Step-Up/Trade-Up programs

[Slava]

I am considering all options here in an attempt to figure out the most enjoyable/cost effective way (for me) to wait for the PCI-E solutions. nVIDIA Step-up Program STINKS, so, among other things, I looked at the ATI Trade-Up program.

Does anyone have first-hand knowledge/experience dealing with this Trade-Up Program?

Please do not respond/speculate if you do not know for sure how it works. I need to know exactly what this is about. I have read ATI FAQs about the Program found here:

<A HREF="http://www.ati.com/buy/traderebate/tradeupFAQ.html" target="_new">http://www.ati.com/buy/traderebate/tradeupFAQ.html</A>

The FAQs do not give any answers to some of the most important questions.

First, they list trade-in prices here <A HREF="http://www.ati.com/buy/traderebate/tradeup.html" target="_new">http://www.ati.com/buy/traderebate/tradeup.html</A> and they claim that these prices are very discounted. For example, the ALL-IN-WONDER 9800 PRO 128MB AGP is listed at $349.00 USD

At the same time, newegg.com offers the same brand new retail card made by ATI for $334.00 USD + free shipping. Newegg is $30-50 cheaper than ATI since ATI’s "discounted price" is $15 higher, plus it charges you for shipping of your new card, PLUS you have to pay for shipping your old card to them . . . and since they have to get it in 10 days you cannot ship using the cheapest method.

The question is whether this trade-in price is fixed no matter what card you send as a trade-in or it goes down depending on how old/new/cheap/expensive your card is.

Second, does the value of my current card matter at all? Will it influence the final amount I will end up paying for ATI AIW 9800 Pro?

Am I missing something or this is a plain and simple rip-off?

What would I end up paying for ALL-IN-WONDER 9800 PRO 128MB AGP if I traded-in a one month old eVGA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128Mb GDDR2 (2.0 n/s) in original packaging with all original CDs/manuals/cables, etc. in mint condition?

<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig every three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green>
<font color=red>I got no sense of humor but my porn is better than yours!</font color=red>

 

[scottchen]

ATI don't give a flying f*ck what card you send them, i just happened to have a few trident 3dimages lying around, none of them actually works, I sold a couple to friends for $5 each, and they traded up to the 9800pro for 199US, that trade's over. ATI doesn't care what card you send them, you just have to send in a video card, they don't care what it is, or if it work or not. Just send them something.

<A HREF="http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/myrig.php?do=view&id=17301" target="_new">My PC</A>

 

[Slava]

Please explain:

If I want to get ALL-IN-WONDER 9800 PRO 128MB AGP,

it is listed on ATI site in the Trade-up program at $349.00 USD

Okay, I send them a 6-year old card. I pay $10 to send it.

Then they charge me 349.00 + $15 shipping.

This way I

1. Bother with sending them an old card;
2. Pay $374 total

At the same time I can get THE SAME card from newegg.com for $334 and pay nothing for shipping. It seems that participating in the ATI program causes the headache and costs $40 more than getting the card from newegg.com

What is the benefit of participating in ATI Trade-Up program?

Is there something I am missing?

Please, explain.


<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig every three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green>
<font color=red>I got no sense of humor but my porn is better than yours!</font color=red>

 

[scottchen]

Well then in this case trade-up's not a good option, ATI had the 9800pro for trade up at 199US, that was the best deal. So in this case then newegg's has the better deal.

<A HREF="http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/myrig.php?do=view&id=17301" target="_new">My PC</A>

 

[Slava]

Yeah. Thanks for the reply. I thought so but did not want to believe that ATI would openly rip people off. nVIDIA program is rather restrictive but at least it is fair: You send them the invoice for your card that you bought within 90 days from the date you chose to participate in the program and they sell you a card of your choice for its retail price minus the amount of your invoice. This way if you are not happy with your FX5700 that you bought for $170 you can get a FX5900XT for 79$ ($249-170).

Of course, you must also send them your card in resellable condition...

<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig every three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green>
<font color=red>I got no sense of humor but my porn is better than yours!</font color=red> <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Slava on 04/28/04 06:45 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[scottchen]

Post deleted by scottchen

 

[mrface]

they sent them to NV also?

<A HREF="http://www.cameronwilliamson.com" target="_new">-={Apostalic Alcoholic.}=-</A>

 

[Crashman]

Please do not respond/speculate if you do not know for sure how it works.

You don't need experience to know how it works, as it's clearly defined in the documentation.

It's a scam. Basically, ATI charges $50 more than the average price for the cards they sell from their website. Then they knock that $50 back off when you send them a card. How nice, so you're getting a card at full price anyway.

But the reason ATI does the trade up program is to REMOVE older cards from the market that would COMPETE with their 9000/9100/9200 series. You send them an 8500, ATI's hoping that whoever would have used that 8500 will now buy a 9200 instead.

So it's ATI's way of reducing competition for their bottom-end products, while costing them nothing because the cards were overpriced $50 to begin with.

I tend to wonder how many people have given up 9500 Pro's a GeForce4 Ti's to them in order to save $50 on their 9800XT. It's the duty of any knowledgable computer enthusiast to send them the most worthless card they can find, junk, if they choose to buy directly from ATI.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Slava]

I tend to wonder how many people have given up 9500 Pro's a GeForce4 Ti's to them in order to save $50 on their 9800XT. It's the duty of any knowledgable computer enthusiast to send them the most worthless card they can find, junk, if they choose to buy directly from ATI.

Hehe ) well you are right. It is, in fact, spelled out in the documentation. But the terms and conditions make so little sense if one actually reads them that I was wondering if I understood it right . . . or I am stupid or something.

You see, your quoted comment is strange because it is the duty of every half-intelligent user to stay away from that program and steer everyone they can away from it because with all the shipping charges and headaches you end up buying the new ATI NOT at the fair retail price but about 40-50 bucks MORE depending on where you are shipping your old card from because the refundable $50 security deposit is in addition to the extra base cost ($15 more than the market), shipping charge ($10-15) and the cost to ship an old card to ATI ($10+).

What a shame...



<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig every three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green>
<font color=red>I got no sense of humor but my porn is better than yours!</font color=red>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I thought so but did not want to believe that ATI would openly rip people off.

They aren't, you still get a discount. Difference, ATI does not reduce their prices except for at new product launches. 2 months ago the deal would've been great (heck we discussed it and recommended it all the time initially), now everyone is selling off their old cards to make space for the new ones.

The time to use the rebates are right after the release of a new card. Go to any manufacturer's site and you will get an MSRP, not the lowest price out there. At launch ATI will be equal to all others out there or very close, once the cards have been out a while, the resellers will be cheaper. ATI charging less than NEWEGG and others undercuts their ability to sell product. The advanatage of buying from ATI is you know what you're getting and there is no BS of returning it to the reseller. APPLE is right now being sued by it's resellers because the 'APPLE Stores' are undercutting all of their prices because they are being charged less by Apple head office, thus penalizing the resellers.

While this is good for cunsumers in some respects, it hurts the distributors, and without enough distributors you'll see prices go up again later once there are fewer distributors.

The whole thing is to be an edjucated consumer when you buy. Now I wouldn't recommend anyone buy directly from ATI's site as every reseller would be cheaper, however wait until the new cards come out and you may find that a BBA card after discount could be cheaper directly from ATI. You may also find more benifit from the lower end cards. When I ordered my R9600Pro (3-4 weeks before they were in stores) they knocked off shipping prices as a deal that I didn't find out about until after I had my card in my hands.

nV's program is totally different, and are not good comparisons. The best deal of all, get the BestBuy/FutureShop extended warranty, make-up *cough* find a problem with your top end card, and have them replace it after 2 years for a newer model. Now that's the best 'deal' of all, but it's unrelated to these two deals, as are the other two.

Main thing is what you value most, getting what you want or paying the price you want. Sometimes the two come together, but those varables change every week/day.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[Slava]

Wow, man. I mean it. Great post. Thanks. I knew about corporations charging more to avoid undercutting distributors. But I was upset that the program claims to offer deep discounts while in reality it does not (except at the time of new line launches). I did not know that

The time to use the rebates are right after the release of a new card. Go to any manufacturer's site and you will get an MSRP, not the lowest price out there. At launch ATI will be equal to all others out there or very close

Still it does not look like you can actually gain anything at all by participating in this program.

The advanatage of buying from ATI is you know what you're getting and there is no BS of returning it to the reseller

I see no advantage there because there are plenty of online vendors with better prices and better or equal return policies. Two examples are newegg.com and amazon.com.

The Best-Buy extended warranty idea is ingenious I will keep it in mind.

Main thing is what you value most, getting what you want or paying the price you want.

Normally, I care not for the price and whenever I build a new system I buy premium hardware regardless of the cost. After all, I build a new rig once in 2-3 years and I find that the expense is justified by problem-free, great performance over a period of time this long.

Problem today is that I am not looking to buy a top of the line card right now. I just need a low cost solution to comfortably wait it out and see what the PCI-E era brings. My choice of FX5700Ultra was not the best and I am looking to replace it at the lowest possible cost. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are way too many choices, they are all pretty similar.

The last time I built a power rig, for example, was when ASUS GeForce3 Ti-500 Deluxe was the best card in the world. The choice of this card was easy because not only it outperformed every single card that existed at that time it also offered the most features of any card in existence at that time. It was an All-In-Wonder without the remote control and it came with very good shutter stereo glasses. It also came with an awesome set of software and half a dozen games, including game of the year Sacrifice. I had no problem paying $500 for it. There was simply no contest (since money was not an issue).

Today, however, there are too many variables. For example, as a transitional card to replace my Ti-500 before I get a 6800 or something similar, I wanted an FX5700 Ultra 256Mb card and preferably from ASUS. ASUS does not make ANY 5700 Ultras. I goofed and got ASUS FX5700 256 Mb thinking it was an Ultra. Oh, it also came with an awesome game/software bundle. But I had to return it and got an e-VGA 5700Ultra instead but it comes with zero bundled software and no one seems to have a 256 Mb version.

Furthermore, I just tried to "step-up" the 5700U to 5900U but the 5900U has been discontinued! Now I have a choice between 5900, 5900XT, 5900SE and 5950U. This is a problem because while 5950U is a good card, it is not worth $500 and analysis of official nVIDIA spec lists for 5900, 5900XT, 5900SE is inconclusive (except to say the 5900 uses the fastest memory of the lot) while prices vary significantly.

I really hate all this mumbo-jumbo. The same chaos exists in ATI product line specs/naming conventions. Throw into the mix a dozen or so manufacturers each with their own naming conventions, memory choices, cooling solutions, software bundles, etc. plus weird names for features "unique" to their versions of the cars as well as confusing trade-in/trade-up programs and you can see where my frustration and confusion are coming from. Making and intelligent choice is almost impossible unless you can afford to spend a month researching all this crap while in this time things will get discontinued, prices will chage and so forth. Sometimes I wanna go on a shooting spree and whack all PR and marketing idiot-assholes.


<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig every three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green>
<font color=red>I got no sense of humor but my porn is better than yours!</font color=red>

 

[Crashman]

When that price was introduced it was competitave with discount sellers such as newegg.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>