Lifetime warranties

[englandr753]

Anyone ever wonder what a company will do if you submit an RMA request on a product that they can no longer get a replacement for?

I have a 8800GTX ACS3 video card that I intend to keep until it croaks, gets replaced croaks again over and over. I just wonder how a company will handle a situation like this lets say 5 years from now Im still using this card in a HTPC setup and it dies.

Doesn't the warranty basically die if you get it replaced after the 1st time. Im saying if they give me a new and different type of card, I wont get a replacement if the replacement dies.

Whats your experience on topics like this and whats your opinion?...

 

[FALC0N]

I really don't know. They would likely give you the closest available replacement. I really doubt they see 5+ year old warranty RMA's often enough for it to matter.

 

[hunter315]

From what i understand they replace it with an equivalent model at the time that the RMA is made. When you get the new product it would likely also come with a registration code, so you register that online and voila it has a lifetime warranty too and the cycle continues.

 

[englandr753]

@ FALCON:

Thats part of the point I was trying to get at but didn't get that out there in the first post. This is primarily the reason they offer warranties like this as they know people will upgrade and discard before it becomes an issue. Its probably <5% of a chance this will happen and they will have to replace something that old...

 

[englandr753]

From what i understand they replace it with an equivalent model at the time that the RMA is made. When you get the new product it would likely also come with a registration code, so you register that online and voila it has a lifetime warranty too and the cycle continues.

It would be interesting to see what they would consider an equivalent model 5 years from now, lol. It would probably be a 49.99 bargain bin card at that point in which probably would outperform that card by a decent margin.

I'm sure the warranty on the replacement would vary from mfgr to mfgr but you probably have it correct for the most part, especially with companies like XFX and EVGA...

 

[Collie147]

Friend of mine had repeated probs with an evga gtx 270 and they replaced it with a refurb gtx 280. So I'd say they'll replace it with a refurb of an equivalent or a slightly better model.