Gigabyte demanding customer pay the shipping both ways for an item covered under warranty?

bloodkil · 22 Jul 2015 at 19:58

rolypolyman said:
My understanding is the first year is with the retailer, legally they cannot fob you off, thereafter the manufacturer is responsible for the remainder of the warranty. As to who pays for shipping costs I don't know.

I got fobbed off with another UK retailer about a motherboard issue, they told me it wasn't covered and fobbed me off. Went straight to MSI which worked out far better. Safe to say I will not be shopping at said retailer again.

Surfer · 22 Jul 2015 at 20:01

rtho782 said:
You have no contract with Gigabyte, and they could even say their repairs are all chargeable if they liked.

You DO have a sales contract with the retailer, and your dispute is with them. As they may use the manufacturer to repair, this usually just adds time on to the process (as it adds a middle man) but in this case it's probably best.

If they retailer tries to push you to Gigabyte the response is "no, my sales contract is with you, you need to deal with the issue". They may well forward the unit on to gigabyte but that's not your problem. If they won't deal with you, the eventual result is a county court claim.

THIS. ^^^

Customers need to stand their ground more.. the law is on your side here.

Freddie1980 · 22 Jul 2015 at 20:12

Gigabyte are well within their rights to ask you to pay for the shipping. Your contract is with the retailer not the manufacturer (this is ultimately determined by who you paid the money to) so be grateful Gigaabyte are willing to help you rather then fob you of like the retailer has done. All 3 years are down to the retailer to cover, ultimately they will just return faulty goods back to Gigabyte anyway so its not like they lose out in anyway.

Was it OCUK you bought from?

RavenXXX2 · 22 Jul 2015 at 20:15

Looks like seller is scam.

r7slayer · 22 Jul 2015 at 20:35

I don't agree with this at all. It should be, you pay for the delivery to where ever it needs to goto for it to be tested and fixed. If found faulty then gigabyte fix it and pay for shipping back. If found not to be faulty then you pay for shipping back.

bloodkil · 22 Jul 2015 at 20:51

r7slayer said:
I don't agree with this at all. It should be, you pay for the delivery to where ever it needs to goto for it to be tested and fixed. If found faulty then gigabyte fix it and pay for shipping back. If found not to be faulty then you pay for shipping back.

That's I thought it should be, certainly how I did it with XFX. I paid for it to the RMA base in the Netherlands, then they paid for it to go to Hong Kong and back to me. Which in all all fairness I complain about, bit isn't bad considering it only cost me £40 for the RMA (£22 shipping to NL and £18 import tax).

Skynet5 · 22 Jul 2015 at 21:11

Why pay import costs on an RMA? That ain't right.

Scougar · 22 Jul 2015 at 21:13

Seems odd to me. I have done RMA's with people like Corsair and it's direct to manufacturer, without a shipping return cost.

Twirlywoos · 22 Jul 2015 at 21:25

Typical OCUK! One person has bad customer service with a particular brand and most people declare war never to buy from the mentioned company again.

Well let me turn the tables for a minute, I bought Gigabyte cards 3 years ago and contacted Gigabyte for RMA. They told me to go to the retailer and after contacting them they took my cards and paid for collection. Maybe you shouldn't buy from a potato retailer in future.

bloodkil · 22 Jul 2015 at 21:27

lnoton said:
Why pay import costs on an RMA? That ain't right.

I tried to contest it but they said HMRC charge a £50 fee which is reimbursed if it's found to be classed as already taxed. Wasn't really worth the effort for £18 haha

Purgatory · 22 Jul 2015 at 22:08

majnu said:
Typical OCUK! One person has bad customer service with a particular brand and most people declare war never to buy from the mentioned company again.

Well let me turn the tables for a minute, I bought Gigabyte cards 3 years ago and contacted Gigabyte for RMA. They told me to go to the retailer and after contacting them they took my cards and paid for collection. Maybe you shouldn't buy from a potato retailer in future.

I think the point was Gigabyte not the retailer in question. When it comes to retailers I only ever buy my PC stuff from two retailers, OCUK and obviously can't name the other (For my business needs I have other retailers because they provide business level support/service, which is very important in a business environment).. and both have been fantastic for many years, never had a problem with any item I have received apart from was very unhappy with OCUK regarding how they pack hard drives, this is one reason I don't buy hard drives anymore from OCUK but buy everything else.

Also Gigabyte gets way too much praise on this forum, if you read other forums you will hear and see all the nightmares regarding motherboards and their overclocked versions of graphics cards that all seem to fail over time or have to be down-clocked because of the aggressive overclocking on the cards and clearly are not tested. I also have had to help many Gigabyte users with updating their motherboards BIOS for example because their support site seems to confuse many customers and even tech people.

Gigabyte remind me a lot of Chaintech back in the day, where they would make their hardware just a bit faster than other brands but over time stability issues rear their ugly head and you find you have to down clock the motherboard or the GPU in question to regain stability.

I don't buy Gigabyte because of this practice and clear signs of problems when every time a user complains about a fault that comes up randomly it turns out to be a Gigabyte motherboard or GPU that is factory overclocked (Their reference boards are perfectly fine though).

I think the biggest selling point to Gigabyte is they have a UK RMA Service Centre.. Apart from that I don't see the appeal of many of their products. They need to make sure factory overclocked hardware is stable, which is more important than it breaking some speed record, without stability it's practically useless is a computer.

Hope they stop this practice of charging customers under warranty for returning their goods. :mad:

, Not one company I have had to RMA to has done this to me , I have had to pay to send the item or they send a free post sticker, but never had to pay to get an item returned to me under warranty.

crinkleshoes · 22 Jul 2015 at 22:51

So... are retailers charged shipping in both directions for returning faulty items to the manufacturers? Really??

Scougar · 23 Jul 2015 at 04:15

The OP did not say he/she got it from ocuk, not really sure about the rant.

Blackjack Davy · 23 Jul 2015 at 16:54

Hmm, on the cards I've had to RMA both went back to the retailer (one was OCuk) and I had to pay the outgoing postage and the retailer paid for the return.

Used to think that was a bit of a liberty tbh considering it was a manufacturers fault, but I'd be really annoyed if I had to pay for it both ways.

wazza300 · 23 Jul 2015 at 16:59

gigabyte don't normally do that,they normally email you a free postage label you print it off and return the item that way,free of charge

cant speak for retailers

Blackjack Davy · 23 Jul 2015 at 17:01

Hmm mine was a Gigabyte card but b-grade stock, which may have affected things. Anyway OCuk told me to return it to them.

Surfer · 23 Jul 2015 at 17:01

Blackjack Davy said:
Hmm, on the cards I've had to RMA both went back to the retailer (one was OCuk) and I had to pay the outgoing postage and the retailer paid for the return.

Used to think that was a bit of a liberty tbh considering it was a manufacturers fault, but I'd be really annoyed if I had to pay for it both ways.

yeah thats how my rma was as well. I pay for the return to ocuk then they pay to send it back to me(or whatever replacement card).

I suppose i should have contested it as its not really right that customers should have to pay yet more when its not their fault the original item was faulty.

http://whatconsumer.co.uk/returning-damaged-or-faulty-goods/#axzz3gjO5PV5A

Meaker · 23 Jul 2015 at 17:22

Going with an MSI notebook they gave me a label and i could either drop it off or get it picked up with ups and then they ship it back. No fuss though it is going to Poland.

crinkleshoes · 23 Jul 2015 at 17:24

For a genuinely faulty item covered under warranty, the customer should not bear any expense in returning the item... sure things happen, but the customer paid a fixed amount for a product guaranteed to work (or be repaired or replaced) for a set period of time so it's not reasonable for the customer to be out of pocket in this situation.

If the customer returns an item as faulty and it turns out to be perfectly fine (possibly awkward as some faults are intermittent)... then I think it's fair for the customer to front the postage cost both ways and maybe even a contribution toward the testing.

Most retailers and manufacturers I have dealt with to-date have gone by the "normal" means (although it depends on what the item is) which is that the customer returns it and then the manu/retailer sends it back... I'm kinda OK with that as most don't usually charge if you make a mistake and the item isn't really faulty, some do charge for the extra shipping cost however. So it might be a reasonable balance that's most reasonable on all parties.

A few, exceptional, retailers and manufacturers will even cover the cost of postage both ways. I've known OcUK to do this too, but that may have only been because them item was practically DOA, rather than 18 months down the line.

I normally purchase from OcUK, sometimes one yellow competitor for ore business-orientated items that OcUK don't stock or I'll visit an electronics retailer in Switzerland thanks to my location. For example, my 2x Titan X cards came from OcUK and were shipped straight to me here in France. Annoyingly for me, they are both Gigabyte

The R9 280X in question did not come from OcUK... otherwise I would probably be returning it to them at the moment.

You can get very cheap postal services, I know... I just think it's insulting and unacceptable for a manufacturer to put the cost of shipping both ways onto a customer for a device that should not even have a fault (yeah, I know... things happen... but they're a multi-million pound company and I'm a home user).

leoncao · 23 Jul 2015 at 19:12

Freddie1980 said:
Gigabyte are well within their rights to ask you to pay for the shipping. Your contract is with the retailer not the manufacturer (this is ultimately determined by who you paid the money to) so be grateful Gigaabyte are willing to help you rather then fob you of like the retailer has done. All 3 years are down to the retailer to cover, ultimately they will just return faulty goods back to Gigabyte anyway so its not like they lose out in anyway.

Was it OCUK you bought from?

Don't think that is true. Retailer are bound for the whole warranty period. They merely have to serve you for the first 12 months. The it should be with the manufacturer. There is no law I know that force your retailer to cover 3 yrs of your warranty, correct me if I am wrong.