Micron reportedly offers pennies on the dollar for Crucial RAM return, offers to reimburse original MSRP despite it being only 37% of market value — chipmaker later reverses course with a better solution
Micron used to produce some of the best RAM available to mainstream users through its Crucial brand. Despite the company's exit from the consumer market through its now-defunct Crucial brand, Micron had pledged to continue honoring warranties on existing Crucial products. A recent case on Reddit, however, highlights ongoing challenges with Micron's warranty process, where it reportedly offered a customer a ludicrous payout for an RMA. Only after further communication did Micron provide an improved offer. Another user also chimed in with a similar story about an SSD return with Micron. We have reached out to Micron for comment.
Crucial/Micron is refusing lifetime warranties after closing consumer ops—offering 17% of market value and keeping working hardwarefrom r/pcmasterrace
Redditor Key_Tailor6948, who shared the email exchange with Tom's Hardware, recently shared their RMA experience with Micron's warranty process after encountering a failing memory module from a 48GB (2x24GB) DDR5 memory kit. While the Redditor did not specify the exact model of the memory kit, Crucial used to sell two such kits in this capacity: the Crucial Pro DDR5-6000 C48 and the Crucial Pro DDR5-5600 C46. The last known pricing for the memory kits was $489.99 and $459.99, respectively, during the memory shortage.
According to the Redditor, Micron allegedly said in an email that the company is no longer offering replacement products for warranty claims. Instead, Micron purportedly stated it would provide a refund based on the original purchase price, including taxes where applicable. However, the proposed refund amount was $241.86.
The major issue at hand is that the reimbursement Micron offered was based on the cost of the 48GB memory kit purchased before the recent memory shortage and the resulting price hikes. Nowadays, the most affordable 48GB DDR5 memory kit available on the market, such as a DDR5-6400 C32 one, which is faster than Micron’s discontinued offerings, starts at a staggering $649.99. The refund Micron proposed amounts to just 37% of the current market value for a somewhat comparable product. The Redditor's math about being 17% of market value and estimating similar-capacity memory kits going for “roughly $1,400" is a bit off based on verifiable pricing, but the proposed payment was still well short of current market value.
Beyond the disappointment over the low reimbursement, the Redditor expressed frustration that they had to send back the entire 48GB memory kit, even though only one of the two modules was faulty. This meant parting with a memory module that was still fully functional. Unfortunately, this is a common industry practice. Most manufacturers require the return of the full memory kit for warranty claims. It is exceedingly rare for companies to allow returns or replacements of only a single memory module from a multi-module kit, regardless of whether the other module is working perfectly. (EDIT 8/11/2026 : Micron's warranty states that it will either replace a product under warranty or refund the current market value of the product or the amount of the original purchase cost, whichever is lower. Therefore, Micron's offer is within the bounds of its warranty.)
The Redditor was also not happy about covering the shipping costs to return the defective memory module. This is another policy that varies widely among brands: some manufacturers cover all shipping fees, others split the cost, so you cannot really single out Micron in that aspect.
It would seem that Micron subsequently offered a more favorable resolution. The company agreed to send the user three Crucial Pro DDR5-6400 C32 16GB (CP16G64C32U5B) memory modules as a replacement. This solution matches the original capacity of 48GB and also delivers better performance than the user's original memory kit. The user accepted the offer.
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Meanwhile, Crucial SSD owners are seemingly experiencing similar RMA practices from Micron. A Reddit user named LeanaIsTheBest highlighted in the same thread that Micron is allegedly refusing to provide direct replacements for a failing 4TB SSD. Instead, the company ostensibly offered a gift card equivalent to the original purchase price of the 4TB SSD as compensation. However, the company provided an alternate option to receive the same amount in cash through PayPal or Venmo, with the condition that the user pays the 6% transaction fee.
Micron wound down its consumer business back in December 2025. It is reasonable to think the chipmaker has reshaped its manufacturing factories to cater to more profitable markets, such as data centers and the AI sector. Micron probably is not maintaining inventory or production lines for consumer products, so direct replacements are unlikely. For a company that reported revenue of $41.46 billion in its last earnings call, it isn't a great look for Micron to not reimburse the replacement cost for loyal customers who have purchased its Crucial products.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
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core-builder A couple of years ago I made a warranty claim for a failed 16GB stick of Crucial Ballistix Max RGB DDR4 4400, which was from a 32GB kit. They insisted I return only the defective module rather than the entire kit, and they were only willing to replace it with a single Crucial PRO 16GB DDR4 3200 module, despite those being two different tiers of product, and the fact that I would now have mismatched modules. When I pointed out the discrepancy and argued that they were not offering a like-for-like exchange, they basically said "sorry, since we no longer have any stock of the original modules, that's the best we can do".Reply
I would've gladly accepted cash for what I originally paid, store credit or even just an offer to exchange the full kit of both modules. I ended up buying another module to match the one they sent me (of course, that's not really necessary under normal circumstances but mismatched modules have always bothered me). -
TechieTwo I used Micron DRAM in all of my many builds decades ago. When I had one pair go bad and tried to warranty them they gave me a bunch of pushback. That was the last time I ever purchased or recommended Micron DRAM again. Their Biz practices are not acceptable to me and their DRAM does not seem to be as reliable IME as other brands.Reply -
murkusdagger Desktop DDR5 is dual-channel. A kit is 2 matched sticks, one per channel. Three sticks can't split evenly across two channels, so part of your RAM runs at full dual-channel speed and the rest drops to single-channel. Same GB, worse memory.Reply
"Your board has 4 slots" is misdirection. Four slots means you fill them in pairs, 2 or 4. It never meant 3 is supported. The correct replacement is another 2x24, and Crucial knows that. And they argued that 3 would be better performance. That's what makes it wild. -
hwertz They tried the same with Louis Rossman. If you've seen his Youtube channel you know how that went. He *specializes* in covering device repairbility but expanded to companies screwing people over in general. He dragged their name through the mud (as it should be). correctly pointed out it's not his problem that they drove prices up by cutting DDR production to make themselves billions in profits. He is passionate about this stuff, when he gets worked up he looks like he may have a stroke. Long (well not that long) story short he got his full refund.Reply -
Dementoss I don't know how things are here now but, in the UK Crucial always had an excellent reputation for reliability and customer service. Disappointing to see Micron seemingly willing to throw that away. They may come to regret it, if the AI business suffers a major correction and, they seek to re-enter the consumer market.Reply -
hwertz Reply
As far as I know they did here in the states as well? But they've blown through that. Even if they hadn't tried to gaslight Rossman (they falsely claimed his faulty memory wasn't faulty and sent it back -- he does phone and pc repair so he had a full on memory tester besides plugging it into a pc or two and having them fail to POST), offer in his case 20 cents on the dollar of replacement cost, etc., and done the same to others.Dementoss said:I don't know how things are here now but, in the UK Crucial always had an excellent reputation for reliability and customer service. Disappointing to see Micron seemingly willing to throw that away. They may come to regret it, if the AI business suffers a major correction and, they seek to re-enter the consumer market.
Even if that wasn't a thing, just screwing over the regular 'consumer' market as they have is enough to make me not want to buy from them again. Honestly, even if it's black market in the US, if I buy any new RAM I'll make sure it's CXMT (or JHICC or YMTC once they get production ramped up shortly). I'll skip Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix for what they've done to their past customers (not the warranty thing, the abandoning the market as quickly and thoroughly as they did.) -
thestryker To me this mostly shows how slapdash the decision to kill Crucial was. They easily could have had plenty of modules prepared if it had been planned for. Instead they clearly axed it and opted to not worry about their warranties because that would have cost them money.Reply
That was a Samsung SSD, not Micron DRAM.hwertz said:They tried the same with Louis Rossman. -
ifoo I posted about this a few months ago. They did this game with me as well. The illegally offered a t510 instead of a t710 which is not a like for like replacementReply
After I pointed out the legality of this, they suddenly posted a policy reversal online saying that they would honor the original cost
This is the thing in order for them to honor the original cost for a warranty replacement you have to send in the old one which they will refurbish and resell for over twice the amount of money
It's a complete rip-off and I hope they get sued for it because they are screwing over everybody because they have a 5-year warranty on these drives and months after releasing this they shut the door on their products even though they're still producing the same product but under their parent company
It is a complete rip-off and they did this so they don't have to give users back hard drives that are now selling for three times the cost.
I guarantee you if you look at their internal emails this was one of their driving decisions for closing the company.
If you own any of their drives your only recourse is to get money back and they will refuse to replace it
https://www.reddit.com/r/PcBuild/s/TrPPmJqadS -
ifoo Reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/PcBuild/s/TrPPmJqadShwertz said:They tried the same with Louis Rossman. If you've seen his Youtube channel you know how that went. He *specializes* in covering device repairbility but expanded to companies screwing people over in general. He dragged their name through the mud (as it should be). correctly pointed out it's not his problem that they drove prices up by cutting DDR production to make themselves billions in profits. He is passionate about this stuff, when he gets worked up he looks like he may have a stroke. Long (well not that long) story short he got his full refund.
They did exactly the same thing to me but with drives
The company is a total scam I spent thousands of dollars on t710 drives but the warranty is basically pointless now. They are absolutely refusing to replace anything that is broken. Even though they have a 5-year warranty on the box. It is a complete rip off and I really hope that gets sued I don't know what to do about it -
Dav_Daddy I imagine some of this is leftover policy from when RAM was a commodity with almost no margin. I realize this isn't a popular opinion around here, (or much of anywhere else to be honest) but I have some sympathy for those companies that stuck it out through the years where margins were low single digit. These are the companies that didn't cut and run (unlike so many others) when things were bleak and there was very little money to be made.Reply
What does everyone actually expect? They can't provide a replacement, so they reimburse the full price paid at the time of purchase. I can't think of any instance where you can return half of a defective product for a 50% refund? Even if they do sell half separately that's not what you bought. You either return the whole thing or you don't.
It seems to me that they were more than reasonable in trying to accommodate this customer and came up with a solution that while imperfect was the best at hand.