Is MSI RMA really that crappy...?

I sent in an MSI Fuzzy industrial board over to RMA due to a dead LAN port - port has no activity, not blinking lights when a cable is plugged in - just dead.

I sent it over, get it back with NOT a single indication of what the problem was or what the solution was - in fact it's the same board with my markings (I wrote in a marker "DEAD LAN PORT" on the dead port).

Obviously when I plug the board in - and plug the cables in - it has no activity whatsoever in the dead LAN port as before.

So I call in and the conversation goes something like this:

Me: "Hi, I'd like to know what was done to the motherboard I sent in; here's my RMA number"
Rep: "Let me see..."
Me: "BTW - I received the board back with no mention of what was done to it; my original complaint was a dead LAN port - I even marked on the board which one"
Rep: "Well - just so you know, some of our techs do not READ OR SPEAK ENGLISH"
Me: "... o...k..."
Rep: "Oh and it looks like they updates the BIOS"
Me: '... the BIOS on the board IS the latest BIOS and has not resolved the problem!!!!!!"
Rep: "... here's a shipping label, send it back in..."

So I sent the board the second time and silence. A week passes - not a peep; I call in yesterday and go "What's going on?" to which I get "Oh the turnaround is 7-10 business days - you should get something by the end of the week". 20 minutes after I hang up I get an email notification that my shit has been shipped out.

Right.

So I call them up and the conversation goes as following:

Me: "I just got a notification that my RMA is being shipped back to me; can you please tell me what was done?"
Rep: "sure... lets see..."
Me: "And BTW - the original complaint I had was for a dead LAN port and the only thing done to the board when I sent it in the first time was reflash an already most-updated BIOS"
Rep: "... okay well it looks like they did a POST test on it and it passed."
Me: "... can you elaborate?"
Rep: "Uh... I don't have any additional info sorry..."
Me: "So you don't actually know whether they plugged a network cable into the dead port and the other end of the cable to a powered switch and tried to see whether the lights lit up on the NIC?"
Rep: "uhhh no sorry"

So the bottom line is the rep told me that if it does not work again, I can call in and talk to the supervisor... tomorrow I'll get that board and I am 100% certain I'll get the same result - dead NIC. I wonder how that conversation with the MSI supervisor would go...

And before anyone starts saying "har har you n00b messed something up" - the board was tested in a lab facility with multiple processors, multiple memory configuration, three different cases and power supplies and crapaton of network cables. I took everything into account prior to sending the board in.

GG MSI.

Thats too bad, but I've heard of (and personally had) some discouraging experiences with other mfgs support as well.

Honestly, I would have just bought a cheap NIC. I know that is not the point but for the amount of money it cost you to ship it, you could have had a working board.

techie81 said:

Honestly, I would have just bought a cheap NIC. I know that is not the point but for the amount of money it cost you to ship it, you could have had a working board.

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I only paid once to ship it - $5 through a FedEx account. Problem is this is a board that I am putting into a machine for a friend and the case is a mini ITX case with not much wiggle room...

VanFanel89 said:

I only paid once to ship it - $5 through a FedEx account. Problem is this is a board that I am putting into a machine for a friend and the case is a mini ITX case with not much wiggle room...

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Ah yeah. Sorry to hear about your trouble with them. Makes me kind of worried since I have several MSI products. Good luck.

Yeah I am not really worried about the product reliability - shit happens... I've had enough MSI products to know they are quite solid. It's the customer service experience that is... less than stellar.

Oh MSI - you crack me up... I got the board and they actually wiped my writing off the LAN port... but missed the little hidden marks I made.

So the lan port still doesn't work?

wow lol. That's lame.

This kinda worries me as i am looking at a msi gpu lol

this has happened to me with MSI before too. Burnt out ATX connector, explicitly identified in the RMA form. The board still POSTED though. MSI received the board, booted it and then shipped it back. You basically need to make the board unbootable for them to do anything.

I haven't had a chance to test the board yet; I am at work and it got shipped to work and sadly most of the hardware here now is server hardware with no compatible cases/power supplies.

I'll test it at my homelab.

Ouch that blows, I've only had excellent experiences w/ MSI RMAs. I've RMA'd 2 video cards and a motherboard so far and usually get products back the in a day or two since I live a couple miles away from them.

I just RMA'd one of my GTX 580s. They sent me a replacement but never indicated what was wrong with the original one. They also packed it like scroungers...it was in a static bag inside a UPS bubble wrap bag inside a AM3 motherboard box inside a MSI nettop box.

lol, I turned my computer off to swap out the memory and now it won't boot, I think it's either the HX620 or the MSI P55 GD80...

please god don't let it be the motherboard...

I have had numerous MSI vid cards no issue. Right now I am running a MSI GTX 460 and a MSI H61 mobo, only issue is the mobo makes noise if one of the power settings is set to enabled. I Called the tech support the 1st guy got me to clear my CMOS improperly. Had to call back cause my system wouldn't even restart. 2nd guy didn't believe me about the high pitch noise. Fixed it on my own with the help of some forum.

Long story short:
Msi makes great products, their engineers are clearly not bad.
The people they hire in the US to give customer support are possibly on par with people who work at burger king.

wol-va-rine said:

lol, I turned my computer off to swap out the memory and now it won't boot, I think it's either the HX620 or the MSI P55 GD80...

please god don't let it be the motherboard...

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lol, I had unplugged my computer for about an hour, if the hand of God was gonna come and fix my computer I sure as hell didn't want to electrocute him, I now just plugged it back in, pressed the power button and voila, all is right with the world again...

what.the.fuck...?

oh well...

JayteeBates said:

I just RMA'd one of my GTX 580s. They sent me a replacement but never indicated what was wrong with the original one. They also packed it like scroungers...it was in a static bag inside a UPS bubble wrap bag inside a AM3 motherboard box inside a MSI nettop box.

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That's pretty much how I got my board back... the first time they sent it in a Phillips medical equipment box.

Hm, I honestly had a super positive experience with MSI RMA process. I sent them an email with the details and I sent my mobo out and got a brand new retail box as replacement. Only cost to me was the shipping.
:edit: Here is my tip, don't talk to them, write them. I found most people manning the phones to be completely unhelpful at many places, especially Dell--they're absolutely terrible. Only time I had a 100% helpful time on the phone was with AMD to replace a cpu.

I had a good experience with MSI the one time I had to RMA. A board died during some Prime 95 stress testing (nothing was OC'd) and would no longer post. I shipped it back to them and within a few weeks I got what looked like a new board back with full retail package.

Well... as posted on another forum:

So I got the board today and - well it's an interesting situation and I guess I can see how they missed it:

This board was on 24/7 before I went it for RMA and the reason I sent it in was due to one of the LAN ports dying. When I got back, I had it plugged in but I didn't actually turn it on - I couldn't find the RAM I had - so it must've been plugged in with the PSU on for an hour or so. When I turned it on - the LAN port was dead.

Today I had all the parts readily available and I plugged it in and what do I know - all the LAN ports work! I scratched my head and then decided to boot Ubuntu live CD - when I booted it - both ports were visible so I figured I'll fold my tail and admit defeat and n00bness. But then I decided to leave it on for a while; went to grab a sammich and do my thang - come back and what do you know! One of the ports is off! In fact - Ubunutu didn't even see it.

I reboot the system - same thing.

I shut it down, disconnected the power (at this point I had my suspicions), gave it about half an hour or so, plugged it back in and voila - port works... but it took it a bit longer to die this time - about an hour and a half.

So looks like the LAN port on the board decides to die on its own whenever it feels like dying. It appears to be an intermittent issue which I can understand why they could have missed it, but it's still a problem...


Thankfully I have a bit of a backchannel so I should get a new board... I hope

Maybe a loose solder somewhere?

Really unless its a relatively smaller enthusiast oriented company known for customer service, such as Corsair for instance, these are always hit and miss and almost Russian roulette like in terms of service. I don't believe they are really any worse or better then say comparable companies such as Asus or Gigabyte on average.

I had an MSI X58 Pro-E that had stability issues.
I talked to MSI customer support and they said to go ahead and send it in for RMA.
I sent it in and got the same board back with the same problem.
I sent it in again for RMA.
This time they called and asked if I would take a X58 Platinum in its place.
I said sure since I was planning on keeping it as a spare board anyway and as long as I had a working replacement I was going to be happy.
So, I got the board and then my friends MSI X58M got damaged during a CPU swap so I was going to lend out the Platinum.
Well, the Platinum will not even POST at all...

Since the first problems with the MSI board I have become the proud owner of three X58A UD3R boards that have had zero problems.

I'll never buy another MSI motherboard again.

Send the board back, say that the problem only occurs after the board has been powered up for awhile, and demand a new board, NOT the same board back. Explain that you suspect the issue is a weak solder joint, and it won't turn up in five minute testing.

Make sure they agree to ship you a NEW board over the phone.

bake the board with the bad lan. Might fix it.

I think I am done dealing with their direct RMA dept... I'll take it to my back channels now :x

they took good care of me

Two of the three MSI items I bought needed RMA. Going to stick to Asus/Gigabyte and Galaxy from now on.

Didn't we used to have a MSI rep on the board a few months ago? Either way I hope to hell my 480 doesn't ever die on me after these horror stories.

osrk said:

bake the board with the bad lan. Might fix it.

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I chuckled. In this situation its better that he send the board in for RMA. You should only ever do that if you're out of warranty. Also if its just a joint, its easier and better to just fix it with a soldering iron/reflow station instead of baking the whole board.

Update:

It took 5 fucking RMAs, 5!!!!!!!!! But I finally got a new replacement board! 3 RMAs - they could not figure out how to fix the problem even though I spelled it out to them - absolute incompetency; I think baboons would have done a better job. 4th RMA they mis-packaged it and it came physically damaged.

After many yellings, screaming and nasty emails they finally sent me a brand new replacement which I received today.

First RMA sent in on April 4th, and this guy was received on June 15th.

Fuck you MSI. You lost a customer not because of your products but because of your sheer stupidity, incompetency and lack of any customer support.

Ultima99 said:

Thats too bad, but I've heard of (and personally had) some discouraging experiences with other mfgs support as well.

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Yeah, I think everybody has their own manufacturers they like and dislike. I personally know I'll never buy another Asus product no matter what it is because of my last experience with them for instance.

Whereas I had a problem with Biostar once, and their tech support contacted their BIOS team who seemingly whipped up a beta BIOS then and there for me. I know, that sounds crazy, but I reported a problem, a few days later they replied back with a BIOS that had the date timestamp of the same day asking me to try it and see if it resolved my issue.

Wow MSI really boogered up your RMA(s) badly. I might be in the minority, but I've succssefully RMA'd two boards (790FX-GD70 and a P67a-GD65 B3) and both were turned around in less than two weeks including transit time. - In each case, the mobo was replaced with a new one and even included a retail box with all of the accoutrements.

One thing that I've learned from doing rebates and RMA's is that you want to follow their, oftentimes, inane instructions as meticulously as possible and be as precise as you can be with documenting the issues that you are having (I've actually stuck post-it notes with arrows calling out problems on the mobo).

One thing is for sure. The old adage, "It's better to be lucky than good" definitely applies here. So far, I think I've been lucky...

I had a similar experience with one of their POS x58pro-e motherboards that had stability issues. I sent it in 3 times and they sent back the same board with nothing done and the same problem still existing. The fourth and last time they sent me some POS x58 something that was supposed to be better. The supposedly better board wouldn't even POST. I gave up out of frustration and just tossed the board.

Sounds about right. I had to rma my old 780i and when I got the board back half of the heatsink was missing. I'm sure that it was there when I sent it in. Trying to get a hold of someone to remedy the issue was a nightmare since they don't read emails and the phone line is always busy.

Found this post from googling. Just RMA'd a board that wouldn't post FF(CPU) error. Came back with Thermal paste all over the socket and a glob on the pins. Cleaned it up best I could and same error.
Inside my rma box was a mcdonalds box piece...

Inside my rma box was a mcdonalds box piece...

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Looks like the MSI technician.. *puts on glasses*.. had some fries with that RMA order.

Sounds like ASUS except at least these guys are talking to you...

Had a similar problem with a ATX power connector on an ASUS board bad soldiering (actually missing solder in one spot).

First time, tech completely missed the issue (I would post... sometimes if you hold the wires just right)
Second time I got the board back had a big lump of solder that actually fell off when I wiggled the connector.
Third time i got it back big scratch accross the back of the board (DEAD).

ASUS: " sorry we don't warranty against scratches"

I was basically SOL, after a bunch of e-mails back and forth and several months I was finally told they would give me a downgraded board worth about 40 bucks if I shipped my old one in.

There is nothing wrong with MSI. My p67a-gd65 (b3) has performed flawlessly. It was one of the first B3 boards to hit Newegg and so I scooped it up and I have 0 regrets (over a year later).

I have had several other MSI boards in the past with almost no issues. Once I did order an LGA775 MSI Board that came DOA but just RMA'd it with NewEgg and 2nd one worked fine.

I was really considering swapping motherboards this week when my Big Bang Xpower returns from RMA but I've got a LAN this weekend and I think I don't even want to fuck with it until next week after reading this.

Sigh...