BFG Support, a new perspective.

Well, I am now quite paranoid about this whole BFG "greater than star" tech support I've bought into. I have a story to tell, and while it isn't quite over yet, so far it's not been a pleasant journey.

First of all, I have always been a firm believer in BFG because I've seen nothing but good news come from everyone about how fantastic their RMA policy is and how good their tech support is. Well, maybe I got caught in a cosmic rift, but my experience thus far as been, well, below average to say the least. I own 3 different BFG cards. I believe in the company, and I respect what it stands for and is doing. I have a ti4200, a 5200 fx, and a 6800gt oc. I have stayed with BFG because I had such good experiences with the cards I have bought, and fully intended on staying with them.

Now this all started when the admittidly long in the tooth ti4200 started to have problems. I was getting some artifacting and frame rate haults/locks with it and was going to just throw the card away seeing as it's, what, a $40 card or so. But, then I remembered it was BFG and I remembered back to all the love stories people had about the ease of the RMA process.

I call them up, go through the typical "tech support trouble shoot" (motherboard bios, chipset drivers, vga drivers, etc etc). Still having problems, so I recieve an RMA # and happily send it off to BFG in good faith expecting a working card back in about a week or so. Well, BFG was very good about getting a card in the mail to me. When it got here (in the time frame I was promised), it was a similar model ti4200, and low and behold, it artifacted WORSE than the card I sent off in the first place.

Next, I called up tech support again, and again was told to jump through the "tech support trouble shoot" even after explaining i'd been over the process once before. It didn't bother me much because, hey, maybe I did miss something. Well I was told to try the latest beta drivers and because my Internet connection wasn't exactly being the fastest and "call back" if I had any further problems. Well as expected, the beta drivers did nothing to fix this card, so I call back and get another tech who says "their notes don't indicate that i've been over any trouble shooting steps" .. now I am starting to get a little annoyed. I finally get the situation explained in about 30 minutes of back and forth.

BFG seems to be the good guy again and making up for the mistake in my book because THIS time they are going to send another card "advanced" with a pre-paid shipping label to send back the broken RMA.

All seemed to be well and fine again until yesterday. I recieved the "advanced" RMA. Can you guess where this might go? It sure caught me by supprise. This card, another variation on the ti4200, did not even post. It simply didn't send a video signal at all. Nothing, nada. And yes I have multiple systems to test the cards on and they exibit the same problems. (Believe me I was convinced it was user error this time around, could a company with such highly reguarded tech support honestly send two cards that did not work?!). Now I am thinking, yep throwing it away would've been a good idea. This is a lot of effort for a little ti4200. But then I started thinking, you know, if this were to happen to my much more expensive 6800gt I would not settle for this. So I am continuing on basically in principle at this point.

After checking power supply rails and going through a few more steps I was finally asked to speak with a supervisor. Now the lesson I have learned up to this point is that, this should have been my first step. The supervisor I spoke with was very understanding of the situation and seems to have me taken care of. I am being "upgraded" to a 5700 after getting permission from the boss, because they feel so bad about the situation. (however, now that I looked at some benchmarks, I am not so sure this is even an upgrade!! ugh!).

We will see where this episode goes next, but lets just say, the BFG tech support everyone else seems to have fallen in love with, isn't the same one I have been dealing with for the past month.

I am curious where on earth they are diggin up these ti4200 cards?
that is an old ass card considering the rate of graphics card advancement.

and no i wouldnt call a 5700 an upgrade either except you kinda have a better feature set.
but framerates will likely drop

stealthy123 said:

I am curious where on earth they are diggin up these ti4200 cards?
that is an old ass card considering the rate of graphics card advancement.

and no i wouldnt call a 5700 an upgrade either except you kinda have a better feature set.
but framerates will likely drop

Click to expand...

Depends on the 5700. The 5700Ultra is certainly an upgrade. The 5700LE likely isn't.

stealthy123 said:

I am curious where on earth they are diggin up these ti4200 cards?
that is an old ass card considering the rate of graphics card advancement.

and no i wouldnt call a 5700 an upgrade either except you kinda have a better feature set.
but framerates will likely drop

Click to expand...

Judging by the rate of working vs. broken .. my guess is the garbage.

In November 2004 I RMA'd them my ti4600 that had a bad fan and the one that they advanced RMA'd me back worked fine. Yes it was almost a year ago but the card was still old then. Their bins are probably low on those parts and should just do upgrades to something more recent (but still old so that it doesn't become common).

There are alot of Geforce 4 Ti 4x00 series cards out there. Especially Ti4200's. They are simply plentiful. They were hot sellers as they were extremely cheap and offered great stock performance, and could be overclocked to perform as good as the Ti4600 in some cases.

Well, it seems like the company has good intentions and at least half of the system is doing it's job. Where the ball is getting dropped however is on the hardware QA end. I too wonder where these ti4200 are materializing from. If I were BFG, I would have sold off my inventory of those completely long ago, in favor of simply substituting upgrade cards as RMA replacements. From an accounting standpoint this is much more economical, plus it makes the customer happy (especially when the damn card works)!

Hopefully your 5700 does the trick...if this one is DOA as well, I think you should see an exorcist.

FWIW, if you search around on these forums, you'll find tons of BFG support troubles. I wouldn't say it's any WORSE than any other company, but it's not really any better. Support is as support is, BFG is just another company like any other. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not...but it's certainly not this uniquely stellar experience that everyone proclaims. It's just exactly like any other support experience.

(FWIW, I had two seperate sets of bad experiences with BFG, spaced several months apart. First, I had an ancient...well, not as ancient as your card, true...but an ancient 128mb, 128-bit FX 5200 Ultra die, which they replaced with a 128mb 64-bit FX 5200. Nice of them! They did replace that with an FX 5700 once I complained enough about it.

'Bout 6 months later, I didn't even deal with BFG tech support, but just bought a 6600GT OC from Best Buy that artifacted in a very odd way. Exchanged that for another 6600GT OC from Best Buy....that did the very same thing! At that point, I was worried about my system - or something - it artifacted the same in two systems, so just bought the only other PCI-E card Best Buy had before doing anything with the second 6600 at all....the X800XL PCI-E I have in my sig. Well, that worked fine! So, dunno, just returned the 6600GT and that was that.

Which I'm not saying is necessarily any worse than any other manufacturer. It's just not better, which is the claim always made about them. They are merely the same.)

my guess is op is just posting this so the bfg guy will pop up and mail him a new one

I know multiple people who RMA'd FX 59xx's and got 6800 GT's in return, I think it's because you had a 4200 and not a higher end card.

wahoyaho said:

my guess is op is just posting this so the bfg guy will pop up and mail him a new one

Click to expand...

Not at all, I already have a card in the mail. If that was my intention, I'd not have waited until the 3rd card to share this with everyone.

I was just sharing an experience to contrast all of the overwhelming positive reviews of the BFG RMA process. That was the primary reason for posting this story. I was shocked at how poorly this process went, but I also do have to say, they are fixing the problems that occured along the way. Their reputation just seems to be inflated.

An earlier reply hit the nail on the head, the problem isn't with the people on the phones (for the most part anyways), its with the hardware QA people who either are sending out deffective cards, or untested cards, or not packing them properly to prevent damage.

I am not looking for any upgrade what-so-ever. I would have been a happy BFG camper if I was mailed a replacement ti4200 that worked perfectly the first time I sent my card in. I'd have likely come in here praising them for doing just that. But I mean, if I end up with a WORSE card than I sent them, and they tell me it's an upgrade .. after all this mess.

I haven't recieved the (hopefully) final card. If it works, reguardless if it is even a bit of a step down, I will just call it quits with bothering them, and wasting my time. I am just praying that I never have to go through this with my 6800gt or anything else for that matter.

sorry i didn't mean for that to sound negative but now i look back at it, it kind of is. but maybe they should give you a 6600 at least if they are giving 6800gt to 5900s.

by lifetime warranty did they mean your life time or the life time of the card? if it's the prior, then they definitely should have some at least still working in stock :x

wahoyaho said:

sorry i didn't mean for that to sound negative but now i look back at it, it kind of is. but maybe they should give you a 6600 at least if they are giving 6800gt to 5900s.

by lifetime warranty did they mean your life time or the life time of the card? if it's the prior, then they definitely should have some at least still working in stock :x

Click to expand...

till the end of time lifetime if thay dont have/make that card any more thay send a new card thats in the same range as the old one was when it was new

so why are they still trying to send him a 4200

I'm also curious why they have Ti4200s stockpiled or w/e. Anyway, It is good that they stepped up and didn't require you to pay shipping in the end and that they didn't BS you around too much. As long as the FX 5700 is working OK, that's all that matters. It definately does have a better feature set than the Ti4200.

The problem is in the people at bfg sending the new cards out....I too recieved a bad card from RMA....It was a 6800gt with obvious burn marks on it, and had that unique burnt electronics smell...No way in hell I'm frying my gaming rig with that...So I too am getting a new card with them paying shipping back....And if you're going to make a mistake, at least don't send out an obviously burnt up card.....GOD (SOME PEOPLE) ARE SO DUMB!!!! (In the Napoleon Dynamite voice...)

Shameless Liar said:

I'm also curious why they have Ti4200s stockpiled or w/e. Anyway, It is good that they stepped up and didn't require you to pay shipping in the end and that they didn't BS you around too much. As long as the FX 5700 is working OK, that's all that matters. It definately does have a better feature set than the Ti4200.

Click to expand...

Yea, well as I said they sent 2 replacement ti4200s so far (granted non-working) but they indeed seem to have a pile of them setting around waiting to send out to people. I am supprised to hear of 5900 owners getting 6800 cards, because with my situation, it has been a struggle to get a working version of the same card, or even a card that performs as well, let alone a crazy upgrade like that.

Infact, I don't particularly like hearing stories like that. If a company starts sending out upgrades for cards, people will start breaking their cards just to get them replaced and it really puts a strain on the whole system.

I still think BFG is a good company, and I think the people taking phone calls have done all they can, but I really hope the people inspecting the hardware start doing their job better. It could very well be all one giant fluke, but you tend not to hear a lot of bad things about BFG, and all good. Like every company, it seems they too have flaws. Thank goodness their phone support is based in the US and they all speak clear english and are friendly. I don't even want to IMAGINE how this would have went if I was being sent to an India call center for a company based out of China. What a NIGHTMARE.

This post is reminding me of my current situation with ATI. I bought an artifacting card, sent it out on my cash, got one back, artifacts again. I'm now arranging the advanced shipping of my next card. If this next x850Xt doesn't work out the least they can do to make up for it is either step it up with their QA or send me an x1800XT. Damn it...

I just RMA'd my 6800 ultra. had replacement within a week. no problems no hasel.

the 'trade your old card in for new card' deal comes to mind in this situation

Maybe a stupid question, but...in some states/areas, don't they still X-Ray some packages to make sure they don't contain Anthrax, SARS, home-made bombs and that kind of crap? Maybe they thought it was a remote detonation device or something like that and had it scanned just to be sure (it turned out negative of course)...and maybe that's why the graphics cards are fried (pun intended)?

What I take out of this situation is the fact that BFG is legitimately trying to do right by their customers. After the first mistake they did the advanced shipping with a prepaid return shipping, and now I assume they are doing the same with the upgrade card they are sending out. Mistakes happen, it is called human error. Somebody at BFG dropped the ball on the Hardware QA as you said. What makes BFG so good is that they are sincerely working (it sounds) to resolve this problem for you...even on such an old card. In the end isn't that really all you should ask for from a company for their RMA service? About the only thing I would say needs improving is all the hoops they made you jump through on the tech support end.

While I agree they are legitimately doing something right here by fixing the situation, I have been dealing with a company for a month about something that should have taken a week. And I still am not finished. I still don't have a working video card, and if it were not for me being an enthusiast, and having other cards, I would have been out of a video card for a month now.

That is not acceptable, and while some things are going right here, they are not all going right.

I don't pretend like errors don't happen, but in this situation it wasn't just one. And now, I am waiting to see if this "upgrade" situation they have set-up is even an upgrade at all. My original point is, there are possibly some problems with the system that possibly need to be fixed. Some parts of the system are working fine, and others need possible consideration. (In my situation, it's not a possibility but a fact.)

I don't pretend like this will happen to you, and I wouldn't wish it upon anyone, but atleast have comfort in knowning if it DOES happen to you, they'll try to fix it. Just hope your situation doesn't need fixing, and be prepaired incase it does happen.

i just had a ti 4200 replaced also first try no go 2nd try it worked i couldnt believe they have ti 4200 still sitting around heh.

I had to call into the BFG tech line last night... Was setting up a 6600 SLI system and couldn't figure out how to enable SLI (no option in the NV control panel) The guy on the phone was really no help, but they did answer my call in less than a minute. I got off the phone and determined that one of the two 6600 cards I had was bad; it wouldn't post all by itself. DOA out of the box really sucks!

My DOA card will ship out today and I'm hoping to get a working card back.

Most companies will blow out used and working refurb parts as their RMA product. It seems like I've only received new product once or twice when returning electronic parts.
I know this is true of Dell, Asus, MSI, ABIT, Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate, and Plextor....

That's no excuse for not testing the parts though...

It actually saves time and money to put a guy in charge of testing stuff right before it goes out the door...

If i was BFG and sent out a bad card,i would have tested the next replacement to make dam sure it worked right. But then they have people working there that dont give a shit.OBVIOUSLY

BFG support leaves A LOT to be desired. I am on my second 6800GT and despite numerous phone calls to the company they won't accept that the artifacting and rediculous high temps created by the card are any fault of their product. So far, as per their recommendations, I have tried a number of different PSU's (they thought that maybe my Enermax 6501 might have been the root of the problem), had to reinstall Windows (their expert techs told me to monkey around with my IRQ's to the point that my system would no longer boot), and at the end of the day the card still doesn't work worth a damn. To play any game without artifacting, I have to manually lower my core to 330 at which point the performance is dismal. At normal clocks, the card sits at about 75C at idle, and jumps to near 120 temps under load. I don't know whether it just applies to Canada or not, but they told me that if I did opt to RMA the card that I would not have the option to give a CC number and have them ship and advance card for use in the meantime, and I was also told that turn around time for them to recieve, inspect, perform repairs, repackage, and resend the card would take about six weeks. At this point I said fuck it and just made a mental note never to buy another damn product from these sheisters as long as I live.

loafer87gt said:

BFG support leaves A LOT to be desired. I am on my second 6800GT and despite numerous phone calls to the company they won't accept that the artifacting and rediculous high temps created by the card are any fault of their product. So far, as per their recommendations, I have tried a number of different PSU's (they thought that maybe my Enermax 6501 might have been the root of the problem), had to reinstall Windows (their expert techs told me to monkey around with my IRQ's to the point that my system would no longer boot), and at the end of the day the card still doesn't work worth a damn. To play any game without artifacting, I have to manually lower my core to 330 at which point the performance is dismal. At normal clocks, the card sits at about 75C at idle, and jumps to near 120 temps under load. I don't know whether it just applies to Canada or not, but they told me that if I did opt to RMA the card that I would not have the option to give a CC number and have them ship and advance card for use in the meantime, and I was also told that turn around time for them to recieve, inspect, perform repairs, repackage, and resend the card would take about six weeks. At this point I said fuck it and just made a mental note never to buy another damn product from these sheisters as long as I live.

Click to expand...

you must of got a new guy there turn aroud is like a week at most normal id bet the 6 weeks is just a guess for shipping to canada

Yea, I went to ship something to Canada and it's crazy trying to get stuff there in a reasonable amount of time without filing all kinds of crazy customs forms and spending a fortune. I am sure it's a Canadian thing reguarding ship times. Like I said earlier, the turn around time was exactly as promised, I just happened to recieve some bad products.

And again, I am not finished with this whole escapade. I never once felt as though BFG was going to leave me out to dry. They do indeed stand up to their warrenty. I don't agree with the full on crap throwing fest targeted at BFG, and that wasn't my intention either. As I have said in previous posts, all I am doing is sharing one mans experience.

I have a dusty room; and was getting artifacting issues whilst gaming over the summer (90+ ambient in my bedroom)

So i looked and my 6800gt was nastily dusty (had it for 8 months) and temperatures were idling upper 60s; popping 100 while load. It was also the silver blue led cooler that I had heard was worse then the reference design (look scooler though).

so I called up bfg; talked to the guy for a few minutes about it. After about 5 min bsing with him about cooling differences between reference and the cooler i had; he told me they were the same; and pre-shipped me a new 6800gt with the same cooler, with the pre-shipping lable (no charge on my cc ever showed up)

New card runs alot cooler, the "auto overclock" puts it at ~425 1.09; higher then the previous card hit, andseems to be brand new. I couldnt complain at all; painless experience

ChronicTrees said:

I know multiple people who RMA'd FX 59xx's and got 6800 GT's in return, I think it's because you had a 4200 and not a higher end card.

Click to expand...

I've had this happen with BFG. I RMA'd a 6800 vanilla and got a 6800GT in return.

However it doesn't work quite properly and I am in the middle of yet another RMA.

It's seems as though testing these replacement cards would solve a great deal of problems.

you know im suprised the BFG PR Guy hasnt posted in this thread yet

I wanted to add my experience with BFG. I called them up when my 6800gt wasn't working and the tech support seemed somewhat knowledgeable, after they could solve the problem they set me up for an rma. I sent out the card and was told to expect a new one in 1 week. After a week i called them and they said it was dealyed and was shipping that day and to expect it in 3 days. I didn't get it in three days and i called them again, and i got the same response. This went on for over 2 months. Eventually i ended up talking to someone high in the company when i refused to talk to any of the support people on the phone and i got my card in 2 hours. They actually had someone drive their car to my house and drop it off.

stealthy123 said:

I am curious where on earth they are diggin up these ti4200 cards?
that is an old ass card considering the rate of graphics card advancement.

and no i wouldnt call a 5700 an upgrade either except you kinda have a better feature set.
but framerates will likely drop

Click to expand...

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=163&card2=138

cx323 said:

I wanted to add my experience with BFG. I called them up when my 6800gt wasn't working and the tech support seemed somewhat knowledgeable, after they could solve the problem they set me up for an rma. I sent out the card and was told to expect a new one in 1 week. After a week i called them and they said it was dealyed and was shipping that day and to expect it in 3 days. I didn't get it in three days and i called them again, and i got the same response. This went on for over 2 months. Eventually i ended up talking to someone high in the company when i refused to talk to any of the support people on the phone and i got my card in 2 hours. They actually had someone drive their car to my house and drop it off.

Click to expand...

And it damn well should have been the owner of the company.

My BFG experience. At the end of September, my BFG 6800-128 started losing it’s video signal intermittently. After some troubleshooting on my own I called BFG tech support. After more troubleshooting it was determined the card was bad. Went through the process of sending the card with RMA ($9 for 3 day service). While I was waiting, I decided it was time for an upgrade since Quake 4 was just around the corner. I purchased a Radeon X850-XT that works great. About a week later my BFG replacement arrived and, much to my surprise, the card they sent was a 6800 GT with 256MB of memory. Awesome…except, it didn’t work; it wouldn’t even post, no signal. I called tech support, got them to agree the card was bad, sent it back and got another 6800 GT-256 within a week. It worked great and now resides in my son’s computer.

My take after this experience and reading this post and other replies; BFG’s RMA department has some problems. It seems they are too quick to send out replacement cards resulting in many people receiving defective units and the subsequent issues resulting from that. On the upside, they don’t seem to hesitate when it comes to sending “upgrade” cards, especially if there are problems during the replacement process.

While we may find this process annoying, the bottom line is, BFG really does a nice job standing behind their products – especially when compared to other companies in the consumer electronics business.

Hmmm. On Saturday, I was pleased because BFG happily set me up for an RMA of my 6800GT OC which failed after nine months of perfect operation. I dropped it off at UPS half an hour ago, and just read this thread. Wish me luck!

alex_law said:

Hmmm. On Saturday, I was pleased because BFG happily set me up for an RMA of my 6800GT OC which failed after nine months of perfect operation. I dropped it off at UPS half an hour ago, and just read this thread. Wish me luck!

Click to expand...

Actually, what alarms me in retrospect is the number of people having problems with BFG cards. There seems to be a lot of “after working flawlessly for x months…” comments around the web which is exactly what happened to mine…

My symptoms were, starting about a month ago, occasional lack of sync when powering up the computer. Then, on Saturday morning during some horrendous BF2 attack helicopter behaviour on my part, poof! The display artifacted to the point of not being able to recognize anything. Subsequent reboots showed flashing characters and lines all over the BIOS and so on.

This is in a case with seven fans, customized to have a large fan blowing on the card itself, in a cool, dust-free room.

I'm not sure whether it's a BFG problem or not - it almost seems that this generation of cards pushed the envelope too far. I don't recall any previous generations having power/cooling requirements anything like these.