I recently made a thread about the fan woes on my brand new 970 ACX and opened a support ticket where I was told that I must RMA though the shop my card was purchased from. The card was bought from a shop that I would generally not do business with but because there was minimal stock in Australia at the time I went ahead with it. I really don't want to do my RMA through this shop, they don't even reply to emails but EVGA will have nothing to do with me. Is it a geographical issue? Do I smell? Why won't EVGA give me the same level of service that other customers get?

NordicJedi  In your case, since you're in Australia, you'd be covered under the APAC region, which does request that you go through the retailer,

In that case I see little point in paying what is generally a price premium for EVGA if I'm limited to RMAing through a shop like every other brand, where does this supposed stellar service come into play exactly? I've seen forum posts from Australians who have RMA'd directly through EVGA and I don't mind sending my card to Taiwan and cutting out the middle man, It's better than having a $450 paper weight on my desk.

EVGATech_MattM
I appologzie for any frustration and I have forwarded this to our APAC support to be resolved. They are working with place of purhcase to get your RMA going. We can assist with an RMA directly to us however for your region and with you just receiving the card we recommend to go through the local place of purchase to minimize your downtime and shipping costs. If it is RMAed directly through us it would have to go to our RMA Department in Taiwan.

I've had a discussion with the retailer and have agreed to wait for the upcoming BIOS update before RMAing the card. Thanks anyway though.