The thermal pad mod isn't going where the original thermal pads are. The original thermal pads will not be touched. This is adding more thermal pads in an area they have never been applied in the past.

I really dont understand how something like that can happen... you can test your products before putting them on the market no ? 

Okay well i requested a set, ive never ran the card with default fan settings, gaming or stress never goes above 60 so i should be okay until they come.

Well, they can test it and they have im sure but it doesnt mean they will have an issue, things happen that even they didnt know, in all honestly from alot of what I gathered most people dont have good air flow or their fans are always under 30%. If I am gonna do intense gaming I always bump my fans to 50-60 depending on the workload and have it come down when im not gaming. Either way they are trying to give people options to fix it so I dont see the issue.
EVGA's customer service always gets brownie points from me, I dont even wanna talk about MSI's, that was sucha  terrible experience, took me 1 month to get the RMA ready to go in ( they took that long) then 3 months to even get it back all because of bad soldering.

i have found evga is one of the best for rma's.msi i did once they were alright but gigabyte was a 4 month wait on the motherboard that was just sad.  asus are also decent