Dreadful MSI Customer Service; Problematic R7970 BE Experience! Faulty Replacement Card!

[ddavij]

G'day their,
In December I went to go build a new computer consisting of 2x MSI R7970 Lightning BE graphics cards; these cards in my opinion we're amazing! Little did I know of the quality of these products...

Upon putting my 2x 7970's in crossfire, I experienced catastrophic amounts of artifacting (at 67+ Celsius GPU Temp), I then narrowed this problem down to one of the graphics cards (The other card works FLAWLESSLY) – I called up MSI, explained my situation, they got me to RMA the card, I sent out the card for the RMA at the start of January.

Two days later, I get an email from MSI Australia saying that one of the fans on the graphics cards we're broken – they also told me, the piece broken off the fan was not found in the packaging, thought that was extremely odd and unusual. They offered me a deal, to pay $165 to replace the fan on the graphics card and send me a "NEW" R7970 Lightning BE, to fix the initial artifcating problem I had – thought OK, what the heck, went through with it.

Last Thursday (14/3/13) I got a "new" replacement R7970 Lightning BE – opened it up, took out my other 7970 in the computer out, put this "new" one in. All was hunky dory, turned the computer on, no video was being displayed from the graphics card – the graphics card's fan was just running at full speed, no activity from the card. I then placed the graphics card in another PCI-E slot, nothing, placed it in another computer, nothing... At this point I was furious.

I took the card out, put my other 7970 in, worked flawlessly. Looked closely at the 7970 I got sent, and found that it was dinted on the side:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/209/screweduppipe.jpg/
Not only that, the card's heat-sinks we're also loose.
The quality of the card was appalling, looked to be second hand.

I now have no idea what to do – I'm honestly gob-smacked. What do you guys think I should do?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
David.

 

[vmem]

G'day their,
In December I went to go build a new computer consisting of 2x MSI R7970 Lightning BE graphics cards; these cards in my opinion we're amazing! Little did I know of the quality of these products...

Upon putting my 2x 7970's in crossfire, I experienced catastrophic amounts of artifacting (at 67+ Celsius GPU Temp), I then narrowed this problem down to one of the graphics cards (The other card works FLAWLESSLY) – I called up MSI, explained my situation, they got me to RMA the card, I sent out the card for the RMA at the start of January.

Two days later, I get an email from MSI Australia saying that one of the fans on the graphics cards we're broken – they also told me, the piece broken off the fan was not found in the packaging, thought that was extremely odd and unusual. They offered me a deal, to pay $165 to replace the fan on the graphics card and send me a "NEW" R7970 Lightning BE, to fix the initial artifcating problem I had – thought OK, what the heck, went through with it.

Last Thursday (14/3/13) I got a "new" replacement R7970 Lightning BE – opened it up, took out my other 7970 in the computer out, put this "new" one in. All was hunky dory, turned the computer on, no video was being displayed from the graphics card – the graphics card's fan was just running at full speed, no activity from the card. I then placed the graphics card in another PCI-E slot, nothing, placed it in another computer, nothing... At this point I was furious.

I took the card out, put my other 7970 in, worked flawlessly. Looked closely at the 7970 I got sent, and found that it was dinted on the side:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/209/screweduppipe.jpg/
Not only that, the card's heat-sinks we're also loose.
The quality of the card was appalling, looked to be second hand.

I now have no idea what to do – I'm honestly gob-smacked. What do you guys think I should do?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
David.

wow that is some terrible customer service. I would normally just call them up and explain the problem, get some sort of written record or at least a reference number to the phone conversation so you can hold them accountable. but honestly, at least here in the United States we rarely hear about issues with MSI customer service so I'm at a loss as well... perhaps you can try contacting their home-base in Taiwan?

 

[ddavij]

G'day their,
In December I went to go build a new computer consisting of 2x MSI R7970 Lightning BE graphics cards; these cards in my opinion we're amazing! Little did I know of the quality of these products...

Upon putting my 2x 7970's in crossfire, I experienced catastrophic amounts of artifacting (at 67+ Celsius GPU Temp), I then narrowed this problem down to one of the graphics cards (The other card works FLAWLESSLY) – I called up MSI, explained my situation, they got me to RMA the card, I sent out the card for the RMA at the start of January.

Two days later, I get an email from MSI Australia saying that one of the fans on the graphics cards we're broken – they also told me, the piece broken off the fan was not found in the packaging, thought that was extremely odd and unusual. They offered me a deal, to pay $165 to replace the fan on the graphics card and send me a "NEW" R7970 Lightning BE, to fix the initial artifcating problem I had – thought OK, what the heck, went through with it.

Last Thursday (14/3/13) I got a "new" replacement R7970 Lightning BE – opened it up, took out my other 7970 in the computer out, put this "new" one in. All was hunky dory, turned the computer on, no video was being displayed from the graphics card – the graphics card's fan was just running at full speed, no activity from the card. I then placed the graphics card in another PCI-E slot, nothing, placed it in another computer, nothing... At this point I was furious.

I took the card out, put my other 7970 in, worked flawlessly. Looked closely at the 7970 I got sent, and found that it was dinted on the side:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/209/screweduppipe.jpg/
Not only that, the card's heat-sinks we're also loose.
The quality of the card was appalling, looked to be second hand.

I now have no idea what to do – I'm honestly gob-smacked. What do you guys think I should do?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
David.

wow that is some terrible customer service. I would normally just call them up and explain the problem, get some sort of written record or at least a reference number to the phone conversation so you can hold them accountable. but honestly, at least here in the United States we rarely hear about issues with MSI customer service so I'm at a loss as well... perhaps you can try contacting their home-base in Taiwan?

Yeah, I was told MSI was a great company in regards to graphics cards but, I guess I'm the unlucky one!
In regards to the phone conversations, I specifically asked, when they told me of the $165 deal, "will I get a 'NEW' R7970 Lightning BE" - the guy their, who I know I've been speaking to throughout this whole process, told me, "yes". He initially wanted to replace my graphics card with a lower model - R7970 Lightning, the non BE version! Had to wait 2 and a half months for the BE Version to come in.
I'll contact Taiwan now, see how things go, explain the overall situation to them and see what help I can get!

Thank you so much for you're reply too!

EDIT: Tried calling them, closed. I guess I'll need to wait till Monday.

EDIT2:

Here is an e-mail I'm thinking of sending to MSI Australia, the guy I've been dealing with this whole time - what do you guys think?

Hello Asif,
Upon you're instruction, I have installed the 'replacement' R7970 Lightning BE into my system - yet it does not work! When turning the computer on, no video is outputted - there is no activity from the graphics card, not even the blue LED's on top of the graphics card illuminate - all that happens, is that the fan's on the card are running at full speed. I installed my other R7970 Lightning BE, and works flawlessly! No problems what so ever! I took out the 'replacement' R7970 Lightning BE and found that a pipe on the side was damaged - dinted (you can see this in the pictures attached) and the heat sink on the graphics card is loose compared to my other R7970 Lightning BE, on top of that, the graphics card looks appalling, as if it's second hand. I also noticed that when I took the 'replacement' card out, it was rather hot, for running for 10 seconds, much hotter in comparison to my other R7970 Lightning BE graphics card. I was assured, by you, at the start of January, when you spoke to me of a replacement card, that it would be a 'new' card, you never stated that it will be a 'refurbished' version, even so, if this card worked correctly, as a 'refurbished' card, I would not be fussed anyways. I'm simply gutted and appalled that I received a completely faulty 'replacement' card, after waiting for 2 and a half months; where all I want is a card that functions properly and flawlessly, just as my other MSI R7970 Lightning BE does! I did not spend $1200 on 2x R7970 Lightning BE's to be presented with faults!

(The card on the left is my 'replacement' card, the card on the right is the other R7970 Lightning BE card I had originally)

Regards,
David.