Chaintech video card warranty and RMA?

[augiem]

Hey,

Does anyone know what the warranty usually is for Chaintech video cards? 1-yr? Lifetime?

The card is Chaintech TI-4600 Retail Box - all cables, software, etc. But I can find NOTHING about a warranty on the box or in the manual.

About 9 months ago I bought a "refurbed" TI-4600 from Newegg that turned out to be a defective card. (Yeah, Newegg and their FALSE "refurbs" ... I smell a class action coming) Anyway, because of circumstances, I didn't find out that the card was defective until after it was too late to RMA it to Newegg.

Basically the card is warped and has a hard time keeping contact with the AGP pins. If you prop the far end of the card up with a box, it seems to be fine. If not, you get random garbled boxes running vertically down the display as soon as windows starts.

I'd like to RMA it... I see people complain about a $30 fee just to look at the item. Is that still true? Anyone RMA and old card lately and get a shiny new 5900XT or something as a replacement like some of the other companies have done?

Anyway, any user experience with this seemingly very customer unfriendly company would be appreciated.

Augie

 

[SgtZulu]

Yes, pitch it in the trash and stop whining

 

[augiem]

Hmm, if you called being a dissatisfied customer, trying to find some help because I was lied to by the retailer and am practically ignored the manufacturer whining... I'll keep on whining till hell freezes over!

If everybody thought like that, we'd all have the standard of living of Russia under communism. Here, take it and be happy. If you're not, who cares. Great attitude.

 

[high]

call chaintech's tech support and see what they're saying..?

you know the routine, if you get the run around, ask for a supervisor, then a manager, etc, etc... until somebody does something for you.

 

[nitromullet]

About 9 months ago I bought a "refurbed" TI-4600 from Newegg that turned out to be a defective card. (Yeah, Newegg and their FALSE "refurbs" ... I smell a class action coming) Anyway, because of circumstances, I didn't find out that the card was defective until after it was too late to RMA it to Newegg.

Hmm, if you called being a dissatisfied customer, trying to find some help because I was lied to by the retailer and am practically ignored the manufacturer whining... I'll keep on whining till hell freezes over!

If everybody thought like that, we'd all have the standard of living of Russia under communism. Here, take it and be happy. If you're not, who cares. Great attitude

Newegg makes no bones about the fact that you are taking a risk when you buy a refurb from them...

They warn you TWICE!!!

Newegg.com does not test any product, including refurbished items. Refurbished components are therefore only tested by the original manufacturer. Due to the varying quality of manufacturer testing, YOU ARE TAKING A RISK BUYING REFURBISHED PRODUCTS. Refurbished items are OPEN BOX products that contain components that have previously been owned by other clients and returned to Newegg.com. These products are sold considerably under cost.

IMPORTANT!

Your order contains a Refurbish product(s). Please read the following before you proceed:

Newegg.com does not test any product, including Refurbish items. Refurbish items therefore are only tested by the original manufacturer. Due to varying qualities between manufacturers, YOU ARE TAKING A RISK BUYING REFURBISH PRODUCTS.

Refurbish merchandise are OPEN BOX products that contain components that have been owned by other clients and returned to Newegg.com. The products are sold considerably under cost. Newegg.com guarantees all Refurbish products for 15 days only. CPUs, however, only have 7 days for refund. All Refurbish items are considered OEM "barebone" parts.

Barebone means Newegg.com can only guarantee the item by itself, no other accessories. No matter what the product description says, Refurbish products may not have all the other accessories. Newegg.com is limited to the barebone part of the item itself. Do not be upset or surprised if your Refurbish product does not contain any cables, adaptor, manual, CD, drivers, fan, etc. Newegg.com will not send you any missing accessories, even if it is an essential part.

While Newegg.com does not like to discourage sales, only the experienced PC enthusiast should purchase Refurbish items and know how to deal with missing accessories. Only buy Refurbish products if you are willing to resolve defects and/or know how to find missing accessories.

Refurbish products do have a considerably higher return rate than brand new items. If you are just looking to get a good deal, please only buy new products.

YOU ARE TAKING A RISK BUYING REFURBISH PRODUCTS.

I'm not saying it doesn't suck for you to have a defective card, but I don't see how you wouldn't have noticed the card was BENT within 15 days. Blame Chaintech, not Newegg. I don't see how Newegg lied to you, and I don't see any class actions against the Egg anytime soon.

It is comsumers like you that drive the price up for the rest of us.Having live customer service/support for a company is extremly expensive and is factored into the cost of their goods/services. So, when you call them beyond the time for an RMA clearly stated in their terms that you agreed to (you must click "I Agree" at the bottom of the longer disclaimer I posted above to complete your transaction) you are costing the business money, which they transfer to the rest of us. You state that you were unable to install the card in the requisite time because of "circumstances", whose circumstances? Your's, not Newegg's...

Again, I'm sorry that your card is borked, but I don't think you have the right to claim that the retailer lied to you and that their business practices are shady. You took a risk to save a buck (against Newegg's recommendation), and because of your own circumstances, you got burned. Does Newegg need to include a small comprehension test in their disclaimer next time to make sure that you actually understand what they are saying? When you click "I Agree", it means that you accept those terms for the transaction, not that you accept as long as you don't have circumstances.

/end rant

 

[Zebo]

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Sincerely,


Chaintech Customer Support






Disclaimer:
This is a parody. I am in no way associated with Chaintech nor impling they have bad customer support.

 

[Corporate Thug]

^^^

LOL

 

[Schadenfroh]

you think chaintek is bad, try our friends at PNY customer suckers

 

[MDE]

IMO Newegg should have never sent out a bent card but they warn you multiple times before you click buy. I had a bad refurb XP 2200+ but I returned it to Newegg in time.

 

[augiem]

>> Newegg makes no bones about the fact that you are taking a risk when you buy a refurb from them...

Yes, but I know that Newegg makes a habit of reselling cards returned as bad. It's like a "refurb" pool... Someone gets it, it's bad, returns in 15 days, they resell it again. A REFURBISHED card is inspected by the manufacturer, TESTED!!!, stamped as OK. These should be called Open box cards, NOT refurbished.

>>I'm not saying it doesn't suck for you to have a defective card, but I don't see how you wouldn't have
>>noticed the card was BENT within 15 days.

First of all, the card is ever so slightly warped. JUST enough to cause contact problems, but not even in every computer. Tell me the last time you held a video card up to a light to tell if it's slightly bent.

Here's the story.
I ordered this card from Newegg, but the same day I made a deal with someone on Anandtech to trade for his 4600. It was too late to cancel the Newegg order, so I decided I'd just sell one of them afterwards. I DID TEST this chaintech in my system, and even used it for a few days and it worked fine. (I guess it managed to seat itself properly somehow...) Then I posted a FS: TI-4600, gave the buyer his choice of the chaintech or the MSI (the other one I got)... The buyer chose the chaintech, so I took it out of my CPU and sent it to him, and I started using the MSI.

He found the problem, found out it was bent, etc, tried to accuse me of selling him something defective, so I just swapped him for the MSI, and now I have the Chaintech. By then, the RMA was well over. He did try to get RMA with chaintech, but they kept giving him the runaround, not calling back, etc. That's my story.

>> Blame Chaintech, not Newegg. I don't see how Newegg lied to you, and I don't see any class actions
>> against the Egg anytime soon.

Read the reviews on some of the refurb cards. You'll figure out pretty soon they keep reshipping from a pool of defective units until they find a sucker (like me) who just swallows it. Oh, they're pure, truthful, and honest and only care about the satisfaction of their customers.... Yeah, sure.

>> It is comsumers like you that drive the price up for the rest of us.Having live customer
>> service/support for a company is extremly expensive and is factored into the cost of their
>> goods/services.

Okay, this is just plain BS and I take offense to this. Do you know how many times in my life I have used services like Technical support and RMA? I'd say THREE at MAX, and I've been using computers heavily for 20 years.

>>Again, I'm sorry that your card is borked, but I don't think you have the right to claim that the retailer
>>lied to you and that their business practices are shady. You took a risk to save a buck

I reiterate... re·fur·bish : To make clean, bright, or fresh again; renovate.

Augie

 

[KF]

Hey Augie, I think I agree with you mostly. It is not correct to call Neweggs system refurbishing. "Re" has a meaning. If these items are not redone somehow, not brought up to full working order, not retested and confirmed to be in full working order, then they are not refurbished. Now, items with cosmetic defects or wear that does not impair function, could fairly be called refurbished. A very slightly bent card that probably works in a lot of mobos could legitimately be a refurb, though.

I have seen the reports here on Newegg's so-called refurbs from a lot of people, so I think I know what they really are. But no matter if you read through every word of Newegg's info, they still make it sound as if the manufacture (although NOT Newegg) has refurbished the items, and that seems NOT to be the case.

I don't think you are one of the guys running up the prices for everyone else. Everyone that buys something SHOULD receive a correctly working item. Seeing to that is a cost of doing business, and it should be. If your business sells a defective item, and that costs the business something, that is just as it should be. Selling defective items is the problem, not the customer's insistance that it not be defective.

Neweggs warnings have gotten better over the years (in places) but if they just made it clear that these items are NOT REFURBISHED, that the working status of the item is unknown to them, and that the discount is meant to cover the risk of additional costs that may be incurred to the purchaser, no reasonable person could complain. Newegg does not quite do that, IMO.

As for Chaintech, they seem like a lot of the Taiwan companies. They really want you to deal through the dealers. That is supposed to be one of the functions of the dealers, one of the reasons manufacturers seldom sell direct. Some companies do not want to get into direct consumer transactions at all. Most of the returns are fully functional, and the actual problem is "user error." Companies expect that to be the case, and treat everyone that way. If they make it too simple, more people will not do thorough debugging on their own, and not go through the expected dealer channels.

It is surprising to me that no one here knows anything at all about Chaintech's policies. I wonder what that means. A couple of weeks ago I found out no one knew what MSI's policies were. Hard to believe, because MSI is huge.

15 days for returns is pretty tight. One refurb from Newegg took 11 days from Neweggs counting time to get delivered. If there had been a hitch with any of the other items, I could not have determined that the refurb was non-functional before the deadline. People without backup parts to substitute should keep that in mind before they try a refurb.

 

[nitromullet]

IF these cards are not actually refurbed, then that would be a different story and Newegg should be held accountable. However you might want of have some proof of this before you state this as fact in a public forum.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
you think chaintek is bad, try our friends at PNY customer suckers

They will RMA the card if you bitch enough, but youre right PNY is a huge pain in the ass to RMA through as well.

<= RMAd a Ti500 through PNY.