nomoss
hitmano02
So you think a buyer is so dumb they go to pd to surrender their gpu which they paid for ? As for the refund. I'm pretty sure if you try to ask for refund without returning the stuff or the seller is just a random guy in a parking lot. They will tell you to go pound sand. How do you sue someone without knowing their real name or where they live lol? And you really think buyers willing to go through all this trouble for a gpu that they don't get to keep ? And what the buyer is trying to achieve? get a cookie from EVGA? I don't know about you but any private face to face transaction will be in cash or something you can't chargeback on. If you tell me you want to pay with cc i will tell you F off too.
Police will likely keep the gpu for himself or gift it to family as well . Not all cops are your friends .
Lot of replies here are so unrealistic . We don't live in a perfect world .
In this case . evga , thief win. gamer lost.
If the buyer chooses to keep stolen property then they are breaking the law. Still, they may choose to take that risk but will not be getting the warranty that would come with a legally obtained product. Their choice, their consequences.
Fact is, buying from unauthorized dealers or some guy out of the back of a truck is risky behavior. Would love for someone to explain to me why it is not.
Even so, you have steps that you can take to try to recover your money. Not following those steps ensures that, yes, the thief likely wins. But the idea that EVGA "wins" by losing a shipment of stock that they *may* get reimbursed at the cost of the items is ridiculous.
Let's put this into some perspective, as while I agree with ‘their choice, their consequences’, I think some further insight into particularly “why” the sudden surge of hate for EVGA is overdue and may help direct where contraries are stemming from.
First of all, assuming your product has the SN with it and the outside packaging is in good condition without variable, see staypuft's suggestion on Page 2 of this thread for verifying your product.
We'll go through why this is both a good and bad idea to "register" the SN however.
Few are going to prioritize warranty in this market. Buyers are currently taking anything they can get.
Unless something has changed, even EVGA's B-Stock lineup of cards has No secondhand warranty (Non-Transferable via RMA Policy), so they'll sell practically as similarly as regular cards including no warranty initially, so either buyers won't care, or won't know.
However, EVGA's practice is only showing hostility to its own customers as clearly no buyer protections seem to exist here.
> A S/N puts EVGA at risk if a list was published. I’m not sure where this argument comes from.
This requires the invoice to register the card, the serial alone will not be enough.
Many companies put S/N’s on the outside of the box, its not intentional to be classified information, anyone buying hardware off ebay, amazon, etc. will realize the seller already has that information.
Cards will now be sent to eBay and local reputable sellers perhaps who will likewise have no way of knowing they are stolen till the customer buys and registers them.
While a list would not “solve” all the issues, it would help mitigate damage.
> What company would honor stolen goods? None, but well-established companies often have buyer protections.
Selling stolen goods is also a crime (we call that fraud).
If you buy stolen property unknowingly, and without verifiable ulterior motive, you are the victim of a crime, not the cause or origin of the crime as many are misleadingly applying. What company, with as good of rapport as EVGAs, would hold victims in farther accountability for their own mistake of failing to secure a shipment and create a potential loss-loss situation for its customers?
The selling platform should arguably be the ones to verify their inventory is not illegitimate. They have the luxury of time and cross-referencing in this market, the customer today, does not without purchasing and putting themselves first at risk of initial loss. However, because no specific mandate is in place for mitigative effect of this, sellers bear little to no responsibility
to only provide information regarding hardware or any particular service. On another note, suggesting EVGA is working with law enforcement to catch the criminals, and that people should bring their cards they waited over a year for and bought likely at 2 - 3x MSRP at a massive loss for the sake of 'morality', with NO guarantee of receiving the hardware or your money back, jumping through multiple hoops on your own to secure all evidence, create a paper trail and having to rely on your own sources (Paypal, ebay, CC, etc.) protection policies to reimburse you fully and timely is laughable.
If we assume the customer buys from a well-reputed source, to those registering the product in the first place, it would be equally implied they were registering under the belief they thought were legit or used products.
With the loss of time, resources, money, and to a point sanity - even if all steps are taken fully and proactively, ultimately the thief has attained the advantage (effectively 'gotten away'), and its easy to see where the "victim loss" argument comes from and the ends of validity following its premise.
> Users are arguing for the sake of arguing Saying users are arguing for the sheer sake of arguing is just conflating complaining with the responsibility of needed corrections. This very much is an issue at large, and overtly directing punishment to a (innocent) victim is not an uncommon practice.
> Making a lot of assumptions. Assumptions are being made regarding correspondence from EVGA, Police and your providing financial institution that everything will work out as you see it on paper. In many cases it does not.
If you get a card that, for whatever reason, cannot be registered, with how hostile EVGA is being, your best bet is keeping your mouth shut until they contact you based on the failed serial registration, assuming they ever do, then cooperate from there with EVGA and your local authorities respectively.
EVGA gets docked here due to their approach – Potential buyers are now placed in legal and moral conundrum further than before and some may be (in instance) forced to pay a criminal a ransom to return the company’s stolen property back.
Another assumption was made you can simply sue the seller or initiate a chargeback if all else fails.
Chargebacks will often get you blacklisted from websites (Amazon in particular) and have your account at fault even if your case is valid. Suing the seller is also a long process and at times and full reimbursement is not always guaranteed. You can’t get blood from a stone.
No matter what, the buyer falls into a cycle leading to some negative outcome, whether its money, time, or your own registered accounts to be taken away.
> "It is an offense to knowingly buy or receive stolen property." Much of the argument in this thread falls apart halfway in at "Knowingly" (to which is attributive toward caveat emptor). While the term is valid, it is being manipulated to remove responsibility of the seller and place burden on the buyer. While we established the seller does not legally have to provide the information, that does not absolve them of responsibility nor put them at any less fault for hosting illegal activities.
Otherwise, this tactic comes off as a means of just fear mongering on EVGA's part, a very poor show. A better alternative would have been to try and enlist the aid of the community at large instead of highlighting receiving the hardware in question potentially makes you a hardened criminal, and that every buyer victim of this is solely at fault.
Panic and uncertainty surging as a result of this post should not be of any surprise nor allude to targeting users as “suspects”.