How much do you consider warranty/customer service when choosing products?

How much do you consider warranty/customer service when choosing products?


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RangerFromTheNorth

Honorable
Apr 13, 2013
17
0
10,510
I recently had a SeaSonic-built XFX Pro750 PSU fail on me and it took my CPU with it. OK, it happens to even the best products and I have no bad feelings toward XFX for it. In fact even in the wake of this I had settled on a superb XFX Pro 850W Black Edition over the Corsair HX850 Gold for duty in my upcoming Haswell build. But before pulling the trigger I felt inclined to follow-up on my current RMA with XFX.

The XFX rep took 5 days to respond to my email (over a weekend) and told me that I could now send the unit in for RMA.

It had been sent 3 weeks ago.:pfff:

After informing him of this he said that a new one would ship the next business day.

That was a week and a half ago. I have had no updates.

When the Purolator and UPS guys circled my neighborhood today and didn't stop at my home, I immediately ordered the Corsair HX850. It's the same price but not as feature rich, convenient, quiet, or as stylish.

XFX PSU's are probably the best quality/value/performance for my current money and I'll certainly envy their products. But I can't trust them now, nor can I recommend them in good faith.

BTW I also RMA'd a Sony blu-ray player last week--it took 5 business days in total. The RMA of my 2500k with Intel? 2, yes TWO days.

So my question out of sheer curiosity is: How much do you consider warranty/customer service when choosing products? Will you spend a little more to know that if something happens you'll be well taken care of?

Maybe I'm just getting old.
 
yes and no...

if a certain company has known issues of poor customer service then i tend to avoid them just like i would avoid products with known problems.

sometimes it doesnt matter if the warranty or customer service is good or not. in the case of my wd 2tb drvies i had to rma them three times at my own cost to ship them out for two of them. considering i only paid $110 each for them and it cost me about $40 total to ship them i wasn't a happy camper even if the rma went through quickly.

i've had to poke and prod ocz technologies to replace ram sticks that were under lifetime warranty. less than ideal but up until they stopped making ram sticks i still would have bought from them since they were solid products.

typically i buy high quality products which shouldnt break and i havent had any real issues besides the hdds and one set of ram sticks. perhaps i'm lucky...

the hx850 should be a pretty solid psu. i have a 1kw model and it is rock solid. it doesnt have modular plugs (lucky i have a full tower to hide the wires!!!) but it gives me nothing to complain about.
 

RangerFromTheNorth

Honorable
Apr 13, 2013
17
0
10,510

Agreed, some products just have inherently terrible engineering industry wide - HDDs to be precise.

I'm kind of like you then. I always try to get quality stuff and have spent a little more for reputable build quality, but rarely did I ever give much weight to "What happens if this product goes wrong" because I assumed that buying quality in the first place sort of negated that.

I suppose I wanted to get some opinions on this matter because I come from the insurance industry. Essentially speaking we sell confidence and peace of mind. Because our products aren't tangible we recognize that relationships are what win or lose customer loyalty. My thinking is that organizations that sell tangibles (i.e. PC Hardware) often view the customer experience as a one-time deal rather than a long term relationship. Corsair has emerged as a rare gem because their products come bundled with an intangible accessory - peace of mind.