A friend of mines ATI 9500 PRO is starting to have problems. Artifacts, crashes, etc. He has installed latest drivers, reformated and reinsatlled XP and he has no idea what overclocking is so the card has not been abused. Oh, and it is an ATI branded card.
He contacted ATI to get tech support and was left on hold over an hour on a long distance call. He eventually got an email from them stating that there was nothing they could do for him since the 9500 PRO card is now "out of production" and the ATI LIMITED warantee expressly states the card will be "replaced with the same item". With my encouragement he is forwarding all correspondence to half a dozen federal agencies for business fraud investigation of ATI.
The question is - has anyone else run into this problem with ATI?
I bought my 9500 PRO last spring just before they went out of production and a major reason I bought it was because of the 3 year warantee (my last nvidia card died at 13 months). Needless to say I am PISSED to hear about this. Especially since I've been recommending ATI for the last 6 months.
The average high end video card version stays in production about 12 months and they usually don't make it past 18 months so ATI offering a 3 year warantee with a built in 18 month life cycle limitation is pretty much fraud. Especially when the product is nearing the end of its life. I may still be able to get a "full replacement" extended warantee from the retailer but that's another $30-50 and I already paid an extra $40 to buy the ATI branded card instead of a Powercolor or Sapphire.
I guess at this point I have to recommend against buying ATI branded cards. 2 hour tech support waits on long distance is bad enough but trying to weasle out of a warantee because you decided to discontinue a good product for "convenience" is down right criminal.
He contacted ATI to get tech support and was left on hold over an hour on a long distance call. He eventually got an email from them stating that there was nothing they could do for him since the 9500 PRO card is now "out of production" and the ATI LIMITED warantee expressly states the card will be "replaced with the same item". With my encouragement he is forwarding all correspondence to half a dozen federal agencies for business fraud investigation of ATI.
The question is - has anyone else run into this problem with ATI?
I bought my 9500 PRO last spring just before they went out of production and a major reason I bought it was because of the 3 year warantee (my last nvidia card died at 13 months). Needless to say I am PISSED to hear about this. Especially since I've been recommending ATI for the last 6 months.
The average high end video card version stays in production about 12 months and they usually don't make it past 18 months so ATI offering a 3 year warantee with a built in 18 month life cycle limitation is pretty much fraud. Especially when the product is nearing the end of its life. I may still be able to get a "full replacement" extended warantee from the retailer but that's another $30-50 and I already paid an extra $40 to buy the ATI branded card instead of a Powercolor or Sapphire.
I guess at this point I have to recommend against buying ATI branded cards. 2 hour tech support waits on long distance is bad enough but trying to weasle out of a warantee because you decided to discontinue a good product for "convenience" is down right criminal.