Gigabyte/Nvidia based PC shutting down

[slgrieb]

In my experience, Hitachi is the only HD manufacturer that won't do advance replacement. But I don't buy many Hitachis. I use mostly WD and Seagate. At any given time, I usually have multiple drives in the replacement pipeline, so if a customer has a bad drive, I normally replace it with one from a previous RMA and put his replacement into the pool. And yes, it's a sad comment on HD reliability.

Motherboards are a different story. There are too many platforms and particular customer preferences to have a suitable replacement on hand everytime. Most folks with a bad HD just want a replacement with similar capacity, performance, and the balance of their original warranty.

With MOBOs, you get into issues like support for support for specific CPUs, memory, bells and whistles, etc. With any mainboard, you can usually return it to the wholesaler during a specific DOA period, but outside of that, you are at the manufacturer's mercy.

I think any vendor that places a higher priority on their internal costs vs. prompt replacement is cutting their own throat in the long run. Top MOBO producers like Asus, MSI, Intel, etc will never compete with sleezy brands on price alone. They have got to offer better service. In any market, that only leads to increased profitabillity.

[Garak]

We seem to getting afield from the issue here. My point is that Asus isn't advance shipping RMA boards. You send them the board, Asus repair center fixes it, and ships it back. This consumes 3-4 weeks. Should the customer wait that long for a replacement? In fact, can most business customers stand a wait like that?

Ok, so I replace the board. Customer is happy. Now I get to keep the repaired board. It can no longer legally be sold as new, so as a used board it gets a used price or sits untill I have some other use for it. So, as I see this, Asus current warranty policy is a win only for Asus' RMA costs.

I'd do it the same way - this means there is no "I didnt get the same spec board back" talk - which I have heard a few times. OK, so it takes a while - if you took your car in for a engine overhaul because the cylinder head just popped and you were told that you had to wait a week while the parts arrived or that they had to assess the full extent of the damage before they would set to and repair it, would you? or would you just say fix it and risk something else being wrong later? Generally speaking, the longest part of any RMA is the postage. As for legally selling the board, if the board came out of the system then generally speaking, I wouldn't regard it as new *unless it was DOA when you first installed it* - so the customer has no room to complain any road - the only exception to the problem you seem to be having is when the customer wants it fixed there and then, in which case - sell them a new board or state that the RMA proceedure is out of your hands (providing you do not have some kind of warrenty on that machine) when the repaired board arrives, either use it as a test bench or put it in the bargin bin.

I see where your coming from, but I can also see the big picture too... It's been a while since I typed this much on WD