Graphics Card Warranties (UK Only) - Let's see how good they really are *Look*

[onearmedbandit]

... most likely having to pursue through no claims court...

That doesn't sound like a very good court

Seriously, though, very useful chart!

[Saracen]

To what? I wasn't meaning to the warranty, I mean compared to many other countries.

Really? You compared it to the warranty ....

Or just buy from a UK shop and take advantage of our superior consumer rights, avoiding such a need for manufacturer warranties.

[Pob255]

My hole point is that it's about PROOF

Show me the operational hours rating on any shop advert for a graphics card.

not cards, components, ie capacitors, transistors, resistors, coils, etc
heck even the baring of fan/blower on the cpu cooler will have a life span rated in hours.

These are the parts which have documented working life cycles, all measured in working hours, AFAIK the card it self doesn't.
So you could take the component with the lowest rated life span as a minimum possible life span for the card, however that's measured in hours in a known environment.
So you will need to PROVE that your use of the card has not been at fault, that the card is at fault and that it's lifespan was not "reasonable"

Heck, let's face it electronics are almost a consumable product these days, with the rate of the upgrade cycle.

[badass]

Or just buy from a UK shop and take advantage of our superior consumer rights, avoiding such a need for manufacturer warranties.

From personal experience I'd rather just deal with a problem through warranty than have a disagreement about my consumer rights. Even if that means I end up paying postage when I shouldn't have to.
This comes from someone that has successfully won compensation from a car dealer through court once and is in the process of pursuing another for a refund on a car that intermittently loses its ability to idle from a dealer that is insistent on me having to put up with repair attempts at my own inconveninece till the cows come home.

[onearmedbandit]

Where did you get your info that Gigabyte cards have 3-year warranties? I couldn't find anything on their website about it, and some of the sellers I found were advertising only a 2-year warranty.


Edit: I e-mailed Gigabyte to enquire and they replied with this: "Warranty is 3yrs taken from Serial number not purchase date."

So... how will I know how long my card's warranty would be? Would I need to buy the card before I could find out how long its warranty period is? :s

[jim]

I suspect the answer there is yes.

Very few suppliers would make the effort to find out the serial number before selling it to you. It's probably why the sellers mention a 2-year warranty, because they know that all of their cards are less than a year old so there will be at least 2 years left on the warranty. If there isn't, you should be able to complain.

In short: just treat it as a 2 year warranty and you should be fine.

[kalniel]

Really? You compared it to the warranty ....

Er, no I didn't, and it doesn't say that anywhere in the quote you used either :/ The fact that we have superior customer rights (compared to other countries) *results* in the lack of *such* a need for manufacturer warranties. That's all I said, no more, no less, please don't try to infer things I didn't say.

[badass]

Er, no I didn't, and it doesn't say that anywhere in the quote you used either :/ The fact that we have superior customer rights (compared to other countries) *results* in the lack of *such* a need for manufacturer warranties. That's all I said, no more, no less, please don't try to infer things I didn't say.

What was the point in that statement in the first place then?
Someone does research, posting lots of warranty info. Your response certainly implies to everyone else reading it that differing warranties are irrelevant in the UK with our good consumer protection laws. Warranties are far easier to work with than arguing with a retailer about their obligations.

[kalniel]

What was the point in that statement in the first place then?
Someone does research, posting lots of warranty info. Your response certainly implies to everyone else reading it that differing warranties are irrelevant in the UK with our good consumer protection laws. Warranties are far easier to work with than arguing with a retailer about their obligations.

Sorry if my response was hard to understand. I was trying to say that because we have superior consumer protection compared to other countries, there is not *such* a need for choosing products based on their warranties - you could go further and say that retailer choice is now a factor for consideration in this country as well and it would be great to see a table likewise comparing different retailers RMA responses. That doesn't mean to say that there is no need for examining different warranty policies, and at no point was I comparing consumer rights to warranties.

[Saracen]

You said we could just buy from a UK shop and avoid the need the such a warranty. Buying from a UK shop does not avoid the need for such a warranty, regardless of whether UK rights are superior to other countries or not, because warranties can, and some do, give rights and coverage UK consumer rights legislation simply does not offer.

The comparison you made is that warranties are not needed because of UK rights. You compared the functionality of UK rights to the functionalities of warranties and sad that it "avoided the need" for such warranties. It does NOT, because it all depends on what the warranty offers. Where a warranty offers broader coverage, they may well be superior to UK rights, and even where they do not, they may well offer a faster resolution of the problem than relying on UK consumer rights.

UK consumer rights certainly are better than many other countries, a point amply illustrated by the codifying EU directive requiring all member states to offer at least certain levels of coverage still falling way short in many respects (though not all) of what we already had here. But that doesn't mean that the existence of those rights "avoids the need" for warranties, and that is the comparison you made, the need for warranties because of consumer rights.

I did not infer things, and as such warranties can offer coverage UK rights do not, you are simply wrong in that it avoids the need. It offers, subject to the specific warranty, options that consumer rights UK legislation does not.

And that it why a comparison of warranties is useful. The problem with it is that it might be a snapshot of warranty coverage right now, but unless kept up to date, it may be misleading to rely on as time goes by. Manufacturers can change their warranty coverage, for better or worse, more or less at will. They obviously cannot out out of consumer law, so legislation provides a base level of cover, and a pretty respectable base level at that. But it's always worth knowing what warranties, whether from manufacturers or even non-mandatory cover from shops is, because it may well be the best route.

An example, outside of computing .... the tailor (both manufacturer and retailer) I get some shirts and stuff from offer a 3-month no-quibble warranty. If you don't like something, return it within three months for replacement or full refund, though excluding outbound delivery charges. That's (obviously) on top of any DSR of SoGA coverage, both of which you still have. And they make the point that it's unconditional. The clothes can be worn or not, damaged or not, have cigar burns in them or not and been chewed by the dog or not. You still get a replacement or full refund, for three months.

And, the thing about such warranties is that manufacturers (or retailers, like Scan) don't have to offer cover above the level of consumer rights, but .... if they do, and the consumer knew of and relied on that warranty, then it's legally enforceable in the courts, if need be.

Clearly, graphics cards aren't shirts, and I've not seen any IT manufacturer offering anything quite that broad. I doubt the numbers would add up if they did. But the exact terms of warranties can still give options consumer law does not. For instance, it may give a two-year replacement (probably of like-for-like, or a more modern equivalent if a direct replacement/repair is not an option). Consumer law may end up being limited to a pro-rata refund with a deduction for the proportion of the "reasonable" life expectancy of the product that you actually had before it failed.

It may well often be the case that consumer law gives you the best, or most suitable protection and is the way to go. That, in my opinion, is very likely to be the case in the first few days (or just possibly in some cases, up to 3 months and 7 days) where the DSRs apply. The DSR coverage is extremely powerful, but of a generally very short duration. After that, and especially after the first 6 months, a warranty may well give protections over and above the coverage given even by the UK's "superior" consumer rights.

You cannot just buy in a UK shop and "avoid the need" for warranty cover, because depending on the situation and the warranty, a warranty may well give you protection the legislation does not.

[Saracen]

Sorry if my response was hard to understand. I was trying to say that because we have superior consumer protection compared to other countries, there is not *such* a need for choosing products based on their warranties ...

I still don't agree.

First "such" a need compared to what? Implicit in "such" a need is that it's in comparison to some base line. If the base line is to not having those consumer protections, well, they've been on place since 1979 in the form of the SoGA though even that replaced previous much less rigid rights and has been amended a fair bit since '79. But most people know those rights exist, even if they may well not know (or be wrong about) what they say. And that doesn't refer to you, but even on Hexus, despite going over it again and again and again, we still often either get questions asked or clearly incorrect statements made, much less what the general public think is the case. But if that's the comparison, between warranty with rights versus warranty without rights, then we're clearly better off with rights, but warranties can and often do still give cover rights don't.

If it refers to buying in the UK shop to get our "superior" rights rather than buying abroad and not getting them, well, that's true in as far as consumer rights go, because enforcing them very likely means taking legal action in a foreign court and, over anything of this scale, that's very unlikely to be an economic proposition for most of us. But that makes warranties even more useful, because of the manufacturer operates in the UK, then they can be held to account by UK courts for warranty rights.

All told, it's never the case that you're worse off by having warranty rights over what you have in consumer protection without those warranty rights. The worst that can happen is you're no better off, which is why it's useful to know who offers what, and factor it in to your purchase decision. It may not be what determines what brand you buy .... or it may be. For instance, there's not much point having a replacement warranty on a PSU if getting it replaced means shipping the PSU to the USA at your own cost. It'd probably be cheaper to ditch it and just buy a new one. A UK RMA option, on the other hand, may be what leads me to buy brand A not brand B. Ditto warranty cover.

And, for that matter, so might a retailer's reputation for dealing with problems. I've been buying car hifi from the same shop for, oh, about 35 years, precisely because I got such good customer service way back, and it's been first rate ever since. So now, I get a few prices, have a chat, agree something reasonable and always buy there, even if it's a bit more expensive than the cheapest. Service, to me anyway, is worth paying for.

Information is king, and the more you know, the more informed the buying decision whichever way we opt to go. Warranty details are one such piece of information.

Final example. I bought a new washing machine a few months back. Several makes were in the running, and I ended up selecting from the short-list of machines with suitable features at acceptable prices based on the manufacturer warranty offered, which was a full five years, parts, labour and call-out, free of charge on registration of the machine. We then bought a relative a tumble-dryer from the same manufacturer (Siemens) for exactly the same reason. That particular manufacturer warranty goes way above any consumer rights coverage, albeit the legal rights last a bit longer, in theory at least. Had I not known of that warranty option (and thanks to John Lewis for pointing it out) I could well have opted for something else and, over five years, it quite conceivably could have cost me more for repairs than the machine cost in the first place.

[kalniel]

You said we could just buy from a UK shop and avoid the need the such a warranty. Buying from a UK shop does not avoid the need for such a warranty,
..
The comparison you made is that warranties are not needed because of UK rights. You compared the functionality of UK rights to the functionalities of warranties and sad that it "avoided the need" for such warranties.
..
But that doesn't mean that the existence of those rights "avoids the need" for warranties, and that is the comparison you made, the need for warranties because of consumer rights.
..
You cannot just buy in a UK shop and "avoid the need" for warranty cover, because depending on the situation and the warranty, a warranty may well give you protection the legislation does not.

Have chopped quotes simply to highlight something, because I think you've completely misread what I said. I have never said it avoids the need, so please stop quoting as if I did and misrepresenting what I'm saying. I said, and highlighted several times since, that it avoids SUCH a need for them. There is a massive semantic difference.

Compare the two:

1) X avoids such a need for Y
2) X avoids the need for such a Y

I'm saying #1. You're accusing me of saying #2.

[prehensile]

i had a steam code missing from my sapphire box, so i had to write about 5 letters to asia to the effect of:

Please send card
Please please card
Please please oh pretty please I want CARD
Please please please sir send me my number please sir
Just give me the number you butt monkey!

about 2 hours of writing and checking web sites, and 2 months of waiting later i got a code!

[Saracen]

Have chopped quotes simply to highlight something, because I think you've completely misread what I said. I have never said it avoids the need, so please stop quoting as if I did and misrepresenting what I'm saying. I said, and highlighted several times since, that it avoids SUCH a need for them. There is a massive semantic difference.

Compare the two:

1) X avoids such a need for Y
2) X avoids the need for such a Y

I'm saying #1. You're accusing me of saying #2.

No, I'm not. I even put the "such" in quotes. I'm not misrepresenting you, I'm simply disagreeing with you. That's what the points about a "baseline" were about.

And I am most certainly not "accusing" you of anything, so "don't misrepresent what I said" right back at you. I simply think you're wrong.

[bondlegend]

thanks. will be very useful when i make a future purchase. im surprised that asus and sapphire are considered to have poor support

[Nelly.]

Updated the list on the first page with more info on EVGA warranty cover.