EVGA,
 
I wanted to let you know I had a bad experience trying to RMA my 970 today. Long story short about the card, it started sending surges to the motherboard after 90 days of ownership. The latest shorted the card and made it so the system wouldn't even post. So it's a dead card. After calling the customer service line, the guy started my RMA but didn't even offer a return shipping label? WTH? It's your card failure. It's not like I installed it wrong, or did a custom solder job on it. I pointed out that it could have killed my mobo, but he was like "Mobos have built-in surge protection."  Yeah they do. And my car has seatbelts. But I don't go around slamming into things just because it does. It's a safety feature that isn't supposed to be used. Plus I'm guessing, if the board's surge protection is only rated to handle so much voltage, (like plug-in surge protectors) I have no idea if the surge protection even works anymore. So after I said that, he said "I'll send you a label, just this once."

What is going on there? Send the label if your stuff fails. It's your fault. And get a customer satisfaction survey on the lines or something. Please.
 
VU

They aren't responsible for shipping back. If it is a second or third rma, they will help you out usually.

Not many companies are going to give you a label after 30 days. They require you to pay return shipping to them only, and they pay for shipping to send you the replacement.

You say it was sending surges.. How so and what makes you think that? The GPU would be getting power from the PSU, as it doesn't power itself, and surges usually come from the PSU.

I've RMA'd dozens of computer parts over the course of my 20+ years of gaming, (started out on a Dell Dimension in '95) and never once has a manufacturer tried to dodge responsibility for the shipping. Not sure why you would want to pay for shipping, when it's the manufacturer's responsibility to ensure quality control, but I digress.

Scarlet-Tech
They aren't responsible for shipping back. If it is a second or third rma, they will help you out usually.

Not many companies are going to give you a label after 30 days. They require you to pay return shipping to them only, and they pay for shipping to send you the replacement.

You say it was sending surges.. How so and what makes you think that? The GPU would be getting power from the PSU, as it doesn't power itself, and surges usually come from the PSU.

ASUS Motherboard sent a display message to the bios, saying it detected surges from the power supply. I thought it was the PSU too, but replaced the PSU with a new EVGA Supernova 650. Previously I was using a Raidmax 850. Both are 80+ Gold rated supplies. Anyway it persisted after that. So I figured it must be the wall power. Bought a new APC 1200LE Voltage regulator to go between the surge protector I use and the wall. The problem persisted. I reseated the memory and the graphics card, and blew all the dust out of my case. Issue persisted. So I decided to turn off surge protection altogether. Risky move, but I needed to know what was going on, and the BIOS wasn't giving me enough information. System shut off during gaming. There was an audible buzz from the graphics card. Then the system refused to post. I replaced the 970 with a 760 I had laying around, and it booted normally. Played games normally. No surges.

Conclusion: It's a bad graphics card.

I had an Alienware Area-51 5700 laptop, and the graphics interface with the motherboard shot itself twice. Both times they covered the shipping both ways. And that is a heavy laptop. Logitech covered both RMAs of my G-930 headset when it developed connectivity issues, and when my Corsair H50 AIO cooler started to make a gurgling sound 2 months ago, the CS Rep offered to start the RMA (It was just an air bubble in the wrong place, I fixed it on my own.) Anyway. He said I wouldn't have to pay for the shipping. So. Maybe I did get lucky. Or maybe it's just not as common as everyone says it is, and they're playing you guys.

My philosophy is, I wouldn't be returning it at all if it worked properly. If I have to pay for shipping, I might as well just order a different brand on Amazon.

I think every graphic card companies require customers to pay to ship the product in for warranty service. If you live in the states, it would be like $15-20 (with insurance) to ship the card in for warranty service.
 
 
 
 

Dear valorunlimited,
 
I apologize that you are unhappy with your experience with our support.  I assure you that we do care and that is why our representative made an exception to support you with a UPS Prepaid shipping label when requested, even though outside of 30 days from the purchase date.  Please understand that our warranty terms are available online at http://www.evga.com/warranty/ to try and avoid any confusion on our RMA process.  
 
I assure you that it is very uncommon for a graphics card to send any surges to a motherboard, as this is usually the other way around.  However if the graphics card does have a failure, which is uncommon, then it will usually just stop functioning and not cause any damage to the system.
 
I assure you that we are here to help and you will be receiving a call from one of our Customer Support Supervisors to assist further.
 
Also for your reference, below is our customer satisfaction Survey and you will also be emailed to assist.  
http://www.evga.com/myevga/rateus/  
 

valorunlimited
EVGA,
 
I wanted to let you know I had a bad experience trying to RMA my 970 today. Long story short about the card, it started sending surges to the motherboard after 90 days of ownership. The latest shorted the card and made it so the system wouldn't even post. So it's a dead card. After calling the customer service line, the guy started my RMA but didn't even offer a return shipping label? WTH? It's your card failure. It's not like I installed it wrong, or did a custom solder job on it. I pointed out that it could have killed my mobo, but he was like "Mobos have built-in surge protection."  Yeah they do. And my car has seatbelts. But I don't go around slamming into things just because it does. It's a safety feature that isn't supposed to be used. Plus I'm guessing, if the board's surge protection is only rated to handle so much voltage, (like plug-in surge protectors) I have no idea if the surge protection even works anymore. So after I said that, he said "I'll send you a label, just this once."

What is going on there? Send the label if your stuff fails. It's your fault. And get a customer satisfaction survey on the lines or something. Please.
 
VU

valorunlimited
See the thing is, it's not about me or the money. It's about people in general. I would rather brand switch and spend 500 dollars for a new card with another company, than enable, and continue to give money to someone who doesn't care about their customer base. I would give up computing, before I'd become a brand yes-man. And that's something that more consumers need to do. Vote with your wallet. Saying "Oh ASUS isn't much better." Okay. There are like a thousand other graphics card manufacturers out there. You think all of them are going to tell a customer to cough up some cash every time they make a defective product? I just gave examples of companies that do care. So...you know...what's your second argument? Now that the first has been taken apart.

I'm not stepping up, because I don't have another 300 dollars to blow on a graphics card at the moment. I may do it in the next 30 days but I may not. The 'tock' is always better than the 'tick' when it comes to design, stability, and performance. My money is that the follow-up architecture of the 1170 will be the more sound investment. And I can't step up into an 1170 if I go in on the 10, so I might as well wait.

I'm far from a brand yes-man or a company butt kisser. If you look at ASrock, ASUS, GIGABYTE or MSI RMA policy, i bet you will see all of them require customer to pay for shipping the product in for warranty service.
 
I wish more companies would offer prepaid shipping labels for all warranty service. It's one of the reason why i like to buy Logitech mice. If you ever need warranty service, they will email you a prepaid shipping label.
 
 

MSim
 
I'm far from a brand yes-man or a company butt kisser. If you look at ASrock, ASUS, GIGABYTE or MSI RMA policy, i bet you will see all of them require customer to pay for shipping the product in for warranty service.
 
I wish more companies would offer prepaid shipping labels for all warranty service. It's one of the reason why i like to buy Logitech mice. If you ever need warranty service, they will email you a prepaid shipping label.

Agreed - I have RMAed with ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte and every one of them requires the customer pay return shipping.
 
Lenovo has some really top notch support - they actually send a box out with a prepaid label for you to send your machine back for service.  Dell does this too but generally only see it on business class machines.  At the same time it's not really a good comparison in my eyes - you're comparing oranges to orange wedges.  Lenovo mfg the entire machine so if any one part is bad its ALL on them to fix (plus they have it in stock and can do end-end testing).  Pieces and parts have a lot of variance to what could actually be bad or the root cause - which generally support can narrow down but the chances are much greater that someone claims a part is bad when in-fact it's something else causing it.

Update: Talk with Jason the rep went well. Everything is beyond good now. EVGA is willing to help you out and then some if you have a legit issue. Thanks again.

kaninja
Another happy EVGA customer.

  +1    Title should be updated by the OP too.   ;)

Valor, it's good to hear they are helping out.

MSim, a *resolved* shows the latest there was a resolution, and shows that people should look in and see what it was.

Update:

They sent an advanced RMA, but UPS has failed to deliver the package. No additional tracking info has been added for 48 hours. Cserv refused to contact UPS to figure out where my graphics card is or when it will be delivered. I think this is one guy working for customer service, as he always uses the same tone of voice with me. Needless to say, this is back to being unresolved again.

Yeah, they didn't escalate, but I appreciate you responding to me here. Thank you for giving me information as to the status of my card. I was trying to locate Esplin on the map to determine how much further it had to travel...and if it actually had gone past the destination. But google maps is having a hard time finding that location. If it's in PA, I would not expect it to be a delay of greater than 48 hours. If it's going to be greater than 96, maybe a refund would be the best course of action, and getting UPS to ship complimentary next day air. They should do this if the delay is expected to take longer than the actual ship time.
 
VU