Bought a GTX 760 in September of '13 and had it smoke itself by October of '13 due to infant mortality of a power delivery component on the board (couldn't tell if it was a MOSFET, VRM, or power cap). The 3 year rapid replacement warranty is awesome and I get a new one sent out to me promptly. I was a little upset I had to pay return shipping for the defect part but I was in a hurry and didn't think about advance RMA. Fast forward to September of '16 and the same thing happens again - smoked power delivery component - card is still under original 3 year warranty from date of purchase by a week or two.
I call up Tech Support/Cust. Service and they confirm warranty is still good, albeit barely. I proceed to claw my way into an advance RMA because I'm not paying $20 to ship a now $100ish dollar part that has now within a 3 year period had the same defect twice. I get emails and phone calls this week from the CID (Customer Induced Damage) department saying my quote is ready and needs to be paid in order to proceed with the RMA process. Confused, I call back and it was like I was talking to a broken record "Warranty does not cover physical damage to the card, burns are visible. Nobody should have said this was covered under warranty, somebody screwed up." Regardless of how many times I explained that the card was replaced, without cost to me, due to the same issue almost 3 years prior, the answer was always the quoted text above.
To me, warranty coverage means just that - it is covered. Why am I going to pay $200 to fix a now $100 card that failed under warranty when $250 bucks could get me a card that is 3x better comparatively. That's why I pay the premium and grab ASUS products to start with - because I rarely, if ever have problems; and if I do, the 3 year rapid replacement is arguably the best warranty in the business.
TLDR: Had the same GFX card smoke itself due to the same apparent issue twice in 3 years, card under warranty both times. Got free replacement on the first card, second time around I'm told I need to pay almost the original price of the card because "burn damage is not covered" even though that burn damage existed on both cards solely due to a defect of the component. Got nowhere with customer service/CID over the past few days and am starting to contemplate switching manufacturers because I've now been out of a GFX card for 2 weeks and I'm back at square zero.
I call up Tech Support/Cust. Service and they confirm warranty is still good, albeit barely. I proceed to claw my way into an advance RMA because I'm not paying $20 to ship a now $100ish dollar part that has now within a 3 year period had the same defect twice. I get emails and phone calls this week from the CID (Customer Induced Damage) department saying my quote is ready and needs to be paid in order to proceed with the RMA process. Confused, I call back and it was like I was talking to a broken record "Warranty does not cover physical damage to the card, burns are visible. Nobody should have said this was covered under warranty, somebody screwed up." Regardless of how many times I explained that the card was replaced, without cost to me, due to the same issue almost 3 years prior, the answer was always the quoted text above.
To me, warranty coverage means just that - it is covered. Why am I going to pay $200 to fix a now $100 card that failed under warranty when $250 bucks could get me a card that is 3x better comparatively. That's why I pay the premium and grab ASUS products to start with - because I rarely, if ever have problems; and if I do, the 3 year rapid replacement is arguably the best warranty in the business.
TLDR: Had the same GFX card smoke itself due to the same apparent issue twice in 3 years, card under warranty both times. Got free replacement on the first card, second time around I'm told I need to pay almost the original price of the card because "burn damage is not covered" even though that burn damage existed on both cards solely due to a defect of the component. Got nowhere with customer service/CID over the past few days and am starting to contemplate switching manufacturers because I've now been out of a GFX card for 2 weeks and I'm back at square zero.