Maybe a list of bad support component vendors?

[johnyeah]

I recently had a friend who "tried" to build a new system, only to frustrate himself because he received a faulty video card (an 8800GT). At first, diagnosing the problem with the machine took us already 3 hours. Finally, after plugging in my video card, also an 8800GT, and taking his out, the system posted for the first time!

However, this is not the end of the story. He went on phoning up customer support with the company he bought the video card from. After extensive an hour long extensive and well organized explanation with the customer support, they finally acknowledged that the problem was with the faulty video card (throughout the whole duration of the call, they were trying to blame the problem on the motherboard saying how it did not support the video card, come on). Either way, he was told to send in the video card for replacement and my friend did it right away the next day.

Guess what? A week and a half later, he receives a replacement that does NOT work (not even on my rig).

Anyways, my moral of the story is if people could come up with a list of vendors they had bad experience with to help the new homebuilt users to avoid headaching hassles like this.

I'll start off with one.

BFGTech. Bad customer support and faulty products, what more can you ask for?

 

[rgeist554]

They probably just send you the same card back, it honestly wouldn't surprise me. A little trick you can do is to put a very small, but distinct marking, somewhere on the card that only you'll see. When they send you the card back, just make sure it's not the same broken POS card.

*edit* Also, what kind of motherboard was your friend using? If it had a PCI-E 1.1 slot... it should support it.

 

[F34R1355]

Are you sure that your friend is not doing something wrong? I have only used a couple of BFG cards, but never had a problem. They came with a motherboard CPU bundle quite a while back.

 

[esmith7075]

Well I've heard Sapphire is a bad company, but they make ATI cards. supposedly have horrible customer service and a high amount of DOA cards? google "gr33ngecko" and see one person's experience.

 

[greenspoon]

I recently had a friend who "tried" to build a new system, only to frustrate himself because he received a faulty video card (an 8800GT). At first, diagnosing the problem with the machine took us already 3 hours. Finally, after plugging in my video card, also an 8800GT, and taking his out, the system posted for the first time!

However, this is not the end of the story. He went on phoning up customer support with the company he bought the video card from. After extensive an hour long extensive and well organized explanation with the customer support, they finally acknowledged that the problem was with the faulty video card (throughout the whole duration of the call, they were trying to blame the problem on the motherboard saying how it did not support the video card, come on). Either way, he was told to send in the video card for replacement and my friend did it right away the next day.

Guess what? A week and a half later, he receives a replacement that does NOT work (not even on my rig).

Anyways, my moral of the story is if people could come up with a list of vendors they had bad experience with to help the new homebuilt users to avoid headaching hassles like this.

I'll start off with one.

BFGTech. Bad customer support and faulty products, what more can you ask for?

This is an interesting suggestion. The problem is that every company is going to have a bad piece of hardware here and there. For instance, I know a bunch of people that will not use WD for HD's anymore because they feel they always get bad drives. I however have only received one bad drive from WD.

The point is that most of the major vendors, including BFG, are all reliable. They are going to have some bad products, but unless we make a list of the company that just plain suck, meaning the majority of their products they ship are faulty, the list is not going to mean a thing.

Customer service is a different story though.

 

[rgeist554]

I can imagine that the customer service aspect can suck for the people working there. Just imagine how many people call saying that their card is bad when the person installing it is just computer illiterate. If you've read the other thread - they aren't the friendliest people. The one lady wouldn't even let the guy talk to her supervisor.

As GreenSpoon said, not every card is bad from one manufacturer. When you mass produce something there is bound to be a few bad eggs, and that is unfortunate, but not much can be done about it. Every company is going to experience this at some time or another. Other than the card reliability, their ways of dealing with these type of problems/issues isn't really up-to-snuff.

 

[greenspoon]

I can imagine that the customer service aspect can suck for the people working there. Just imagine how many people call saying that their card is bad when the person installing it is just computer illiterate. If you've read the other thread - they aren't the friendliest people. The one lady wouldn't even let the guy talk to her supervisor.

I doubt every card sucks as GreenSpoon said, but it seems that their ways of dealing with those problems aren't up to par.

I never said that every card sucks. I said that the list would only be reliable if we only listed the vendors that only had bad stuff. BFG is a very respected company.

 

[rgeist554]

I never said that every card sucks. I said that the list would only be reliable if we only listed the vendors that only had bad stuff. BFG is a very respected company.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to come out like that... lol I'll reword it. I'm trying to take your side and say that I doubt every card sucks, but there is bound to be a few bad eggs.

 

[ausch30]

I have been very lucky, I have bought a great deal of products online and the only problem I've ever had was years ago while buying a ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 128 I was sent a 64 instead and I had to pay the shipping to return it and get the card I ordered. I have seen many reports from people about dead products and bad customer support and I have never had to deal with any of that. The only experience with customer support I've had was with Asus when I broke the heat sink support on my P4C800-E Deluxe and I called them and they mailed me a new one no cost to me. I have the greatest sympathy for those that have had bad experiences and understand how that could cause some to become jaded but for me (knock on wood) I've never really had an issue.

 

[rgeist554]

I have been very lucky, I have bought a great deal of products online and the only problem I've ever had was years ago while buying a ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 128 I was sent a 64 instead and I had to pay the shipping to return it and get the card I ordered.

I honestly won't order graphics cards online anymore. Mostly for the reasons that everyone else has already stated. I'd rather have a store within driving range so I can get an immediate replacement and have them worrying about replacing a bad unit. I know for sure the Fry's near me will do this without question.

 

[ausch30]

I would love to have a place within driving rage to go to but I live in Buffalo, NY and the only place to get computer related parts is BB or CC and I refuse to pay their markup as well as the Erie county 8.5% sales tax. Most products end up being close to 50% more expensive when compared to online prices.

 

[rgeist554]

I would love to have a place within driving rage to go to but I live in Buffalo, NY and the only place to get computer related parts is BB or CC and I refuse to pay their markup as well as the Erie county 8.5% sales tax. Most products end up being close to 50% more expensive when compared to online prices.

That sucks.

 

[F34R1355]

Sapphire has great tech support, had one 9600 Pro go bad a few years back, they sent back a 9600XT. Covered 2-day shipping each way.