in an attempt to clarify.
the ticket system is for tech support, reporting issues, trying to find answers. This is operated by our HQ engineers. it's kinda like a IT issue reporting system in a major company.
It gives our engineers direct access to issues and hopefully gives end users direct access to answers. I personally have no experience of how well this works but as they do not handle RMA's themselves this would be the wrong place to simply request an RMA.
We also have a support section on our official forums btw, this is manned by many of the same people.
our direct RMA service is operated by a team in the Netherlands, they do not offer tech support, they only provide and handle RMA's and typically only RMA's from resellers direct or customers whose reseller has refused to help them out. I have visited this RMA centre and to give you some idea, when I was there last December they were operating a 48 turnaround from receipt to dispatch
We offer a three year warranty, the terms provided to our major resellers provide special terms in exchange for their agreement to handle the full three years of that warranty. This is a new arrangement made at the time that we extended our warranty from two to three years. The terms of our RMA provide a maximum 14 day turnaround for resellers (typically half that) from the day they ship the fault card out to the day that they receive the replacement.
The simple answer why we operate the RMA system like this is that the reseller will test the board and return them in batches. We can then replace the product and get the replacement back to the end user much faster than having to receive, test and dispatch multiple RMA's from multiple different people. in general, this method provides much better serviceas it allows us to keep turnaround times to a minimum, it also allows the reseller more freedom to handle the RMA by their own methods.
I hope this helps
