Hello, I'm an owner of the now infamous ACX 3.0 GTX 1080 SC and have a question about the RMA Cross-Ship;
 
From my understanding, if I wanted to request an RMA Cross-Ship I'd have to give EVGA my Credit Card so they can put a hold for the full amount I paid so they can send me a card that has both the VBIOS update as well as the pads added? That's $650 I'm not willing to put on hold for up to a week. I'm a college student with no steady income. It took my ages to save up the money just to get the GTX 1080. I just don't have that kind of money to put on hold. I saw a few people say the cross-shipping is free, but I've seen no indication of that. Or am I missing something?
 
Yes, I can update the card myself (or just turn up the fan curve on Precision X) and yes I can add the thermal pads myself but I shouldn't have to do any of that. I paid premium for a high end card, and I shouldn't have to pay premium (temporally) to receive a proper fixed one. 

Cross shipping is not free, as per http://www.evga.com/howtorma/
 
Standard Cross-Ship RMA

• EVGA account membership and registration is required to contact customer service for troubleshooting and receive a support ticket for an RMA request.
• After an RMA request is approved, you will be required to pay for the full replacement collateral price of your product. Cost of collateral is determined by EVGA.
• EVGA will ship via ground shipping to you within 1-3 business days.
• You will then be responsible for shipping your defective product back to EVGA, following our shipping guidelines.
• Upon receipt of your product, without damage, EVGA will refund the collateral paid in full. Your original product MUST be returned to EVGA within your 45 day RMA approval window in order to receive your collateral returned.
• The complete refund process may take 7-14 business days.

 

So it's free if you refund the collateral paid in full ? 
 
And you are sending back a brand new card with pads and bios ?
or a refurbished one ?

If you send back the card that you are RMAing, then your collateral is refunded. Technically not free since they put that money on hold until they receive the card.
 
This is to protect them from the few folks out there that would abuse a no-collateral replacement card being sent to them and them keeping both cards for themselves.

Sorry, my first language is french, what do you call a "collateral" 
 
You have to pay the value of the card in fact ? and wait to be refund after ?
Or it's just the shippment costs ?

Collateral is what you offer someone until you pay them back. In this case, it would be the cost of the replacement card until EVGA receives the bad card.

Okkkk... that's not the same indeed...

So it's 450 dollars... ok, wont do that