Slashdot Mirror
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."
Let me speak from experience and say that they are not even responding to open support tickets, so i doubt anybody gets as far as an RMA anyway
If they're under administration (voluntary or not) then no, all you can do is add your name to the list of creditors. Although, you're free to sue them, but then they only need declare bankruptcy (if they haven't already) and again, you're talking to administrators. Neither will get you anywhere, as even if you succesfully registered as a creditor, your proportion of the liquidation would only be a few cents, if anything. It would like cost more to apply than you'd receive.
I applaud them for actually announcing this ahead of time, knowing they'll cop a few weeks of hatemail and angry phone calls, rather than doing what most companies do - which is pretend everything's fine, and simply put off RMAs, until the day they close up shop. Hell, they're even mailing the cards/PSUs back. While it's nothing more than a gesture (its fairly difficut to manually repair a power supply safely, and virtually impossible to repair a physically defective video card), its a nice gesture which companies who care less about their customers simply wouldn't do.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
I found this article through your interesting thread: http://www.hardocp.com/news/2010/05/18/bfgtech_exits_graphics
As Notleh on HardForum posted:
"After eight years of providing innovative, high-quality graphics cards to the market, we regret to say that this category is no longer profitable for us, although we will continue to evaluate it going forward", said John Slevin, chairman of BFG Technologies. "We will continue to provide our award-winning power supplies and gaming systems, and are working on a few new products as well. I’d like to stress that we will continue to provide RMA support for our current graphics card warranty holders, as well as for all of our other products such as power supplies, PCs and notebooks."
BFG will continue to offer RMA, telephone and email support for qualified BFG Tech graphics card warranty holders, but will no longer be bringing new graphics card products to market.
First and foremost, I have to say that HardOCP is sad to see BFGTech go. It was a company that opened up new ways of doing business with customers in the graphics card arena. The solid warranties and support you all enjoy now with high-end graphics cards companies can be traced back to BFGTech and its three founders, Scott Herkelman, Ric Lewis, and Shane Vance.
Of course our biggest concern is that our readers that have purchased BFG video cards are taken care of. Speaking this morning with then BFGTech CEO, Scott Herkelman, he assured me that BFG has taken measures to make sure full RMA and support will continue. Eight full time employees and the full group of tech support will remain in place as well as warehouse labor. That means continued 24/7 phone, email, and full RMA support for registered cards. As of today, BFG has a full reserve of cards and monies set aside to sure proper support occurs.
And yet some companies still do. I recently put in an RMA on a set of 2x1GB DDR2 memory with OCZ. I got an email back stating that they are no longer able to provide replacement parts for that set, and that they are sending me a set of 2x2GB instead [and better timings as well]. Probably not costing them much (if anything) more, but increases the likelihood that I will purchase another OCZ product in the future.
Nothing to see here