First off, I want to say thank you to everyone at EVGA. You all are phenomenal!
 
My story will start soon, but first it requires some background information. I am an Iraq war veteran with service connected PTSD. I happen to live a mile away from a Microcenter and I also have a friend who is an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran with service connected PTSD. We both play video games together as a safe way to help cope with that. My battle buddy had been trying to get a new RTX 3080 or 3090 since launch, but was unsuccessful due to the current market conditions. Well since I live so close to a Microcenter, I would stop in and check on a weekly basis to see if I could get lucky and help my friend out since he lives on the other side of town.
 
Some time in April, I managed to secure a RTX 3060 XC Gaming and my friend was excited after I explained EVGA's step up program. He elected for the 3090 and to both of our surprise, the step up went through in a very short amount of time. Sounds like a dream come true so far right? Well here's where things take a turn for the worse. I took the 3060 to my local UPS store on a Saturday and was told that the card would arrive at EVGA that Friday. Fast forward to Wednesday and my buddy and I both notice that UPS tracking says that they are awaiting delivery of the package... hmmm that cant be right, I had dropped it off at the store 4 days prior so I tried calling the store. This is where things get downright irritating. I could not for the life of me get ahold of a human being, so I drove over to the store to ask them what was going on. They did a search and did not find the package, then called up to their distribution center who also did not receive the package and I was informed that I would have to file a claim.
 
What proceeded was a 4 week long endeavor navigating cryptic UPS web pages while receiving almost zero information in return from UPS. If you are a cat owner, you may remember the first time giving your cat a bath. Remember how that turned out? Yeah, I'd rather do that every day than deal with UPS claims. It finally took me going to the store and explaining to the manager why this package was important to me. IE I had to pull the disabled veteran card to start getting any information from UPS and I 100% detest having to pull that card. I'm not broken, just pretty freaking dented.
 
Anyway as I'm dealing with the broken train wreck of UPS customer service, I have the exact opposite experience here at EVGA. I explain to them the situation and they ask if I want to cancel the step up or escalate the ticket. Not knowing what my buddy wanted to do, I escalated the ticket while I got ahold of him. He suggest that I ask EVGA if we could just buy the card outright since we had already paid for the step up and UPS had "lost" the package. (lets be real here, it was stolen before it ever was loaded on the truck at my local UPS store.) I told him I wasn't sure if they could do that, but I would ask. Much to my surprise, EVGA agreed to kick it up to a manager to make the decision provided UPS paid out the claim. 4 weeks later, I finally had said proof of payout on the UPS claim. My stubborn self even managed to get them to cover the 5 year warranty I had placed on the 3060.
 
My buddy's RTX 3090 arrives this week and he is extremely excited. Finally the battle with bot using scalpers and waiting in lines at Microcenter are over for him and he will get to enjoy all of the Ampere goodness thanks to you EVGA. I don't know what strings you all had to pull or what mountains needed moved, but you all came through for an awesome and deserving person. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so very much! This is why you are the best in the business and you have two EVGA customers in us for life!

I think UPS just did the same to me,  I shipped it on Thursday as of today it shows no progress that left the location and it's supposed to be there tomorrow.  I even took my package directly to ups hub. 

props to EVGA!