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

details details

[Tablizer]

Apparently the company itself did not have a life-time warranty.

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...

Obvious joke alert

[MrEricSir]

That's the problem with a BFG, it's got a lot of firepower but you might end up killing yourself.

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?

[ender-]

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.

Sad to see them go

[Local ID10T]

BFG made good gear.

Re:Is it really true?

[Sylak]

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

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.

Interesting thread from HardForum

[line-bundle]

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).

Re:Interesting thread from HardForum

[Jeslijar]

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.

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?

[black3d]

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.

Broken For Good

[Skapare]

The new meaning of BFG.

This crap goes on elsewhere too

[argStyopa]

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.