First of all I just want to mention I'm going to detail my whole situation so sorry if I waffle on abit. I'll preface this by saying I'm from New Zealand so I know things work differently from US & EU support regions. So I had my EVGA 980Ti SC+ ACX 2.0 die on me a couple weeks ago. Its still within its 3 year warranty by a few months so I contacted the retailer I purchased it from and they told me 'yep okay send it in to us and we will test it and replace it if its faulty'. So I pack it and ship it off to the retailers, a few days later it arrives at their store and they test it. They reply back to me saying that they can confirm that the card is faulty, however because the 980Ti is an old model they have no stock available for replacement. Now this came as no surprise to me because obviously the 900 series is old now. So I was expecting to get an equivalent card as a replacement. They then told me because there is no stock all they can do is send it back to EVGA via their supplier to get the replacement, and that this normally takes 4-5 weeks.
So at this point I'm disappointed because as a gamer I've already been out for 2 weeks and am now looking at over a month. So I call the store up and ask the guy what the situation is and why they can't just give me an equivalent replacement. So basically he explains to me that while their store is one of many certified EVGA retailers in NZ they are not a distributor. There is only one official distributor in NZ, a company called PBTech. Therefore because of licencing issues they cannot just send me a replacement, instead they have send it to PBTech who then send it to EVGA internationally. Probably to either the US or Taiwan HQ.Only once EVGA receive it can a replacement be sent to me. The guy went on to say they've had a lot of issues with this and how inefficient it is, but because of the licencing and legal side of things there is really nothing they can do.
So at this point I'm thinking oh well not much I can do, if this is the process I'll just have to go with it and wait. The main reason I chose to get an EVGA card (and PSU) is because of their good reputation with RMAs but over the last couple of weeks I've been doing some research and am alittle concerned. Reading these forums and on other sites I've seen that people often get an upgrade with EVGA if their card is no longer in stock, and obviously that would be awesome but EVGA are within their rights to just replace it with the same card. My concern is that from what I've read these replacements are often 2nd hand refurbished cards. So after all that my question is just can that really be the case? Gotta be honest if I wait a month or more just to receive someone elses repaired card I'd find that pretty not cool. Tech prices in NZ are high and I payed a premium price of over a grand for a brand new product at the time. I'd really like for the replacement I get to last a long time.
Anyway sorry this was so long I just wanted to accurately describe it, I'd appreciate any help or advice very much. Cheers
If you need any additional info just let me know.