i totally understand that you wanted written proof of the support they give you , but being on the phone will save you alot of time and solve whatever issue you have faster and live.

i have done rma for my video card and power supply (xfx and thermaltake) and i didnt care at all to pay for the shipping , as long as i get my product taken care of .

if i were in your shoes i would probably tried to make them pay my shipping and even an upgrade , but seriously if they CANT pay your shipment , they will not do so.

i have owned bfg and xfx , and i will go back to bfg anyday , they have upgrade program , lifetime warranty and i heard about their free upgrade.
no i dont work for bfg

That replacement card lasted about three months. Same situation, artifacts everywhere and I called again. This time it was going to cost me to RMA it. Unacceptable. I spoke with the next level up I suppose and was told that there was no way I was getting this card cross shipped again. It had to be a cooling problem on my end. I pointed out that I was looking at my warranty and it stated free lifetime replacement. They told me they had changed their policy since my purchase. I pointed out that my warranty is my warranty and I had my bill of sale with it and the warranty said nothing about being able to change with or without notifying me. That had no effect and I refused the RMA offer.

It wasn’t a cooling problem, my warranty was clear and they were going to violate it.

I ended up contacting the BBB and within a few days of filing the complaint I was also contacted and an upgraded card was cross-shipped with a personal 24hour burn test prior to shipping. That card failed upon arrival. I contacted my guy at BFG and told him of the snafu and was disappointed that he didn’t actually burn it in at his desk as he said. I also told him my BBB complaint stood until I received a working RMA card. Another cross-ship with a new 7950GT and all was well with that card. It’s still running strong.

I since moved on to EVGA and have never had a problem with any of their cards. I’ll spend $400 a year on a video card because I have a problem… but I won’t spend that and then be required to continue sending it back over and over at the cost of $20 each time.

Shady customer support practices. I’ll never do business with that company again.

Thank you

I have a asus 8800 gts 512 which would sli with the bfg but I wanted matching cards and both new.. now im gonna get back someone elses junk if i dont return them :(

Contacted BFG and explained it was DOA.. they said they would replace it im pretty sure with some other broken card that they fixed but i need to pay the shipping, keep in mind that i bought this card less than a week ago… anyway off to the post office to get a box cas the box they sell it to you in is not suitable for shipping… Ill send it today.. I bet it will be the third week in Nov when I get the used fixed card back that they pulled the dog hair out of and bench test for me…At any rate it would cost me 400 for one card in our little community so I guess its the price i have to pay.. Ill keep you posted

Shipped it on Tuesday from Calgary and it arrived there this morning. Not really sure what prompted me to drop $750 on a video card, but it was fun while it lasted. Made a decent space heater in the winter as well.

By the way, NVidia just admitted to there being defects in nearly every single 8xxxx and 9xxx series card they’ve ever made, resulting in an extremely high rate of breakage. I’ve been happily been using my XFX 8800GT for nearly 9 months with no serious issues (a few hard reboots during very hot summer days), so since you’re still waiting for a replacement now would be a great time to dust out your case with some compressed air.

Good luck to you, Arrowhite, and don’t be afraid to draw the line somewhere. You bought that video card; you’re not subscribing to it.

They have miraculously shipped my card from their new center in Kahnawake, Quebec through the states via UPS, even when I have used Canada Post originally as my courier and have used express shipping which they did not.

What reason did they have to delay my shipment by nearly a week and send it to a different country?

The only logical reason I can come up with is a self serving UPS contract and I cannot fathom as to why they’d inconvenience their customers like this.

Why even open a place in Quebec to accept RMAs from if you are going to just ship it back through Illinois?

I thought this situation couldn’t get any worse with 2 card failures of the 7900 GT/OC in 1 year, but yet it can get even worse with the complicated stupidity and endless efforts to turn a one dollar profit at a two dollar expense.

In short, BFG fails miserably. It will be no surprise when they go out of business and the only thing that makes me mad at this point is my small monetary contribution might delay that for even a minute.

Would never buy from BFG again, even though their warranty policy does not really bother me.

I did not know they would send an updated card if mine has failed twice(or not being made anymore), and if I get another 7900 GT and it fails again, I will be quite displeased with BFG in general for knowing this issue persists, and handling other clients such as yourself with upgraded versions of cards, then giving me a faulty card again.

At this point I’d even rather a slightly slower card provided I didn’t get the random shooting spikes of death, color bleeding, miscolored pixels bleeding through everything, and mangled boot up lettering/colors, textures not being clamped, etc.

From what I have heard it is a voltage regulation problem with the cards, and it will be a shame for myself and BFG if they send me another faulty one. The evidence of their pre-existing knowledge of the cards being failures as well as them issuing better models to “shut people up” who know that these cards are failures, would provide a much better BBB report, as it shows a general disregard for customers and a premeditated motive to send a defective product to a customer.

As a consumer I’ve been served well by many companies, large and small, but have been seriously screwed by others. I used to be a much more trusting and naive person but have been forced by my environment to adapt and become defensive. Now when I deal with a company I assume the worst but play my cards close to my chest, revealing little bits as is required.

As familiar I am today with this process, I still get screwed occasionally. I have to work a long time to afford a $340 video card so I’m willing to invest further time if necessary to protect that investment. I know from experience that you usually have to get 3 or 4 people in to find someone that, A, gives a damn, and B, has the authority to do anything about it. My patience to reach that 4th person runs shorter every time, but my blog is always within arm’s reach whether I have something nice or nasty to report, and my blog is instant, permanent, and public.

I’m one blogger of a billion. Anyone can blog or otherwise report their consumer experiences online these days. Corporations must soon learn that, just as our phone conversations may be recorded on their end, so shall bloggers be reporting on their experiences. Corporations have a responsibility to be cordial, and when their actions are made public that responsibility is to themselves. That’s the pressure I wish to put on companies that earn my ire; even if I don’t intend to do business with them I want them to consider the ramifications of negative “press” if they continue along that route.

And P.s., I gave my real contact information when I bought and returned that video card to Future Shop. They know me as a very loyal and frequent customer so I’m sure my patronage has kept my account in the black in the long run. I was their back, they wash mine. Positive reciprocity is what keeps one coming back to a company and I commend Future Shop for this.

I disagree to – it’s very much the consumers.. er, you’re right, it’s not the JOB of the consumer, and the vast majority of the population forego what I will call this an opportunity. Not every company offers the same thing, and what you’re advocating here is better marketing campaigns. Shopping around is the biggest weapon we, as consumers, have against corporations. Not loyalty. When I spoke before I was speaking from the perspective of the bigs, not the buyers. As a consumer, I have absolutely no loyalty to any company whatsoever. I have been through every brand of computer component save for the cheap ones and I literally change up on a whim of whoever has the best overclocking and so on. I’m any businesses worst nightmare because I come in fully researched, merely looking for a hands on approach and nothing a salesperson can say can sway me. Most people are not like this. I realize you are talking more about after the ‘attraction’ part in to the retention – but that’s precisely my earlier point, the retention is very lightweight. They have your cash, and you will either stay, or you’ll go, and you’ll either be back, or someone else will take your place. It’s just letting chaos do it’s work.

“when that scrimping cuts into the customer experience that customer’s satisfaction is at risk.”

But what experience are we using here as a benchmark? You’re dissatisfied with their refusal to pay shipping costs on a replacement card. I don’t give a damn. I’m satisfied you’re not. Someone else is mad because when the card no longer plays the LATEST games, they want a FREE upgrade. Where do you draw the line? From your position it seems that you are being reasonable and the person demanding something free is not – a matter of perspective.

“I don’t care or sympathize one bit with a company’s profitability”

And this is why they don’t care or sympathize with the ‘transitional’ consumer. They care about large scale contracts they care about reseller interaction, they do not care about John Doe on the phone. You expect them to sympathize with you and cator to you to ‘retain’ you, but you don’t care about sustaining them – which is their #1 priority. Not to mention your actions, both towards BFG and Future Shop, are against the sustainability of the company. You used Future Shop (You refuse the term ‘fraud,’ so…) to make your life less inconvenienced. This did not give them any profit, and in fact, they now have to sell an opened box for a discount. Thus you actually cost them money – or, we’ll say for aguments sake, you cost them profit. Yet I bet when you go to buy a portable audio player, and Best Buy has it for $10 cheaper, you don’t sit there and say “Hmm, but Future Shop really helped me out when I was without a computer, I’ll just spent the money there.” You expect them to treat you as a person with compassion would, but you don’t – and reasonably so – treat them as a person or a ‘buddy’ that may have helped you out. BFG is the same.

“I have no obligation to any company. They’re lucky to have me as a customer and they’d better give me my money’s worth or they’re going to hear about it.”

Let me say this loud and clear – they don’t. The people that handle your complaints do not pass the message on. They take their headsets off, go “What a dick..” and they walk to the lunch room with people who are representing tonnes of other companies with more people screaming at them about Pay Per View and what have you and pass the day on.

In the end my wish is to be given the services I pay for and for the company to give me support, not to hold my money ransom. The fact that I had to “defraud” Future Shop (a term I disagree with – I acted fully within their rules) goes to show what desperate measures I needed to take in order to prevent weeks of downtime.

It’s not the consumer’s job to go out of his way to find a company to be loyal to, it’s every company’s job to retain that customer they were so lucky to attract. I understand that the priority of companies is to do as much as they can with as little overhead as possible, but when that scrimping cuts into the customer experience that customer’s satisfaction is at risk. I don’t care or sympathize one bit with a company’s profitability – I just want the product I bought with a reasonable working lifespan. BFG front line support did not empathize with me and tried to make me go away instead of nurturing my business so henceforth I’ll be taking my business elsewhere.

Let me say this loud and clear – nowhere do I advise people not to buy BFG products. I was just as fast and thorough in praising my good BFG customer service experience as I was to decry the bad one (note the second sentence of this story).

I have no obligation to any company. They’re lucky to have me as a customer and they’d better give me my money’s worth or they’re going to hear about it.

You paid a premium to REDUCE the CHANCE of device failure occuring. There is no way to avoid it. You can buy 4 top of the line graphics cards and have the first one fail, and then have the 3 subsequent ones fail on their own (not counting the fact that after ~2 you usually blame other factors or at least investigate them, I’m saying that the 4 cards actually do fail) and it’s still just a chance. It’s unlikely, and it’s an anomaly of sorts – but it HAPPENS. I have owned probably 20 top of their time graphics card and only ever had an ASUS-made ATi card fail. You can find a thousand people who swear by ASUS and have never had a problem. It’s all chance.

” … BFG is welcome to alienate its highest-paying customers if that is their wish.”

You pay the highest for premium hardware to cover the cost of the R&D towards said hardware and the higher quality fabrication that has to go in producing it at the time, not for “please cator to my every need” -type support.

“It’s thanks to people like me that prospective customers may read the real experiences of the company’s customers and base their buying decisions on something other than marketing copy.”

They might. They might also base their decisions on the millions of other cards sold, and fully functioning – of which there are plenty of testimonials and reviews. Anybody who reads JUST your article and has their opinion influenced is the type of person that companies do not bother catoring to. As a business entity, you have a certain low-class of consumer who will inevitably drift between different businesses with no REAL loyalty, just a facade to try to get what they want. By this I mean that you can call up BFG and scream about ow you were a loyal customer and how you will ‘never buy from them again’, and they hear you, and they may deploy some rudimentary retention mechanism to keep you as a customer. But there’s a point – and it’s not too far in – where they cut loose. I used to work for Hewlett-Packard as part of their team that handles extremely escalated customers who are demanding all sorts of things. Our job wasn’t to give it to them, it was to explain to them that their sitution is only partly our fault and part of it is just par for the course. They may get some sort of compensation, but the kind of outlandish demands such as “I want all my money back” or “I want compensation for the $15,000 I ‘lost’ while my product wasn’t functioning!” never go answered. You know why? Because anybody who is naive enough to switch brands and abandon a company at the drop of a hat like that, is just going to bounce around anyway. You can swear off BFG, and only buy MSI cards or ASUS cards or whomever you choose, and as a customer you are gone from BFG. But at that very same moment, there are other people who are having similar experiences with every other product in the same class.. and they’re telling ASUS “screw you, I’m never going to buy from you again!” and they go to BFG. It all balances out in the end, and that’s why you – honestly – don’t matter. I know you want to feel important and you want that 1-on-1 style interaction but these are corporations. The people you call are just people sitting at desks who want to go home and see their families. They are just doing a job wanting to get through the day. Nothing more.

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