as they thought they would.

r/amd

And to pile on, who cares if XFX changes their warranty? The cooling solutions they use are sub par.
 
r/amd

And to pile on, who cares if XFX changes their warranty? The cooling solutions they use are sub par.
I still think the phone reps were referring to the Fury X, not all models.
As we know, the Fury X does not have a lifetime warranty.
 
I can say one thing for sure...if i were in the market for a 300 series i would fall back and buy the cheaper 200 series just for the lifetime warranty.......would dam well suck for a card to go out right after 2 years
If i were buying a fury might as well go with xfx for there speedy rma's since by my math there about 4 times faster than evga based on my own experience
 
XFX was a gimmick brand anyways, buy from those that use quality parts.
 
hey guys,

the official word for North America is...

The lifetime warranty for Dual fan cards has ended. Now, every card sold is a standard 2 year warranty with the exception of Best Buy. Best Buy purchases still include the lifetime warranty.

We fought to keep it, but the market for GPU's as revenue/bitcoin/altcoin producers is too large now to offer it. The sheer volume of cards that were replaced (through BTC Miners) under warranty, despite miss-use, was too high to ignore.
 
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hey guys,

the official word for North America is...

The lifetime warranty for Dual fan cards has ended. Now, every card sold is a standard 2 year warranty with the exception of Best Buy. Best Buy purchases still include the lifetime warranty.

We fought to keep it, but the market for GPU's as revenue/bitcoin/altcoin producers is too large know to offer it. The sheer volume of cards that were replaced under warranty, despite miss-use, was too high to ignore.
Is this just a new policy for the 300-series/Fury X and onwards?
There are 200-series cards still being sold I assume they include the lifetime warranty.
 
XFX also saw the train coming: if AMD unlocks voltage on Fury X, VRMs will be frying and PCIe slots will be melting left and right. And of course no one seeking an RMA due to overclocking ever admits to any wrongdoing.
 
XFX also saw the train coming: if AMD unlocks voltage on Fury X, VRMs will be frying and PCIe slots will be melting left and right. And of course no one seeking an RMA due to overclocking ever admits to any wrongdoing.
Even if XFX had kept their lifetime policy, Fury X would not have been covered.
 
Even if XFX had kept their lifetime policy, Fury X would not have been covered.

I guess I just find the timing suspect. they get rid of it the exact moment Fury X is released?

blaming an across the board policy change on bitminers seems like a downplay to avoid singling out and casting doubt on the new flagship card which they are obviously invested in and need to sell well.
 
I guess I just find the timing suspect. they get rid of it the exact moment Fury X is released?

.

100% Agreed. The mining craze... really? AMD was the only brand worth mining on, and that died last year.

I don't buy it. You could have at least blamed it on world hunger, or just plain economics due to low sales volume or a un sustainable business model. But mining... come on.
 
It might have something to do with regular Fury DD models... But the Fury X has nothing to do with it. It's not my fault if you don't understand how their lifetime warranty worked in the first place.

Carry on...
 
I guess I just find the timing suspect. they get rid of it the exact moment Fury X is released?

blaming an across the board policy change on bitminers seems like a downplay to avoid singling out and casting doubt on the new flagship card which they are obviously invested in and need to sell well.

Yeah, I don't really have privileged information on exactly why the decision was made. We believe (here in the tech support/ community support office) feel it was the severe increase of RMAs.

We were accustomed to seeing hundreds of RMA's come in as single RMA's every month. For example, one person, one bad card, we replace it, no big deal... but early last year we started seeing RMA's of 10+ cards, which was unheard of for an end user...in 1 month, one user RMA'd over 40 cards, modified bios, fans were dirty... it was a total mess.

Unfortunately, the lifetime warranty was designed to protect the ideal GPU buyer: someone who's a gamer and who uses it for extended periods of time, but never 24/7 with modified bios settings for months at a time.

The 200 series and Best Buy 300 series have lifetime warranties for now... Once the 200 series sells off and goes EOL, I fear the lifetime warranty coverage will shrink even more.

Anyway, the lifetime warranty is a big part of XFX and our commitment to our community, losing part of it was a huge loss to our team, as well as our customers.
 
^ Totally understandable when you explain it that way. Thanks for the insight and honesty!
 
hey guys,

the official word for North America is...

The lifetime warranty for Dual fan cards has ended. Now, every card sold is a standard 2 year warranty with the exception of Best Buy. Best Buy purchases still include the lifetime warranty.

We fought to keep it, but the market for GPU's as revenue/bitcoin/altcoin producers is too large now to offer it. The sheer volume of cards that were replaced (through BTC Miners) under warranty, despite miss-use, was too high to ignore.

ummmm, nobody has been mining on GPUs for like 2 years now
 
I was just looking at warranties on Newegg and it looks like MSI, ASUS, and Gigabyte will be the new go to video cards. They are the same price as everyone else but come with a 3 yr warranty.
 
what are you talking about dude? amd video card prices didn't normalize until this time last year.

And they only normalized due to asic coming out for script and the alternates not being able to cope with the crash of scrypt currencies value.
 
Yeah, I don't really have privileged information on exactly why the decision was made. We believe (here in the tech support/ community support office) feel it was the severe increase of RMAs.

We were accustomed to seeing hundreds of RMA's come in as single RMA's every month. For example, one person, one bad card, we replace it, no big deal... but early last year we started seeing RMA's of 10+ cards, which was unheard of for an end user...in 1 month, one user RMA'd over 40 cards, modified bios, fans were dirty... it was a total mess.

Unfortunately, the lifetime warranty was designed to protect the ideal GPU buyer: someone who's a gamer and who uses it for extended periods of time, but never 24/7 with modified bios settings for months at a time.

The 200 series and Best Buy 300 series have lifetime warranties for now... Once the 200 series sells off and goes EOL, I fear the lifetime warranty coverage will shrink even more.

Anyway, the lifetime warranty is a big part of XFX and our commitment to our community, losing part of it was a huge loss to our team, as well as our customers.

Hi, I know I may be a little late to this thread, but I just want to chime in by saying that I think this is a poor solution to the problem.

The lifetime warranty is a huge marketing tool. Before I bought XFX cards, I bought Visiontek on account of them also offering lifetime warranty. Then I had to actually deal with them and found out their warranty was pretty useless. So I shopped around more and moved to XFX, which were average cards I'd say, but stood out on account of the warranty being offered. I stopped purchasing XFX cards after the registration system swallowed my registration for one of my cards and they refused to honor it some years back.

I decided that the "lifetime warranty" was mostly a scam to get people to buy cards since you had to be SUPER careful to make sure you had documentation of registration in writing for them to account honor it (which was pretty terrible service). After that, I shifted to other brands when I needed new cards and just made sure to pay less since I wasn't getting the same warranty I'd paid more from for XFX.

My purpose of this post isn't to rag on XFX for their poor warranty policies (although a better reg database or simply going by purchase date instead of registration would be preferable), but to recommend a better alternative.

You could still offer the lifetime warranty, but simply change the terminology.
2 Year Standard Warranty

Lifetime CONSUMER Warranty on registration (you could even require a copy of a driver's license for lifetime warranties), with a reasonable limit of 3 cards per year (individual cards can be replaced as much as needed to get them working, but customers are limited to 3 separate cards, barring any replacements sent out for one of said 3)

Add an asterisk that subjecting video cards to abuse will invalidate the warranty. So how would we determine whether or not someone is abusing cards? Instead of looking at specific cards, you look at their warranty patterns. So if someone has been registered with you for 10 years, have a history of cards registered, and need one or two repaired each year, that wouldn't be abuse. If someone buys 10 cards in a single year and needs 3 repaired, that also probably wouldn't be abuse (probably a hobbyist animator). If someone buys 3-4 cards every year and needs every one of them repaired, every year, that's abuse. Likewise, if someone's newly registered in the current year, registers 3-4 cards, and needs all of them repaired, that's also abuse.

So I think adding a state-issued ID verification system for the lifetime warranty and looking at usage patterns of the warranty would allow you to reinstate it without punishing standard users. I doubt even heavy 3D artists are unlikely to burn through cards at the same rate as bitcoin miners.

You could even go more extreme if you wanted and require driver's/ID verification for the base warranty (i.e. to quickly cut off anyone trying to use fake addresses or other shenanigans to game the system), as long as that doesn't conflict with any consumer laws.

Without the lifetime warranty, XFX is only strikes me as kind of average. They're as or more prone to failure than their competitors. When I got burned by CS over the card the online system lost registration data for, I also stopped buying XFX cards for other purposes (i.e. HTPC's etc.. that I built for other people). So something you should think about when revamping your warranty policies is to put customers first while still mitigating costs incurred by people trying to game the system (and preventing them from doing so).

This is an old thread, so I don't know if XFX will even read this, but I hope they do, and consider restoring the lifetime warranties for standard users.
 
As an addendum, you could also offer enterprise warranty options for heavy users who want to burn through tons of cards mining or whatever, at an increased cost / year that makes it sustainable for you as a business.
 
You could still offer the lifetime warranty, but simply change the terminology.
2 Year Standard Warranty

Lifetime CONSUMER Warranty on registration (you could even require a copy of a driver's license for lifetime warranties), with a reasonable limit of 3 cards per year (individual cards can be replaced as much as needed to get them working, but customers are limited to 3 separate cards, barring any replacements sent out for one of said 3)

Add an asterisk that subjecting video cards to abuse will invalidate the warranty. So how would we determine whether or not someone is abusing cards? Instead of looking at specific cards, you look at their warranty patterns. So if someone has been registered with you for 10 years, have a history of cards registered, and need one or two repaired each year, that wouldn't be abuse. If someone buys 10 cards in a single year and needs 3 repaired, that also probably wouldn't be abuse (probably a hobbyist animator). If someone buys 3-4 cards every year and needs every one of them repaired, every year, that's abuse. Likewise, if someone's newly registered in the current year, registers 3-4 cards, and needs all of them repaired, that's also abuse.


How the heck does the average gamer need one or two cards repaired each year. I've been a PC gamer since 1989 and never needed a video card RMA. EVER. I've had a couple die, I've got a dead 9400 on my desk right now that was in my dad's PC - but they are a LOT older than 2 - 3 years when that happens! I upgrade my card every couple years typically - so I don't hold onto them forever - but man...that's absurd. You've got to be doing something wrong if you are going through that many cards. A lifetime warranty wouldn't do me much good because I'm going to get antsy for a new card's performance in 2 years'ish.
 
Did you get on the phone? Where are these quotes from? Sounds like they're just getting rid of the lifetime warranty thing. Lifetime warranties are costly, and they probably weren't selling cards for them as well as they thought they would.

^^^THIS

XFX couldn't get anything extra for their lifetime warranty. People saw no value in something they don't plan on keeping more than a couple of years. Lifetime warranties are actually quite costly for the company offering. People wouldn't pay a $10 premium for the lifetime warranty. Even when it was reference designs so their was nothing else to choose by except price and service. Price trumped too often. People are stupid.
 
How the heck does the average gamer need one or two cards repaired each year. I've been a PC gamer since 1989 and never needed a video card RMA. EVER. I've had a couple die, I've got a dead 9400 on my desk right now that was in my dad's PC - but they are a LOT older than 2 - 3 years when that happens! I upgrade my card every couple years typically - so I don't hold onto them forever - but man...that's absurd. You've got to be doing something wrong if you are going through that many cards. A lifetime warranty wouldn't do me much good because I'm going to get antsy for a new card's performance in 2 years'ish.

I was thinking the same thing, lol. Thought maybe I was missing something that kept me from understanding.
 
If they keep that deal going then I wont mind as its an option. I wonder what strings Best Buy pulled for that deal.
 
Mostly, I was just trying to brainstorm some reasonable limit. I personally only go single card, but I know there are or were many gamers who do SLI or Crossfire with up to 4 cards. And there's also the chance that someone just has bad luck. Which is why I also said the thing about looking at overall return behavior for a registree. If they're a long time customer it should even out if they get back with their video cards at some point.

It's somewhat ironic because the growth in processing demand has slowed down somewhat for most people (by which I mean the difference between 1080p->4k gaming is substantially less than 720->1080p), so in principle lifetime warranties should be less expensive than they were before so long as people aren't kissing the bleeding edge. I actually do remember paying more for lifetime cards back in the day, and I upgraded more frequently since I knew I could sell my old cards and the new buyer wouldn't be screwed if anything happened down the line. These days I game less and keep cards longer. It's just a shame that miners had to ruin it for everyone else by flooding manufacturers with dead cards.
 
We monitor the forums a few times a day, we hear your ideas and we're not ignoring them. Unfortunately, there are no plans to re implement any such thing, nor do i foresee one coming soon.
 
If they keep that deal going then I wont mind as its an option. I wonder what strings Best Buy pulled for that deal.

BB is still an 800 lb. Gorilla & I'm sure they wanted XFX to give them exclusive rights for the Lifetime Warranty. I would have purchased their R390X, but it came on sale too late for Black Friday.

For those of you saying XFX cooling is sub-par, sorry I don't agree. I've owned 4 XFX cards & all have been great. If anything I think their QC is a cut above IMHO.
 
It's a shame. When XFX went from nVidia to AMD, I was really excited.

2 of the 3 of the AMD cards I've since bought have been XFX cards with lifetime warranties; simply due to the life-time warranty (high end cards in Canada are around the 700$ mark, before taxes). I keep my cards for around 3-4 years, minimum these days... As they go through a hand-me-down process to other machines in my house. Since the 2x Lifetime warranty process has been ended, I've held off upgrading, and will be going to a vendor offering a 5+ year warranty, as a minimum.

Now I'm fairly certain that I'll be going nVidia exclusively. Between sky-high Fury prices, and poor vendor warranty support issues (either short warranties, or poor in-country warranty support).

Sorry AMD, it's been fun.
 
This has been a sticky issue with them for a while. They use to offer a double lifetime warranty on their cards. When I actually went to make use of mine, they had magically lost every single registration for every product I had that had the double warranty.
 
This has been a sticky issue with them for a while. They use to offer a double lifetime warranty on their cards. When I actually went to make use of mine, they had magically lost every single registration for every product I had that had the double warranty.

Wow...That's not cool @ all. I'm surprised that coming from XFX. I always keep my box & receipts.
 
I can see XFX's points. I think a 3-year warranty is good enough for most of us. I never keep a GPU for more then 24-30 months. I just bump my CPU a little & get a new card without having to build a complete rig again. How many of us really keep a card that long. If anything sell or give away my old cards.

Maybe I've been lucky as well as I never had a video card go south on me.
 
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