Issue with Zotac 3080 amp holo.

[Brian Lovegrove]

well.... Overclockers staff confirmed the card is faulty and agreed to refund. so call them today to confirm erfund and they tell me the card has no serial number on it and as such they wont be able to refund. i of course tell them the whole story, i bought it, it faulted,it says engineers sample etc. they have screenshits of the proof of this but they say without the serial number they cant refund untill they been through zotac which could take a while so i really dont know what to do from here. quite obviously no foul play from me and have all recipts/screenshots etc but yeah. for now im left hanging and waiting for 1200 to be refunded or a broken card sent back to me. either way i feel like im being called a liar or whatever despite having proof of puurchase and witnessed issues.

 

[Brian Lovegrove]

Did you buy it from OCUK?

yep purchased on the 18th and confimred as faulty by oc staff about 2/3 days later after i returned it to them.

 

[Brian Lovegrove]

yeah but i mean if the serial number is only on a sticker which most ppl remove and not printed on the board somewhere that is very much a no no but i understand where OC are coming from of course. just its quite obvious i havent really done that and kept them informed of everything every step of the way so hopefully it will get resolved properly otherwise i will have to get trading standards etc invovled as the card was faulty and they aclnowledge that, they had screenshoits of it clearly statingg its a enginerrs sample etc also. guess its just a waiting game. i would say tho i wont be buying Zotac branded anything again after this. the fact a sample card was sold to at 1200 and now its a big issue is kind of disgusting no matter how you look at it

 

[Brian Lovegrove]

when i fist installed a card i ran super position benchmark. this recognised the card as engineers sample.

when the item was sent back (a day after i recieved it) it was in its orrginal packaging completely. all i had done was install the card, run benchmark and then sent it back after it started to fault.


https://ibb.co/rGT9tRp

link to screenshot of sample

 

[Brian Lovegrove]

when i fist installed a card i ran super position benchmark. this recognised the card as engineers sample.

when the item was sent back (a day after i recieved it) it was in its orrginal packaging completely. all i had done was install the card, run benchmark and then sent it back after it started to fault.


https://ibb.co/rGT9tRp

link to screenshot of sample

i would also assume serial number as well being on a tiny sticker would be on box somewhere and on the PCB in the card so i cant see the removal of a little sticker being the reason im unable to get a refund or replacement

 

[Brian Lovegrove]

Hopefully the thief who swapped the engineering sample into your retail box, made the mistake of registering the card that should have been in your box.

Zotac should be able to tell from their records where the engineering sample went, and maybe the recipient could tell zotac to whom and where they sold it. Engineering samples aren't meant to leave the recipient and are released from Nvidia for the recipients only. ZOTAC need to look internally for who sold these on.

When you receive a new item, check the box and it's seals very carefully. Photograph if they look tampered with. Ideally they should be cellaphane wrapped.

I don't see why you would have created a thread on OCUK forums if you had swapped a card.

I imagine the outcome will result in your favour. Just unlucky to be the recipient of fraud somewhere along the line. Hope it gets resolved quickly and OCUK liason with ZOTAC should be expedited in such a case. I imagine there was probably some middle men on the way as many 3000 series cards have had to be sourced from the grey market for retailers to get stock.

i made a thread on here mainly to ask advice on what to do to start with as its the first faulty item i have ever received and was unsure about procedure.

Only GPUS I have ever seen say Engineering samples or Review samples are ones sent to reviewers or people that work for the company for testing or to companies that want a large order and they send one that way to review before making a large purchase .. That is normally where the serial number would be and again if removed you would get the void void message under it.

this is my somewhat being a noob i guess. i can tell you tho the box i received the card in still had the stickers over the openings but was not fully wrapped to my memory. i can 99.9% guarentee also if i removed a sticker from the backplate i would have stuck it on the instructions that came with the product. but yeah i admit my lack of knowledge might bite me in the ass but im pretty sure also if i saw the word Void on the sticker or underneath i would not have touched it as im generally pretty anal about things like that, keeping recipts etc