Reports BFG deny warranties as business winds down.

[Platypus]

Seems the long warranties on BFG products may be of no further value:

"BFG Technologies Inc. is in the process of winding down and liquidating its business. Unfortunately, our major supplier would not support our business. As a result, we are returning your graphics card without being able to repair it. We apologize for the inconvenience."

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/d...y_Support.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/...ding-business/

[slgrieb]

Not surprising, unfortunately. Given the quality of warranty service in the industry, most "warranties" might just as well be press releases touting the products.

So happens I have a great example to share. On July 2 I requested an advance replacement RMA from Western Digital for a customer's drive that failed WD diagnostics due to too many read errors. It took WD 5 days to process the RMA request, then the RMA status was listed as "delayed", because the drive was "out of stock". I finally received the replacement drive on August 11 !!!. Nice job, WD.

Seagate's service hasn't been much better lately. They want to charge you $20 up front for an advance replacement, and turn around time on a drive has been a couple of weeks on the last two drives I RMA'd.

Actually, the only company I've been please with lately has been Acer. I've had to return a couple of defective monitors for warranty service and in both cases the RMA was processed instantly, and the monitors were repaired and shipped in 36 hours after reaching their service center.

[CeeBee]

That's because MOST people don't wait for parts - their computer manufacturers do. And even a small shop is likely to have few drives in stock that can be used as a replacement - and when the RMA'd drive comes back it is put back in the "spare" set.
I've recently had a very good experience with iRobot. My vacuum robot failed during warranty, 2 days later I had the latest model delivered. No credit card required, no security deposit - just a request to send the failed one back.

[slgrieb]

That's because MOST people don't wait for parts - their computer manufacturers do. And even a small shop is likely to have few drives in stock that can be used as a replacement - and when the RMA'd drive comes back it is put back in the "spare" set.

Thats pretty much the only feasible way of handling replacement drives, and of course what I have to do. In fact, I keep a couple of external drives as loaners for units being RMA'd, since these are often drives used for backing up customer computers. Still, I think the fact that it took WD more than a month to ship a replacement drive is *%^# joke. I do have to give them some credit for shipping it FedEx Overnight at no charge, but still...