Well at the very least EVGA could lift that 90 day window so people could buy that extended warranty if they missed out and feel uneasy with the entire deal.
(i'm honestly not 100% sure that heat is the reason, if there was just a bad batch of VRMs or other components that we don't know about then this thermal pad thing might be a complete placebo.)
Just for perspective, in Germany (where i am), Zotac has a 5 year warranty for FREE (3 years in the US), and Gigabyte has 4 year warranty on all GTX 10xx Series cards, if i want 5 year warranty from EVGA i have to pay 25€ extra? and i can't transfer the extended warranty if i sell the card in that time?
...does not really sound that competitive of an offer, i was honestly surprised to find out that it did cost money at all, i thought i would just have to register my card within 90 days and the 5 year warranty would be free, well NOPE, somehow none of the reviews i've seen talked about that.
And the "Step Up Program" is also limited to 90 days (and even more, limited to specific cards? not even including my 1080 FTW !?), which means that i can't step up to a 1080ti when that is released... because those aren't released within 90 days, i hear January ... not that i was planning too, would have been a nice option though.
And not to a Classified or the watercooled one either... because mine isn't on the list.
...so NONE of that stuff even applies to me.
To put the icing on the cake, i bought my 1080 FTW too early and did not get into that Gears of War 4 promotion, did buy the game myself.
...and THEN this nightmare with the Thermal Pads (why isn't there a heatpipe on all the stuff that needs cooling anyway? others have a heatpipe on their VRMs... the hell? you can be sure next time i'll take a closer look to the underside of the Heatsink of the next gen cards before i buy another GPU)
...still waiting for those Thermal Pads btw. it's been 2 Weeks now and counting.