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BFG Tech Sending Out RMA Denial Letters, 'Winding Down Business'
SKYMTL writes "Once one of NVIDIA's primary board partners, BFG Tech has now officially started denying RMA requests for their supposedly 'lifetime warranty' graphics cards. According to a letter from BFG, they are '...winding down business' and are 'unable to replace' any non-working product. A sad turn of events for the thousands who bought BFG's graphics cards and power supplies."
Apparently the company itself did not have a life-time warranty.
Table-ized A.I.
That's the problem with a BFG, it's got a lot of firepower but you might end up killing yourself.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
My lifetime?
The product (estimated) lifetime?
The company lifetime?
The receipt lifetime?
Always check which lifetime they mean. Words are wonderful: there are so many definitions to choose from.
Obviously by lifetime warranty, they meant the company's lifetime. Not the hardware's.
Read the fine print!
It could be some pump-and-dump scheme. Yes I know it's not listed but it's possible it has shares trading privately.
Or some competitor trying to undermine BFG.
I would rather like to see a note it's website, like http://openlabs.com/ has on its front page.
BFG made good gear.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
A "lifetime warranty" is for the lifetime of the product, not your lifetime.
You'd think people would have figured that out by now. If the warranty doesn't have a specific period spelled out in terms of days, years, months, etc. then it's essentially worthless. All the company has to do is "end of life" a product, and voila! no more warranty. And when a company shuts down, the warranties are gone forever regardless.
I just returned my BFG card and got it replaced a few weeks ago. It was only a couple of months old when it failed. Not the quality I expected from such a big-name company.
So who is making quality graphics cards and standing by their warranty these days?
So that leaves XFX and EVGA to duke it out.
"Anonymous could not immediately be reached for further comment." - International Business Times
Here is an interesting thread from HardForum:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=ad39475190e27b7270fad7c8f5202588&t=1539921
It has an image of the letter, gives a plausible reason why BFG is going down (Best Buy wouldn't carry some of their products).
I've had lots of BFG cards fail on me and others I know because they're the "OC" ones that come factory overclock. That combined with the inferior fans that fail usually lead to damaged cards and fried GPUs. So BFG is both more likely to break than the average brand and now going back on their lifetime warranties. Wow, after that kind of BS, nobody's going to buy whatever it is they're still selling after getting out of these markets!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Is it actually legal to sell someone a product with a warranty and then refuse to fix it because business is winding down? Don't closing companies have to keep a certain amount of money for problems like this? Can I put a lien on their property if they fail to meet their contractual obligations and I'm shorted money because of it?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
In the context of a company going under, the term "lifetime" is pretty meaningless. What are you going to do, sue them? BFG had solid CS in their prime, and this really wasn't a deliberate attempt to hoodwink anyone. It would be nice of them to procure new cards for RMAs from other suppliers, but they don't really have any incentive to do so.
However, some companies, like PNY, offer a "lifetime" warranty meaning "while the card is still being manufactured by us." Needless to say, after being informed of that little loophole, I stopped buying anything from those guys!
....can I get it replaced under warranty? The 800 number doesn't work for Epyx - but it could be this rotary dial phone....
LOAD"TOUCHTONE GENERA",8,1
READY.
SYS49152
It sucks that BFG is going under, but in a mostly-free-market world, it's reality sometimes, huh.
Sadly, I don't much care about those consumers affected by denied RMA requests. The larger picture here is that this is another example of how console gaming has brought stagnation to the gaming industry. Companies who profitted from deploying bleeding edge hardware that was demanded by a constant churn of increasing software demands are no longer able to stay afloat. Consoles lock graphics to a much longer generation than does pc gaming. It's hard for companies like BFG to stay afloat when stuff stays the same for five or more years.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
They be grinning back form the bank. Gettin' out while the gettin' be good !! Suckaz !!
The comments on BFG power supplies at newegg pretty much confirm this. "Other Thoughts: RMA'd to BFG, got approved, paid for shipping, then received it back in the mail with a statement, "BFG Technologies, Inc. is winding down and liquidating its business." Dead product returned without repair/replacement." Dated 8/13/2010, little over 2 days ago. I wonder if XFX is right behind them, I have a few of their video cards that I bought for the life time warranty....
It's sad to see BFG go. They were one of my favorite card manufacturers, but people can't really get upset with BFG and feel like they were wronged. Nothing lasts forever. You can expect a "lifetime warranty" to last as long as either the company exists or in the worst case, as long as they're manufacturing that sort of product. If they'd been a broader company and stopped manufacturing graphics cards alone, your lifetime warranty wouldn't mean much.
We had a BFG card in my VFX shop - and what we originally thought was a faulty Mobo, became two faulty Mobos, then three. HEY! Time to stop putting that crappy card in our machines! After a very expensive testing process, we discovered that it was, in fact the BFG card that was blowing up our systems. Good luck getting them to acknowledge that... BFG YOU WILL NOT BE MISSED!
Nonsense. The Big Friendly Giant was a gentle, good-natured creature: He did fire dreams, but you'd never be risking your own death around him.
When I RMA'd my graphics card, I've received not one, but two replacements. (one sent from the UK and other from the US).
Lucky me ! Unlucky BFG Tech.
...is what BFG customers were.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Like all other companies with lifetime warranties, they are shedding the responsibility of the warranties.
They will be 'Back!' in a couple of years, with the same warranties, until the next time. :(
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Computer peripheral manufacturers have gotten to be like furniture stores.
The company runs long enough to obtain lines of credit. The owners then give themselves huge raises and pay themselves gobs-o-cash drawing on those credit lines. The owners invest some of their personal money and set up a new business with a new name. The old business, being drowned in all of this new debt, declares bankruptcy and the new business purchases the inventory and assets for pennies on the dollar. Then the new business opens up without any of the liabilities of the old business.
I worked for a furniture store in high school for 2 years and in that time, they cycled it 3 or 4 times. About every 6 months they'd have a big "going out of business" sale, then reopen 2 weeks later under a new name. The furniture that remained never left the building. I'd spend those 2 weeks of downtime replacing all the price tags and signage to reflect the new business name.
The new meaning of BFG.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
nvidia outsource their boards? Most card companies (creative labs for instance) seem to at least start off buying components and creating boards based off reference board designs for chips. Were (and are) nvidia solely in the chip business?
I know JohnnyGuru went over there and he's a stand up guy. That doesn't necessarily mean the rest of the place isn't full of clowns.
I have a BFG 680i LT SLI board and it's possibly the shoddiest designed board on the planet. There's not enough shielding built into it so if I play a very resource intensive game the PCIE bus desyncs and causes a hardware failure BSOD. Even any game that uses the graphics card even a little can cause it to BSOD if there's a source of electronic noise near by. On the 3rd RMA I basically got all new hardware to put onto the new board, I even got a new PSU (using the JohnnyGuru forums for help, which was great) and a nice new UPS and it didn't help. So here I am today, with a box built for gaming that cant.
Sad to see, but it happens. Had the same deal with a motherboard once. Couldn't get upset about it.
At least they offer a lifetime warranty. The only warranty I ever truly care about is one that lasts long enough to where going through an RMA just isn't worth the time or expense anymore. Lifetime or not, that point (about 3-4 years for graphics cards and maybe 2-3 for motherboards) is warranty enough.
However, I wish that EVGA would go out of business instead. You see, for some reason EVGA's products actually become less reliable if you don't ensure they have your name and product serial number matched together in a database. I learned the extra-hard way that for some reason my 3 identical 6800GT cards from them, which all failed within their "claimed" warranty period, must have been expected to fail as I did not register them on the EVGA website when I bought them. I reasoned that the only explanation was that the cards are somehow become less robust of a product after they're sold and must need to be digitally re-manufactured through the product registration process. Either that or the company enjoys fucking the customer. I never did get a straight answer as to which was actually the case.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
This won't change much in the Netherlands. The customers get their warrany from the store they bought the product from. So if I bought a week ago one of their cards, and it breaks in 6 months (when BFG prolly has vanished) I go back to the store, and the store has to provide the warranty. The fact the company they send it to doesn't exist anymore is not the problem of the end-consumer. It's business risk. Shop thus has the option to try and repair the card themselves, or they will have to replace it with a similar product. Of course, stores won't be eager to do this/tell you. Bottomline, in Netherlands, consumer won't get effected too much by this.
Holy crap, their equipment looks cool.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I know that when Gateway sold its Professional Services Unit to MPC (formerly MicronPC) in 2007 and then MPC filed for chapter 11 a year later, MPC was obligated to honor the existing warranties whether they were originally contracted with the former Gateway unit or the later MPC unit. To this day, we're still having warranty work done by a third-party company on behalf of Gateway/MPC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPC_Computers
I mean, isn't that what "lifetime warranty" is supposed to mean?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This isn't just confined to the computer industry or firms that are having financial troubles.
10 years ago or so we bought $5000 worth of leather furniture (http://legacy-leather.com/v2/bigskytrad.html) from http://www.schneidermans.com/. At the time we purchased a LIFETIME warranty, that included lifetime supply of cleaning solution and care products for the top-grain aniline leather.
About year 2, we had one cushion destroyed by a neighbor's small child and a permanent marker, which was replaced promptly and without any issues.
About 2-3 years later we got a package from Schneidermans saying "oh, sorry, here's your package of care products; we've decided to discontinue the 'lifetime' warranty; we would refund your money for the warranty but you got a replacement part so we consider the warranty used and the contract fulfilled. Sorry."
It was probably my fault for not causing a big stink about it, but RL was pretty complicated at the time and I didn't.
But I've always felt screwed that they sold us a lifetime warranty and then arbitrarily decided they just didn't want to support it later.
-Styopa
Actually, people tell VISA that all the time. It's called filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy....
Every time I've spoken with these folks I get a techie who knows the product, speaks my language and is just amazingly helpful. I've never had one outright die on me but I've heard they were always great at replacements too.
I don't know what to think about this, but it's too bad they are moving out of the business. The though of saving 10 dollars by buying a PNY board never crossed my mind while BFGTech was in the business (I know they're still in business, just not in graphics anymore).
Sounds like there's a bit too much protection over there, more than you want in most cases, but that you have to pay for anyhow.
In the US a lifetime warranty is generally for as long as the original purchaser has the product. It is also sometimes limited by the production lifetime of the product, meaning that once the product has been retired the warranty goes away too. Regardless it is generally a "For as long as it is useful," kind of thing. However, if the company goes out of business, so does the warranty. This is true of time limited warranties too. When MPC went bankrupt, we lost the warranty on the computer we had from them at work.
So what to do? Well in most cases nothing. It isn't a real common situation, so you don't generally need to worry about it. Even with this, notice this is one graphics card manufacturer that has gone under and not been bought (when a company buys up another, they buy the warranty responsibility with it). When was the last time that happened? It's been awhile.
However, suppose something is important or expensive enough that isn't ok, you need assurances. Fine, what you do is buy a warranty from another company. There are insurance companies that sell warranties on whatever you like. Some specialize in consumer electronics. You tell them the kind of item, the length and the value, they work out a cost. They then underwrite a policy. They will then replace it with a similar item, should it fail in that timeframe and the manufacturer refuse. It is just an insurance policy like any other, however it has a fixed length and a single upfront cost.
Normally such a thing is nor worth purchasing, especially with consumer electronics. Their life is usually long and the tech advances so fast you are better simply saving your money for a new model.
No, not the terminated warranty, but people like you who somehow expect a warranty to cover accidental damage. It is this kind of abuse which has destroyed the margins for anyone trying to sell quality products, and left us with only the dregs of industry.
Why doesn't the government back these people's warranties, like it did with GM?
PC graphics do brisk sales. The ATi division is the only part of AMD making money right now, and nVidia? That's nearly all the do is make graphics chips.
You have to remember that it isn't just the ultra high end cards that contain that kind of stuff. There is a big market of midrange cars out there. You ever get a new Dell at work that needed to run 2 monitors? An nVidia or ATi card drove that thing.
Of course those high end cards also bring better profit. Bigger price also mean s bigger profit.
There is nothing to substantiate your claims that consoles are killing graphics card makers. They seem to be making money just fine. Yes BFG, one of the resellers went out of business. So? Lots of reasons that might have happened. Here are a few:
1) They cast in entirely with nVidia. Lately, ATi cards have been cleaning house. They got their DX11 part to market first and had real good price performance. This hit nVidia sales.
2) nVidia screwed them. Allegedly nVidia cut their allocation of new, high end parts. This hurt them badly.
3) Best Buy screwed them. Retail is still big sales and if a major retailer cuts you off, you are in trouble. This is especially true if you business counted on it.
4) Insufficient reserves. Their company may have been too insolvent, unable to take a change in the market.
5) Insufficient contingency planning. They didn't seem to have any plans as to what to do if they lost a major seller like Best Buy.
6) Oversaturated market. Maybe there are just too many people making the products.
Whatever the case, it is one OEM going under. Go to newegg, punch in a search for a GTX 480 or 5870. You'll find lots of people want to sell you one.
People selling the 480: Asus, MSI, PNY, Gigabyte, Galaxy, eVGA, Zotac, Sparkle, ECS, and Palit.
People selling the 5870: Asus, MSI, HSI, XFX, Sapphire, Gigabyte, Power Color, Diamond, and Vision Tek.
That is just companies selling the highest end cards on Newegg. There's more out there too. Doesn't look like a dying market to me.
A top-end BFG card would cost as much as I spent recently on a PS3 + 3 games bundle; no wonder the market for expensive video cards tanks: the current-gen consoles are now half their initial prices and a lot of people want to experience gaming on their new HD television set, which also cost a fraction of what it did a few years ago.
You seem to be unaware that it you die they might go after your estate. This is particularly true if the debt you owe them is sizable and the assets in your estate are enough to pay off those debts.
If the warranty only lasts the life of the product, and the product breaks, does that mean the life of the product has ended, and thus the warranty has expired?
Only if the company formally declares bankruptcy can they get out of their "lifetime warranty". See the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act for general information about warranties. "Lifetime Warranty" has specific legal meaning in the US.
Second, where is "BFG Technologies, Inc."? That information isn't on the web site. (This is why anonymous web sites are bad, and why our SiteTruth system gives them a low rating.) But it can be found. Dun and Bradstreet gives us the information that they are in Illinois, and Illinois corporate records gives us this:
BFG TECHNOLOGIES, INC. File Number 62377402
Status ACTIVE
Entity Type CORPORATION
Type of Corp DOMESTIC BCA
Incorporation Date (Domestic) 08/27/2002 State ILLINOIS
Forbes has background info on John J. Vosicky. He was the chief financial officer before he was CEO. He was also previously CFO of Comdisco, which went into bankruptcy in 2001.
That the warranty wasn't advertised and sold as covering accidental damage? Many of the overpriced "protection plans" do cover accidental damage. And I see what they did, very sneaky, but I really wouldn't consider one cushion of a couch to fulfill a protection plan agreement, unless that agreement specifically said only one use.
and it eats alot of power as well
what DDR2 boards are locked to 1gb stick max?
that what you get for a 15 euros = about $20 MB
You do realize that your observation proves my point completely, don't you? It's because of the console platform dominance that developers are no longer pushing the envelope with their PC releases. As with the Crysis example you gave, it is economically unattractive for publishers to back a dev studio who is working on a PC-only title. If John Carmack walked into Activision's offices and said, "Guys, I just came up with this new rendering engine that's incredible. Ambient lighting, reflective shadows, the whole shebang! Only drawback is that it requires a video chipset released within the current generation of video cards." Those executives would punt his ass right out the door if titles using the engine can't easily port to consoles.
Did you notice that this year's QuakeCon tournaments were entirely limited to QuakeLive? iD has given up on horsepower-hungry development and has redirected its pc-gaming business towards comodity hardware.
Goodbye innovation. Hello stagnation.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Something looks wrong with this article as pointed out here. How many companies do not include a closing or opening in a letter? What professional company has letterhead that looks like that? Why does the article say that the letter was received with a power supply when the letter itself states that BFG is returning a graphics card? People really get carried away with these news stories. Until someone from the company is contacted then this is not "official."
In BFG's case (since that's what we're talking about here), the "limited-lifetime-warranty" in question clearly states is basically for the lifetime of the product (in the US and Canada), or 10 years from the date of purchase (outside US and Canada) against defects in material and workmanship for as long as the orignal purchaser owns the product when given normal wear and proper usage. Basically, this gives them the out that if the product isn't manufactured anymore, you're out of luck.
I'm pretty sure there's not an actual requirement to purchase insurance for this type of warranty claim as a business can always claim "self-insured". The only reason to not allow for self insured status is if the regulators could show that the warranty claim is likely fraudulent. This usually only happens to third-party extended warranty companies that don't have the resources to repair or replace and often go out of business after collecting money for while. Requirements for surety bonds (the kind of "insurance" you seem to be referring to) are generally not required of primary sellers that are presumed to have the ability to repair or replace (of course in this case, it wasn't a good presumption).
Of course even if the law said that a primary seller had to escrow money or pay insurance or face a heavy fine for deceptive advertising, I'm sure their bankrupcy conservator would now take such a claim by say the FTC (or appropriate country authority) and just put it in the "liability" paper stack when liquidating the business.
As a contemporary example of this problem you only need to look back a year when GM and Chrysler faced bankrupcy and people were wondering what would happen to their new car warranties. Of course GM and Chrysler were "self-insured" for their warranty claims and the government actually had to step in to guarantee the warranty (in bankrupcy, of course this warranty contract as all other contracts are subject to cancellation or modification). GM can Chrysler were not required to escrow money or pay for insurance to cover the new car warranties that they advertised because they (as a primary seller) were presumed to have the ability to repair or replace. If the aforementioned car companies had purchased such insurance, I'd bet you that they would have probably teetered on bankrupcy much soon (given the quality of some of their cars, I'm sure that such insurance would have been prohibitively expensive).
I wish I had the link to one example: there's one consulting company whose founder methinks writes a blog, the latter often featuring a rather hot, real engineer babe who knows Mandarin, and kicks ass at troubleshooting SMT production issues. My browser history doesn't go that far, otherwise I'd dig it up.
Are you possibly referring to Bunnie's Blog? AFAIK she's an engineer that works for Chumby. She's posted some interesting stuff on manufacturing in Asia, including jaw-dropping videos of high-throughput circuit assembly (by humans, not robots).
Like it or not, this is how limited liability companies work. Your potential liabilities exceed your assets, you fold your tent ans steal away like a theif in the night. The same shareholders and same directors can set up a phoenix company the next day and buy the assets of the old company (at firesale price) and start again. The limited liability company is the root of capitalism, and I suggest we are stuck with it, for better or worse.
Because they ain't got no dough.
The company should be placeed in receivership, liquidated, and the proceeds shared among the class of clients with bad boards who were contractually promised certain things.
It use to be that Sears made DieHard batteries with lifetime warranties that would be replaced for a "lifetime" back in the start of the brand.
However, these warranties eventually died because the batteries they made either stop being made or had to be replaced with less than dangerous chemicals to life/environment. So the consumer had to get another battery that wasn't "lifetime" covered.