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."

Comments

Whose lifetime?

[line-bundle]

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.

Re:Whose lifetime?

[black3d]

Independent of the original intention, most "lifetime warranties" are somewhat shortened by the company no longer existing, the receipt no longer existing, or the user (and in most cases, the only person who cared about the warranty) dying.

Re:Whose lifetime?

[Anonymous Coward]

...most "lifetime warranties" are somewhat shortened by ...

I like to say "whichever comes first"...

Re:Whose lifetime?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a matter of law, it is almost always "reasonable lifetime of the (class of) product".

Nevertheless, ALL warranties expire when the guarantor of those warranties ceases to exist. And they're invariably unsecured, which means you can't ever claim a debt against the company in administration unless there's something left after all secured debts are paid (almost never, or the company would still be in business!).

Re:Whose lifetime?

[Lemmy Caution]

This is why "no one gets fired for buying IBM." Alternative vendors and small companies are generally riskier to deal with - if they collapse, all the support collapses with them. This reality is why many businesses prefer big, institutional vendors even when they cost more and, in the short term, seem to provide less.

Re:Whose lifetime?

[Syberz]

[...] the laws were designed to safeguard individuals, not corporations

Where is this exactly? I think that I'd like to move there.

Sad to see them go

[Local ID10T]

BFG made good gear.

Lifetime Warranties...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:details details

[FlyHelicopters]

+1 to the above... If a company goes out of business, lots of people have a worse day than me with a video card... How about all the employees out a job to start...

Legality?

[Renraku]

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?

Re:Legality?

[jimicus]

Which is why pretty much all "should we go bankrupt, we'll turn off the DRM" promises are worthless. What are you going to do if they don't comply?

Something else which a lot of people (who perhaps don't understand business) need to realise:

If the company goes into administration, the original directors - the ones who stood up and promised "should we go bankrupt, we'll turn off the DRM" are out of a job. Regardless of whether or not they want to instruct their engineers to disable the DRM, they no longer have authority to. New directors are appointed by the administrators and it's their job to get the best possible outcome for the shareholders - be it selling the business as a going concern or winding it up and selling the assets. "Turning off the DRM" is likely to be so low on the priorities list that it'll never happen.

Re:Legality?

[cgenman]

I've always seen "not pirating the hell out of something" as a common courtesy to DRM suppliers. If Steam goes under, and Valve is no longer in a position to disable the DRM, you can always walk over and download an unencumbered version from online. Seeing as how most everything will be years old at that point, it will be easy. You'll lose saved games, but if you're picking up Doom again after twenty years, you probably want to play from the beginning anyway.

I bought a CD online from a smaller musician. After a few weeks with no shipping, I started sending mail in an attempt to track down what happened. The person handling CD's had disappeared, then re-appeared, then went away again, etc. I suspect someone had a death in the family, or some sort of drug binge, or something. Either way, after about 6 months of this, I just walked over to the local online supplier and downloaded a FLAC version of the album. Sure, I don't get the case or anything, but I now have the perfect digital copy of the album I wanted anyway, and the creator got paid.

Consoles spelled the doom

[SethJohnson]

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.

Re:Consoles spelled the doom

[assemblerex]

Sadly I don't care what callous people say while they pontificate.

Re:Consoles spelled the doom

[geogob]

Although I agree with you on the state of the gaming industry and the link with console gaming, I don't think this is what caused the downfall of BFG. It might have accelerated it, but I feel it was more a series of bad business decisions and choice of distributors that nailed the coffin for BFG.

Re:Consoles spelled the doom

[Xest]

It's easy to blame console gaming, yet console gaming continues to produce better looking graphics with existing hardware well beyond the life of equivalent PC gaming hardware. This is largely because the entire hardware pipeline in consoles is focussed towards gaming, whilst the PC isn't- it's more generic hardware bus just isn't as suited to gaming, hence why lower spec consoles can still produce better graphics and better framerates than equivalent and higher specced PCs (within reason of course).

The fault isn't console gaming, the fault is of the companies pushing ever more powerful graphics cards, whilst developers on the PC just outright fail to make use of the last generation- and for good reason. The issue is that the PC is such a fragmented platform and suffers from such high piracy rates that developers on the PC are better off spending their time making sure their game works for as wide an audience as possible, which means far less focus and optimisation on high end graphics.

The fact is, the high end PC graphics card market was always going to be unsustainable, because it's simply a niche market in an era where developer focus is more and more turned away from that market due to decreased profit from that segment.

It's not really anything to do with console gaming. The fact is, it's hard for companies like BFG to stay afloat when their target market is declining on the realisation that they don't need the latest and greatest graphics card coupled with the fact the world financial situation is still shakey and if consumers don't need to spend money right now, then they wont. When you build a company for a niche market that exists based purely on testosterone fuelled competitiveness of who can get the highest FPS then it's no suprise that when money is tight things start to decline somewhat.

As an illutration of my point, my current PC has now just hit 2 years old and I can still play the latest games like Starcraft II in maximum detail at 1920x1200. This would be unheard of a decade or so ago, where even 1 year old PCs would struggle to run the latest games at high detail, or in a decent resolution. The fact is, the PC market is changing and there's not much of a place for overclocked SLI graphics cards in that nowadays- the rise of playable, rather than graphics fuelled indie games over the last few years is also another reason why people no longer need to pay for ultra-expensive high end graphics cards now. The focus has moved back somewhat towards playability and fun for the masses rather than just stunning graphics for the elite on the PC.

Re:Consoles spelled the doom

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame Microsoft and their refusal to have DX10 on XP. Why make a game that can use DX10 or 11 technology when a majority of your customers are limited to no higher than DX9.

The old gaming cycle used to revolve around new consoles getting a lot of the development, followed by a decline as the hardware got old and a majority of home computers surpassing consoles in capabilities (even after the overhead of the OS, antivirus, etc), making it the preferred development platform. Then a new console would come out and the cycle will repeat. With the current stagnation in the PC market caused partially by Microsoft's decision, most PC games are stuck at DX9 graphics levels, which is slightly behind what a xbox 360 can do. So consoles have stayed in the preferred development spot, removing incentives to push hardware capabilities on PCs.

Now while all the latest in graphics hardware is available through OpenGL on XP, most graphics card vendors have crap for OpenGL support in consumer grade cards and most development studios are stuck with DirectX since that is what their tools develop with and they are using it for 360 games already.

Re:Consoles spelled the doom

[FileNotFound]

The reason your 2 year old PC can still play "modern" games is that there has not been a major leap forward in graphics since Vista introduced DX 10.

There has not been a single 'revolutionary' chipset since the 8800. The current nvidia line is unimpressive and offers minor gains over the past TWO generations.

The video card market revolved around being able to sell a bunch of bleeding edge $800 cards followed by a ton of $200-400 ones. You cannot sell $800 video cards in this market.

If/when the economy recovers and people are once again willing to cough up money on video cards and entertainment, there will be major advancement in the video card market. Until then, it simply does not make any sense to develop and release the new cards when they will not be bought. It's far more profitable to concentrate on cost cutting with the current generation and releasing the same chips but for less.

Re:Interesting thread from HardForum

[Fross]

That was 3 months ago - looks like BFG as a whole may be winding down now, hence the warranties would no longer hold.

Re:details details

[vlm]

How about all the employees out a job to start...

Some organizations close, then reopen under a new name with the same people doing the same thing.

My guess is their target market wasn't even born when Doom came out with the BFG rifle, so its time for a new name.

Re:details details

[heathen_01]

The BFG is not a rifle.

Re:details details

[PopeRatzo]

. Generally, when you intend to spread FUD about an otherwise reputable and respected company, it's considered good form to have at least a shred of evidence rather than just a guess.

If they were "reputable" would they be burning people with "lifetime" warranties?

BFG can't have it both ways. You can't be "reputable" and "crooked" at the same time.

By the way, I've decided to tell VISA that I'm "winding down business" and will no longer be paying them for the stuff I bought.

Re:details details

[Minwee]

By the way, I've decided to tell VISA that I'm "winding down business" and will no longer be paying them for the stuff I bought.

If you can prove to them that you have reached the end of your lifetime, as BFG has, then that would be okay.

Re:details details

[PopeRatzo]

That's called filing for personal bankrupcy (chapter 7 & 13)

Is that what BFG is doing?

Will the owners of those "lifetime warranties" be able to get in line with other debtors and carve up BFG's remaining assets?

Re:details details

[nedlohs]

Yeah right, because a credit card company has never got money from an estate to settle debts. Never.

Mr Obama??

[XanC]

Why doesn't the government back these people's warranties, like it did with GM?

Re:And how do you know?

[colinnwn]

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.