MSI RMA Service - negative experience

I

Iching

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 29, 2008
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I just wanted to share a negative experience RMAing my MSI GTX1080 AERO OC. I requested a fan replacement since it was making annoying sounds at low speeds. Sent the card in, of course, they sit on it for as long as they can and send it back. Low and behold, get the card back and there is a scratch on the back of the PCB. Call them up again, they issue expedited RMA and all. They sit on the card even longer this time, apparently it can be up to three months. Must be the coronovarious taking over... Same card gets sent back, it works for now but has no resale value in my view there is damage to the pcb. All I requested was a fan replacement. It was the first time in many years I had to rma a product and receive rubbish customer service. After all it's an Asian company so warranty/service are always sub-par. Definitely don't recommend MSI in the future.
 
Sending in a $700 card that has been used for over a year (I assume) for a fan replacement that would cost maybe 60 bux for a whole new cooler with fan probably wasn't the best idea to begin with.

Just sayin'
 
DrLobotomy said:
Sending in a $700 card that has been used for over a year (I assume) for a fan replacement that would cost maybe 60 bux for a whole new cooler with fan probably wasn't the best idea to begin with.

Just sayin'
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i had no idea they sold 800 dollar cards with NO backplate? yuck
 
I did the same thing with a Sapphire Radeon 7950 back in the day...working card with bad fan...under warranty. Never did get a working card back after 3 tries.

I disagree with DrLobotomy. If it's under warranty, why spend $60 to fix it yourself. If you're going to do that, you might as well save money and buy used.
 
DrLobotomy said:
Sending in a $700 card that has been used for over a year (I assume) for a fan replacement that would cost maybe 60 bux for a whole new cooler with fan probably wasn't the best idea to begin with.

Just sayin'
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It's still under warranty. I asked if they could send me the fan and they refused. Let me upload the picture of the scratch. It's very subtle. It's the fact they couldn't even quantify the extent how long it's going to take to fix it.
 
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I can empathize with you. I sent my Z270 motherboard to Gigabyte for an RMA. It had a single broken transistor on the bottom that caused it to not POST. I assumed such a minor repair would be easy for a company which manufactures motherboards like Gigabyte.

I mailed the motherboard on December 8th. It wasn't until February 21st that they said they would send me a check to replace it. This was after numerous phone calls and emails to their RMA department prodding and pleading with them to move my case. Absolutely disgusting.
 
here's how it's done ... EVGA

https://hardforum.com/threads/evga-rma-support.1990916/

kirbyrj said:
I disagree with DrLobotomy. If it's under warranty, why spend $60 to fix it yourself. If you're going to do that, you might as well save money and buy used.
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my "guess" is that DrLobotomy (geesh just read their ID LOL) works for or has a vested interest in MSI, ASUS or any of the other comnpanies that have been thieving off the customers for years now

Just sayin'
 
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The production lines, the customer support people, and the people who physically work with returns are all separate departments, likely geographically separate.

I have plenty of quality products from MSI, but that doesn't mean that I'd expect quality from their RMA process, or not.
 
I am sure you are fully aware MSI will deny RMA if there is any physical damage to the product. Photo for your reference. The guy from MSI was polite but had the balls to ask me if the card works. Really?
1C0EF25F-C1C7-4CD4-8919-AC90882AE21F.jpeg
 
HAL_404 said:
here's how it's done ... EVGA

https://hardforum.com/threads/evga-rma-support.1990916/



my "guess" is that DrLobotomy (geesh just read their ID LOL) works for or has a vested interest in MSI, ASUS or any of the other comnpanies that have been thieving off the customers for years now

Just sayin'
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I don't want to attack anyone personally but his alais speaks for itself. He made a 50 IQ comment that's for sure.
 
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I had to RMA 2 2080ti Seahawk X EK’s to MSI.

First one they shipped back in a week. The other one took forever, over a month. Luckily I had a backup card laying around.

I thought it was the niche nature of the card. Maybe MSI just sucks at RMAs.
 
I've only had good experiences with MSI RMAs. Had a bad fan on a 280X and they had a replacement provided in about a week, then they later replaced a 290X with a 390X in the same timeframe. This was awhile ago so not sure if anything has changed with them though.
 
Had an issue with a fan on an EVGA 1080ti and they shipped the replacement card the same day. You can call and get a person on the phone that not only natively speaks English but also has a decent idea of what they're talking about.

If I'm buying Nvidia I'm buying EVGA. They've always been good to me.
 
Iching said:
I am sure you are fully aware MSI will deny RMA if there is any physical damage to the product. Photo for your reference. The guy from MSI was polite but had the balls to ask me if the card works. Reall
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umm the one on the left should look like the one on the right. it looks damaged to me. does it work?

1583039704181.png
 
It does work but I really don't know how to go about it. It seems the resistor is hanging by the thread. I'm no expert but it seems this area has to do with sli. Am i right?
 
I've RMA'd motherboards and video cards to MSI and I always got good, quick service. YMMV.

Best deal was when I RMA'd a normal 5870 and they sent me a 5870 Lightning as a substitute. I made out on that deal.
 
ok, only thing that makes sense to me as to why a SLI connector trace is missing/damaged is that they put your serial tag on a different used card and sent it back too you and no one saw the trace missing/damage. Why else would you send in a card for a fan problem and get back a card with missing/damaged trace :barefoot:
 
HAL_404 said:
ok, only thing that makes sense to me as to why a SLI connector trace is missing/damaged is that they put your serial tag on a different used card and sent it back too you and no one saw the trace missing/damage. Why else would you send in a card for a fan problem and get back a card with missing/damaged trace :barefoot:
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It's very hard for me to quantify. They were polite but borderline retards. The guy asked me if the card works I should be using it. It was only for the fan replacement.
 
Iching said:
I am sure you are fully aware MSI will deny RMA if there is any physical damage to the product. Photo for your reference. The guy from MSI was polite but had the balls to ask me if the card works. Really?View attachment 226898
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There’s actually an SMD cap that’s gotten scraped off the card there. Be careful not to lose it.
I could repair that if you wanted to send it to me, but you’d be forgiven for not wanting to send this card to a stranger from the internet.

For the record, I agree that that’s some poor customer service, and pretty irresponsible of them to expect you to test a card with visible damage like that. With the right damage, it could wreak all sorts of havoc on the rest of the system, although this looks pretty benign. Did they at least replace the fans like you wanted?
 
RazorWind said:
There’s actually an SMD cap that’s gotten scraped off the card there. Be careful not to lose it.
I could repair that if you wanted to send it to me, but you’d be forgiven for not wanting to send this card to a stranger from the internet.

For the record, I agree that that’s some poor customer service, and pretty irresponsible of them to expect you to test a card with visible damage like that. With the right damage, it could wreak all sorts of havoc on the rest of the system, although this looks pretty benign. Did they at least replace the fans like you wanted?
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1st rma was fast and they replaced the fan however as soon as I opened the box and Ia m very OCD I was... What is this? I called them right away, and they approved advanced RMA. The 2nd one took almost 6 weeks. They just sent the card back. Thank you for explaining. I think the part deals with sli not the card itself.
 
Iching said:
1st rma was fast and they replaced the fan however as soon as I opened the box and Ia m very OCD I was... What is this? I called them right away, and they approved advanced RMA. The 2nd one took almost 6 weeks. They just sent the card back. Thank you for explaining. I think the part deals with sli not the card itself.
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Yeah, looking at the photo again, it's clearly the SLI connector. If you don't intend to use the card as part of an SLI setup, you could probably just ignore this, and never have a problem. It actually might even work in an SLI setup, anyway. The ripped trace is most likely a ground, with the capacitor being used for noise suppression on a connected data line. You should obviously RMA the card again and demand that they replace it, but if you somehow run out of options on that front, as I said before, I can most likely repair that for you, if you care to send it to me. I've made a few threads in the past year or so about repairing cards that are damaged more seriously than this, and I'd be happy to fix yours if you can't get MSI to fix it.
 
RazorWind said:
Yeah, looking at the photo again, it's clearly the SLI connector. If you don't intend to use the card as part of an SLI setup, you could probably just ignore this, and never have a problem. It actually might even work in an SLI setup, anyway. The ripped trace is most likely a ground, with the capacitor being used for noise suppression on a connected data line. You should obviously RMA the card again and demand that they replace it, but if you somehow run out of options on that front, as I said before, I can most likely repair that for you, if you care to send it to me. I've made a few threads in the past year or so about repairing cards that are damaged more seriously than this, and I'd be happy to fix yours if you can't get MSI to fix it.
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You do that? Nice set of skills you have. I will give them a call. The card is undervolted to 0.875 and for a blower is fairly quiet.
 
with the right tools and a steady hand you can lay the trace and cap back into place and re-flow/solder them, then seal the black pcb coating.
 
This is why I still use physical stores for certain purchases. They value me as customer and fight for each RMA I need. To which extent they fight I don't even know, I just drop the card off and they call me a bit later with a fix or replacement.
I say this from an all MSI system... Knock on wood
 
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