BFG Tech Sending Out RMA Denial Letters, 'Winding Down Business' 327
SKYMTL writes "Once one of NVIDIA's primary board partners, BFG Tech has now officially started denying RMA requests for their supposedly 'lifetime warranty' graphics cards. According to a letter from BFG, they are '...winding down business' and are 'unable to replace' any non-working product. A sad turn of events for the thousands who bought BFG's graphics cards and power supplies."
Re:details details (Score:5, Informative)
Sad to see, but it happens. Had the same deal with a motherboard once. Couldn't get upset about it.
Re:Is it really true? (Score:5, Informative)
Still a lot better than PNY's warranty (Score:2, Informative)
In the context of a company going under, the term "lifetime" is pretty meaningless. What are you going to do, sue them? BFG had solid CS in their prime, and this really wasn't a deliberate attempt to hoodwink anyone. It would be nice of them to procure new cards for RMAs from other suppliers, but they don't really have any incentive to do so.
However, some companies, like PNY, offer a "lifetime" warranty meaning "while the card is still being manufactured by us." Needless to say, after being informed of that little loophole, I stopped buying anything from those guys!
Re:Whose lifetime? (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry what?
The reasonable lifetime of the class of product is something protected by law anyway (well, in europe). A "Lifetime Warranty" can and should be interpreted as something over and above that, a warranty or guarantee that last the lifetime of the purchaser, Much like with a zippo lighter.
Of course, yes, if the company goes tits-up then it's pretty useless.
Re:Legality? (Score:5, Informative)
If they're under administration (voluntary or not) then no, all you can do is add your name to the list of creditors. Although, you're free to sue them, but then they only need declare bankruptcy (if they haven't already) and again, you're talking to administrators. Neither will get you anywhere, as even if you succesfully registered as a creditor, your proportion of the liquidation would only be a few cents, if anything. It would like cost more to apply than you'd receive.
I applaud them for actually announcing this ahead of time, knowing they'll cop a few weeks of hatemail and angry phone calls, rather than doing what most companies do - which is pretend everything's fine, and simply put off RMAs, until the day they close up shop. Hell, they're even mailing the cards/PSUs back. While it's nothing more than a gesture (its fairly difficut to manually repair a power supply safely, and virtually impossible to repair a physically defective video card), its a nice gesture which companies who care less about their customers simply wouldn't do.
Re:Interesting thread from HardForum (Score:5, Informative)
I found this article through your interesting thread: http://www.hardocp.com/news/2010/05/18/bfgtech_exits_graphics [hardocp.com]
As Notleh on HardForum posted:
"After eight years of providing innovative, high-quality graphics cards to the market, we regret to say that this category is no longer profitable for us, although we will continue to evaluate it going forward", said John Slevin, chairman of BFG Technologies. "We will continue to provide our award-winning power supplies and gaming systems, and are working on a few new products as well. I’d like to stress that we will continue to provide RMA support for our current graphics card warranty holders, as well as for all of our other products such as power supplies, PCs and notebooks."
BFG will continue to offer RMA, telephone and email support for qualified BFG Tech graphics card warranty holders, but will no longer be bringing new graphics card products to market.
First and foremost, I have to say that HardOCP is sad to see BFGTech go. It was a company that opened up new ways of doing business with customers in the graphics card arena. The solid warranties and support you all enjoy now with high-end graphics cards companies can be traced back to BFGTech and its three founders, Scott Herkelman, Ric Lewis, and Shane Vance.
Of course our biggest concern is that our readers that have purchased BFG video cards are taken care of. Speaking this morning with then BFGTech CEO, Scott Herkelman, he assured me that BFG has taken measures to make sure full RMA and support will continue. Eight full time employees and the full group of tech support will remain in place as well as warehouse labor. That means continued 24/7 phone, email, and full RMA support for registered cards. As of today, BFG has a full reserve of cards and monies set aside to sure proper support occurs.
Re:Still a lot better than PNY's warranty (Score:3, Informative)
Re:BFG cards blow up Mobos (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lifetime Warranties... (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on the country you're in.
In the UK you have the Sale of Goods Act, which demands that goods must last a "reasonable time" from purchase ("reasonable" obviously depending on the type of product. You wouldn't expect an oil filter to last several years, for example) and the statue of limitations is six years. If the product fails within this "reasonable time", it's down to the retailer to repair or replace - though if you go direct to the manufacturer as a warranty return, then when they've replaced it you no longer have the item you bought from the retailer so they no longer have any obligation to you.
AIUI, EU law dictates that we have something like this but doesn't prescribe a 6 year statute of limitations.
So if your shiny new sofa falls to pieces after 18 months and the store says "1 year warranty! Can't touch us!" you can - at least in theory - sue them.
Thing is, most retailers can and will say "Out of warranty! Can't touch us!" and most people will say to themselves "Bugger. Suppose there's not much I can do, but I'm not buying the replacement from them." Failure to honour these rights is rife within the retail industry, and Trading Standards usually only step in with the most blatant violations (such as big signs in a physical store saying "No returns, go to the manufacturer").
Re:Legality? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, technically. But you probably don't want to know how far down the priority list customers are when it comes to bankruptcy creditors.
Roughly (IIRC, IANAL etc.), it goes 1) cost of administering the bankruptcy, 2) taxes, 3) secured debt (property and what have you), 4) employee wages and such, 5) everything else.
Customer debts come under everything else,along with, well, everything else.
Re:Whose lifetime? (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, a "lifetime" technology warranty is almost invariably for the lifecycle of that particular manufacturing line. As soon as they are no longer manufacturing replacement parts and run out of comparable stock, the warranty fine print states they no longer have to honor the warranty.
Re:Still a lot better than PNY's warranty (Score:3, Informative)
As someone else mentioned, if you have one of these cards and indeed they are winding down. You should file to be put on their creditors list. Back when Fujitsu got out of the HDD business, I got a money from part of the class action lawsuit I joined, for drive failures. But I was also on their HDD creditor list for several other drives they refused to cover. In the end I got the money I was owed for them(around 18 drives).
Anyway, I've had no shortage of problems from card manufactures the last couple of years and trying to get them to honor their warranty. From MSI to PNY, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of companies trying to screw people off either, however the other obvious way you can get at least some of your money is to go to you local court, and file a suit under small claims. In most case you'll see your money, because they'd rather just get rid of you than go to court(which costs them even more). That was the only way I could get MSI to "cover" my warranty, and by cover I mean fully refund the price of the card when it was new.
Re:details details (Score:1, Informative)
My guess is their target market wasn't even born when Doom came out with the BFG rifle, so its time for a new name.
Well, your guess would be wrong. BFG as a company is staying in business, they're just done making graphics cards since the margins have become too slim. Generally, when you intend to spread FUD about an otherwise reputable and respected company, it's considered good form to have at least a shred of evidence rather than just a guess.
Re:Whose lifetime? (Score:5, Informative)
That depends on where you are. In some countries with consumer protection, marketing phrases like "lifetime warranty" have to be defined in legible writing on the same page that makes the claim, and are considered deceptive marketing subject to heavy fines if not backed up by pre-paid insurance and escrow part supplies.
I've had warranty repairs on a product where the company had gone out of business, and this was possible precisely because the laws were designed to safeguard individuals, not corporations.
Re:details details (Score:3, Informative)
of course anybody that deals in such things (who also would be the ones that care as such about the article)
are going to be familar with the terms
Return Merchandise Authorization = RMA
Return Merchandise Authorization Center = RMAC
United Postal System = UPS
so emailing the RMAC to get both a UPS label and an RMA number is perfectly understandable.
Good Riddance (Score:2, Informative)
I know JohnnyGuru went over there and he's a stand up guy. That doesn't necessarily mean the rest of the place isn't full of clowns.
I have a BFG 680i LT SLI board and it's possibly the shoddiest designed board on the planet. There's not enough shielding built into it so if I play a very resource intensive game the PCIE bus desyncs and causes a hardware failure BSOD. Even any game that uses the graphics card even a little can cause it to BSOD if there's a source of electronic noise near by. On the 3rd RMA I basically got all new hardware to put onto the new board, I even got a new PSU (using the JohnnyGuru forums for help, which was great) and a nice new UPS and it didn't help. So here I am today, with a box built for gaming that cant.
Re:details details (Score:3, Informative)
UPS = United Parcel Service
USPS = United States Postal Service
financial sad for vendors (NL) (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Whose lifetime? (Score:5, Informative)
And yet some companies still do. I recently put in an RMA on a set of 2x1GB DDR2 memory with OCZ. I got an email back stating that they are no longer able to provide replacement parts for that set, and that they are sending me a set of 2x2GB instead [and better timings as well]. Probably not costing them much (if anything) more, but increases the likelihood that I will purchase another OCZ product in the future.
Re:Whose lifetime? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, ones that aren't made with bad capacitors [badcaps.net]. In case you didn't know, this normally shouldn't be happening. That you think it is normal indicates how bad the problem has become. Read the history of the problem on the link provided.
Re:Too bad it's not EVGA going under. (Score:5, Informative)
This seems to be just bad luck. You likely had cards from a bad batch. Large-scale manufacturing processes are quite apt at producing lots of scrap.
A guy I know used to co-own a printing shop. He used to say that sometimes they'd have a very expensive wastepaper production line. Same goes for printed circuit board assembly: all it takes to sink millions of dollars per hour into scrap at the end of the line is to run a poor reflow oven profile.
There is no reasonable way to make a graphics card "less robust" without putting real money into it. You seem to have no idea how mass electronics production looks. Those cards were likely coming at an average rate of one every few seconds off a big production line somewhere. Any sort of per-item tweaking has to be kept to a minimum to make it economical. The cards go through the assembly/reflow/clean, some are picked up for automated optical inspection of solder joints, then they are tested by an automated test cell that emulates the relevant busses, boots the card up and acquires the output video signal to check if it's OK, loads the flash with firmware, etc. Then a bunch of ladies attaches the brackets and packs them into boxes, and off they go.
The production line is far removed from the distribution channel. If a card like yours is failing, there's no way to digitally re-manufacture it.
No, the company didn't want to fuck you, nor did they do anything nefarious. The manufacturer -- likely a contract manufacturer -- messed up and you ended up with unreliable cards from the same batch. Or, maybe there was a thermal design issue -- either the board layout's interaction with reflow process, or runtime thermal management. That's all there is to it.
Now for well deserved ad-hominem: please refrain from making up conspiracy hypotheses (they ain't theories, damnit) when you have little clue about the involved technology. Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Fuckups at electronics production lines are commonplace, and there are some very, very well paid consultants who can sometimes get 7 figure salaries doing "nothing much" but knowing an Asian language or two and traveling from place to place, explaining how to fix production lines whose output is part or all scrap. I wish I had the link to one example: there's one consulting company whose founder methinks writes a blog, the latter often featuring a rather hot, real engineer babe who knows Mandarin, and kicks ass at troubleshooting SMT production issues. My browser history doesn't go that far, otherwise I'd dig it up.
The babe's main claim to fame IMHO, apart from being hot and knowing Mandarin, is that she has a real understanding of the involved technology -- understanding in the Feynman sense. She doesn't treat SMT production lines like gods who need prayer and offering, nor does she anthropomorphize them ("the line is having a bad day today") -- contrary to some of the locals who run the show, who sometimes suffer from lack of training and don't really understand what's going on. When you understand, you can try making hypotheses as to what's wrong, tweaking things, and seeing if stuff improves. That's the definition of understanding, in this case. Otherwise, you pay for hot babes to come and help you out ;)
Astounding (Score:0, Informative)
No, not the terminated warranty, but people like you who somehow expect a warranty to cover accidental damage. It is this kind of abuse which has destroyed the margins for anyone trying to sell quality products, and left us with only the dregs of industry.
Re:details details (Score:3, Informative)
Re:details details (Score:3, Informative)
Apparantly the company is not going out of business, merely exiting the graphics card market? If true, refusing to honor lifetime warrantees is not reputable.
Re:details details (Score:3, Informative)
1) Buy card from Best Buy.
2) Return old card to party unspecified (not sure whether you meant it to go to BFG or, in this example, Best Buy).
3) Wait one month.
4) File credit card dispute (I'm guessing at step 2, you meant send to BFG. Otherwise there'd have been no need to file the dispute as Best Buy would have refunded your purchase at time of return).
Congratulations, you just committed civil fraud against Best Buy in your attempt at sticking it to BFG.
Or was step 4 just in case the store didn't refund you? At any rate, you've still involved a 3rd party in your dispute with BFG.