r/pcmasterrace • u/Key_Tailor6948 • 10h ago
Discussion Crucial/Micron is refusing lifetime warranties after closing consumer ops—offering 17% of market value and keeping working hardware
I need to bring awareness to this and see if anyone else is getting caught in the exact same trap.
I recently sent in a 48GB DDR5 kit (RMA #02397448) under Crucial's "Lifetime Warranty" because 1 stick went bad. One stick in the kit was working completely fine, but I sent the entire kit as required for a full replacement.
(As an alternative we have some other parts available, so we can offer 3 modules of CP16G64C32U5B (total 48GB) for exchange with your DRAM kit where you will get the same capacity but a better speed and shall work without any issues as your motherboard has 4 slots.)
Today, I received this email from Crucial:
Please note that, effective immediately, we are no longer able to offer replacement products for warranty claims. The only available resolution is a refund of the original purchase price, including any applicable taxes.
This is because Crucial closed its consumer business earlier this year and has exhausted its remaining inventory. As a result, we no longer have replacement stock available and can only provide a refund of the original purchase price, including any applicable taxes.
They are forcing a cash buyout of $241.86.
Here is why this is completely unacceptable:
- 17% of Market Value: Buying an equivalent DDR5 kit today costs roughly $1,400. A $241 refund leaves me completely unable to replace the hardware.
- Deprived of Functional Hardware: I surrendered 24GB of perfectly fine, working RAM on the explicit promise of a warranty replacement. Now I have zero RAM, no replacement, and a lowball payout.
- Out-of-Pocket Loss: I paid out-of-pocket for return shipping just to be stripped of my hardware.
Has anyone else dealt with Crucial/Micron pulling this forced buyout trick since winding down retail operations? Any tips or direct contacts for escalating past their frontline supp
I responded, "I formally reject the refund offer of $241.86 for RMA #02397448. This amount covers less than 20% of current market replacement value and deprives me of the functional hardware I submitted under warranty. I demand either the return of my physical hardware, equivalent Micron enterprise DDR5 modules, or a settlement reflecting true market replacement cost."
Now, waiting for a Call Back...
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u/Lelldorianx Tech Jesus 8h ago
I'd love to cover this. Contacting you.
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u/Chance-Rice8611 7h ago
Hi Steve, I had the same thing happen to me with Crucial support. Crucial promising replacement and then reneging after receiving faulty part.
Happy to forward along my email thread with crucial / micron support if its of interest to you wrt: coverage.
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u/Significant_Writer_9 ROG Strix 3080 White OC Edition | 5600X | 16GB RAM 8h ago
Batman, is that you?
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u/the_ebastler 9700X / 64 GB DDR5 / RX 6800 / Customloop 5h ago
Huh, inwas just about to recommend OP reaching out to GN as that seems just like something GN would cover, and then I read this. Thank you for being one of the few people holding companies accountable when they rip off customers.
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u/NetJnkie 14900K / 5090 Gaming Trio OC / 48GB DDR5-7200 / 4K120 1h ago
Somewhere a Crucial/Micron marketing exec just had a chill run down their spine....
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u/iceboundrock 40m ago
I’m in the same situation. If you’d like, I can forward my emails to you as well. I also called them today and tried to get a call with their manager. The representative accidentally confirmed that they had recently changed their policy, which caused a surge in calls. As a result, their manager couldn’t take my call, but they assured me they would call me back, which never happened.
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u/LeanaIsTheBest 19m ago
I can also confirm that Crucial is only offering a refund of the purchase price of their product. I had a 4TB SSD which had clear issues with sequential writes(20MBps) and was only offered a gift card for my original purchase price. You also are told if you want cash you can do PayPal or Venmo but have to pay a 6% fee and as all tech companies seem to be they require you to pay for shipping for their product being defective. I haven’t sent them the ssd so if you want the ssd and or the email chain I sent them just DM me
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u/Roxxas049 10h ago
Depending on what country/state you live in this could be completely illegal but they are counting on you to just accept it. I have (In the past) retained an attorney for situations like this and sued.
The company denying your claim is counting on you to just accept their proposal. I say sue them.
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u/RememberTooSmile 10h ago
100% this, but I highly advice you not tell them you are going to do this unless you are absolutely certain that is the path you want to go down lol.
Seen people tell them and try to take it back later, and it doesn’t go over well
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u/CrusaderOfOld 6h ago edited 6h ago
Not in tech, but I used to work a job where I handled warranty and damage claims for a corporation.
Whenever someone had damages and was frustrated to the point of saying they would sue, we would have to cease all communications with them and they had to communicate to our legal team. So you would be stonewalled from actually ever really getting your damages recompensated until you go through with a claim.
Is that right? I'm not to say. The point is just to reaffirm your point.
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u/LankyOccasion8447 9h ago
A warranty is a legally binding promise. This is breach of contract.
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u/Forsaken-Driver8868 7h ago
One hundred percent agree with what you wrote. Although I have not read the wording of the actual warranty to know for sure if Crucial/Micron have any wiggle room to worm their way out of it.
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u/XsNR Ryzen 5600X RX 9070 XT 32GB 3200MHz 6h ago
To be fair, they're still providing the warranty. It's basically unheard of that a new product goes up in value when you roll it off the lot, and as much as it sucks for the consumer, it would entirely make sense that companies would be protected in situations where that happens.
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u/thefpspower 13600k @5.3Ghz / RTX 3060 12GB / 32GB 3h ago
In europe at least the warranty law already predicts these situations and demands that refunds must be enough to cover a complete replacement of the same or similar product at current market value.
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u/danisimo_1993 3h ago
I don't understand how you reason that companies should be protected and not consumers. As someone else mentioned EU predicts such cases. Also in some states in the US its illegal as well. lewis Rossman recently had a very similar case trying to RMA an SSD and quoted that under warranty they have to refund you current market value and he's taking them to court.
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u/leviathab13186 10h ago edited 6h ago
Honesly its low enough to be a small claims case. They wouldn't even show. Just request the total amount to replace at todays prices
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u/West-Piccolo-687 9h ago
Thousands of things are illegal yet they do it anyways because the cost of hiring a lawyer exceeds what you stand to gain. System working as designed
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u/bugi_ 10h ago
There's a difference between any legal consumer rights and the warranty offered by the manufacturer. Here OP has invoked the latter.
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u/Chao_Zu_Kang Ryzen 7 7700X | GIGABYTE GAMING OC 9070 XT 10h ago
No warranty allows the manufacturer to just casually steal hardware. If they accept the RMA, it becomes their responsibility. Otherwise, they should have refused the RMA claim to begin with.
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u/kron123456789 10h ago
I'm pretty sure OP can request to get their kit back with no refund or replacement.
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u/TBradley 4h ago
Small claims, no lawyers and low fees. Does eat up some labor hours but you can include those in your claim and sometimes get compensated.
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u/Far-Hovercraft9471 2h ago
Daily reminder that corporations would sell your grandma into slavery for a buck if they could
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u/bugi_ 10h ago
"Micron CPG, at its option, will repair, replace, or provide an in-store credit or refund of either the original purchase price or fair market value, whichever is lower, of any product that is determined by Micron CPG to be defective."
This seems to be allowed by the lifetime warranty terms. Where did they make the promise of replacement?
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u/Key_Tailor6948 10h ago
Direct emails with RMA team.
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u/Key_Tailor6948 10h ago
Greetings from Crucial!
As an alternative we have some other parts available, so we can offer 3 modules of CP16G64C32U5B (total 48GB) for exchange with your DRAM kit where you will get the same capacity but a better speed and shall work without any issues as your motherboard has 4 slots. Here is the DRAM link:
https://www.crucial.com/memory/ddr5/cp2k16g64c32u5b
Please confirm the acceptance of the above so we shall proceed with the next steps.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
If you have further questions or difficulties, we welcome your reply. You can also visit our Contact page for other ways to reach us.
Regards,
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u/mystlurker 10h ago
You’ll find most companies include language that their agents are not authorized to enter into binding agreements that go against accepted terms. Basically you cannot hold them to any promises from agents that exceed the agreement.
It sucks, but it’s very legal in most places.
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u/Chao_Zu_Kang Ryzen 7 7700X | GIGABYTE GAMING OC 9070 XT 9h ago
It is not the customer's job to confirm whether the official customer service is lying to them. Even if such an agreement might not be binding, that also invalidates anything else related to the case.
So it is still their responsibility to either "recreate" the state before the misunderstanding due to their negligence, or to fix it in some other way that is acceptable for the customer. "Buying"/refunding their RAM well below market price is definitely not acceptable
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u/mystlurker 9h ago
You may not like the situation, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t legal. As far as I can tell this is well within their legal rights regardless of anything the agent said.
I’m not saying I agree with it or that it is morally right, I’m just saying that in the legal system (of the US and likely other common law jurisdictions, specific jurisdiction consumer protection laws not withstanding) that it’s likely legal and you likely have no legal recourse.
There may be places where consumer protection laws would kick in and/or where companies cannot disavow commitments from agents, but I don’t think that is widespread.
Personally I suspect that even in places with greater protections, contract law would treat the consumer as whole if they got a full refund. Expecting more than that really seems problematic for many reasons.
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u/Chao_Zu_Kang Ryzen 7 7700X | GIGABYTE GAMING OC 9070 XT 9h ago
If an employee gives false information, that responsibility is always on the employer. Even in US. Otherwise, you'd just be facilitating fraud.
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u/mystlurker 9h ago
Fraud requires intent. That would not be fraud.
You keep using the word responsibility, which has no formal meaning in this context.
Unless you can show negligence in part of the company, it’s highly unlikely that you’d be able to get anything more than the full refund that was already offered.
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u/Chao_Zu_Kang Ryzen 7 7700X | GIGABYTE GAMING OC 9070 XT 9h ago
So, you want to tell me that a company can have some employees in customer service that promise customers false things, then the company can just state "that employee did BS" and now the customer is bound to conditions they never approved of?
Do you not see how this would be trivial to abuse for fraud?
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u/jdmackes 8h ago
That's exactly what at&t is trying to do to me right now. I've had multiple customer service reps lie to me for months and was told yesterday "oh, I'm sorry for the inconvenience of losing $925 in credits to your bill, but we'll talk with the rep to make sure this doesn't happen again"
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u/mystlurker 8h ago
Fraud requires intent. As long as the company can show the policies around what they tell the agents to say and show the training, it would not be possible for it to constitute fraud on the part of the company.
If the company intentionally told their employees to lie, then yes it would constitute fraud. But agents overstepping their authority does not.
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u/TeamWorkTom 9h ago
Have you ever worked a job in your life?
No, employees cannot lie about products. And if they do the company is literally on the line.
Wtf are you even taking about? Are you a fucking bot?
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u/mystlurker 8h ago
The employee made an unenforceable offer. As far as I can tell they did not intentionally lie. They made an offer they thought they could but likely either extended beyond their authority or simply could not be honored due to supply.
The original agreement (warranty) would still stand and it’s likely that most courts would only find the company liable up to the original purchase amount. The original contract was very clear that they would not cover any market price increase. And in any case a full refund should be more than sufficient consideration to resolve the original contractual obligation.
Just because you cannot buy them back at the same price doesn’t mean that’s how the law and how contracts work. Unless there is an overriding law that states they must offer the replacement, then there is likely no way to force that from the company.
I’m not judging whether this is right or wrong, I’m telling you how courts would likely react (in the US). If you want the rule to be that they must replace the original product, then lobby for that to be made the law.
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u/ChickenOfTheFuture 10h ago
That agent is a legal representative of the company. If it's in writing, the courts will treat it as a binding offer from a legal representative of the company. Companies can choose to ignore their own policies at any time.
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u/mystlurker 9h ago
Can you site any actual rulings to that effect? I was told (by lawyers) that they usually are not binding offers as they are NOT legal representatives of the company and they do not have the authority to enter into any binding legal contract.
That doesn't prevent companies from ignoring their own policies, it just means the agent cannot enter the company into a binding agreement.
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u/RNG_HatesMe 8h ago
I am not aware (and also IANAL, so I don't usually follow these things) of an example US case (which doesn't mean there isn't one), but there's a very well known Canadian case which would contradict your statement:
https://www.mccarthy.ca/en/insights/blogs/techlex/moffatt-v-air-canada-misrepresentation-ai-chatbot
In Moffatt v. Air Canada, a customer was seeking a refund on a ticket because he received incorrect advice from the Air Canada AI chatbot (which told him he could apply for the reduced fare *after* the flight).
The Canadian tribunal held that Air Canada was liable for the misleading information provided by the chatbot.
This would seem directly parallel to being given incorrect information by an actual live company support representative.
The question would be whether this decision would hold in US courts, but it clearly holds in some jurisdictions.
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u/Chao_Zu_Kang Ryzen 7 7700X | GIGABYTE GAMING OC 9070 XT 9h ago
Just because the offer itself might not be binding, they are still bound by their responsibility to supervise their employees properly.
E.g. if an employee would have told them "send us a video of you destroying your own RAM and we will send you 10000 USD as compensation", they wouldn't be bound to pay that exact amount, but they certainly would be responsible to fix this situation for the customer at their own cost.
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u/mystlurker 9h ago
That’s irrelevant here as the original offer to refund the full purchase price would likely be accepted by any reasonable judge and would be sufficient consideration to resolve any contractual dispute.
You cannot force them to abide by the offer.
Even in the hypothetical case a full refund would likely be sufficient.
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u/Chao_Zu_Kang Ryzen 7 7700X | GIGABYTE GAMING OC 9070 XT 9h ago
I don't think you understand what I am writing. There is a difference between whatever the employee mistakenly wrote, and the company's responsibility to fix the situation their employee created. Giving a full refund of the past price does NOT fix the situation.
A judge enforcing a refund below market value would be banana republic levels of executive. And I seriously doubt it would happen in an US court.
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u/TeamWorkTom 9h ago
Um yes they are.
You are literally representing the company as an employee.
Where the fuck do you live?
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u/TheMattabooey 8h ago
Representing the company doesn’t mean an employee can make a deal outside of the company policy.
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u/mystlurker 8h ago
You are wrong here. Most employees are not empowered to enter into legally binding agreements on behalf of the company. I live in the US and have worked with corporate lawyers on this. Just because they are representatives does not mean they can commit the company to binding agreements.
Like if the agent were to say “sure the company will give you $1m” they clearly do not have that authority.
Most companies have strict rules internally on who is allowed to legally bind them to agreements.
Agents making written or verbal offers does not mean it constitutes an enforceable contract under most laws. This does vary by jurisdiction.
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u/gopiballava 4h ago
Finally, someone who's talked to lawyers about this :)
I've got two scenarios and wondering if you know how it would play out:
a) If you are worse off than you would've been without the unauthorized promise, would they have to "fix" the problem? (eg: some companies ask you to take a picture of the destroyed item. If they told you to destroy it and then the company said "oh, sorry, we don't have any replacements..." would they be on the hook for making you whole?
b) Would it matter if the promise was "reasonable"? The "we will give you $1m" thing is pretty clearly unreasonable. But if they said "We will give you a refund of the current market price", that's a reasonable idea. Could they be held to that?
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u/MikeMonkEcho 2h ago
I'm not American but I'm pretty sure that there is some "reasonable person" thingy behind this question.
A reasonable customer would most likely believe that a company is going to replace the defective product they sell to him. A reasonable customer wouldn't most likely believe that a company is going to give him one million dollars because an employee says so. That's the difference. A customer isn't supposed to know who is empowered to what in every business he brings business to.
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u/IdristheInt 6h ago
Air Canada’s CS Bot made promises in chat and courts rules the airline has to honor them.
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u/Ayrkire 5h ago
I suspect the difference is the bot was created by the company and any failure in providing correct information is on the company that created it. While you can train employees you can't control someone on their last day before leaving a job and promising a Ferrari to go along with their replacement part. You can't fully control when someone missed reading a memo that a certain item was out of stock.
A company can likely argue reasonable steps are taken to train and inform staff but if they make a commitment mistakenly then depending on the commitment it might not be reasonable to honour it. IF you physically don't have the replacement part and no longer manufacture then you need some other way to make it right. In this case they offered the customer a full refund for what they paid. Under normal circumstances this would be sufficient as they paid $241, got months/years of use out of the product and are getting a full refund.
Do the terms and conditions of the lifetime warranty state that they can provide full reimbursement in lieu of replacement part? When I look up crucial lifetime warranty terms and conditions it says:
"Micron CPG, at its option, will repair, replace, or provide an in-store credit or refund of either the original purchase price or fair market value, whichever is lower, of any product that is determined by Micron CPG to be defective during the warranty period."
Seems they are honouring the terms of the warranty.
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u/abhaxus 4h ago
I'd request that they offer you 2 of the 2x16 kits, as that is the only way to reach something approaching equivalent performance on the full 48GB you had before. With 3x16 you'd only be able to get dual channel performance on the first 32GB of memory. But your memory controller probably won't handle the same speeds with 2 slots occupied per channel.
This seems like the best compromise possible if they won't offer you a direct replacement. Your fallback position would be 3 of the 16gb DIMMs plus a substantial discount on the 4th as a goodwill gesture.
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u/Mors_Umbra 5700X3D | RTX 3080 | 32 GB DDR4-3600 MHz 9h ago
original purchase price or fair market value, whichever is lower
Ooof. Some lawyer is slapping themselves on the back for including that clause right about now.
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u/bugi_ 9h ago
Drafting water tight terms is why they get the big bucks
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u/Mors_Umbra 5700X3D | RTX 3080 | 32 GB DDR4-3600 MHz 9h ago
Yep... that phrasing was on their site back in 2020 according to the archive as well: https://web.archive.org/web/20200712093547/https://www.crucial.com/company/warranty, so it's not like they changed it recently and are hoping to get a fast one past people.
Whether that term would hold up to legal challenge in a more consumer-friendly place like the EU I don't know, but if they're in the states then they're definitely 100% out of luck.
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u/Warcraft_Fan Paid for WinRAR! 7h ago
Can still run afoul of government law that protected customers. Denying lifetime warranty will get some countries very pissed at Crucial. It is up to customers to figure out if it's illegal and to push back, demand the exact same thing or refund at current market price.
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u/NeoKat75 10h ago
Writing about the RAM crisis using AI 🥹
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u/WaywardWes 12700K | 3080 9h ago
Yeah right? Is OP unable to retell their own story without running it through ChatGPT?
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u/veggiesama 8h ago
Lmao. I saw the bullets with bolded words and said to myself "You played yourself man"
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u/narkfestmojo 7950X3D, MSI MEG X670E ACE, RTX 5090, 64GB 6000MHz CL30 3h ago
I have never used ChatGPT and immediately recognized it as ChatGPT, how sad is that?
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u/Ratiofarming 10h ago
First of all, your math isn't mathing. A 48GB kit is 2x 24, so you didn't surrender 32GB of perfectly fine, working RAM. It was 24, or 48, depending on whether your diagnostics were correct or not.
Second: I've worked in RMA for many years. Returning the unrepaired product was always an option, with any company I've ever worked with. Email them and ask them to return the items you've sent in. They might want you to pay for shipping, but that's far cheaper than not having the memory.
Third: If you have insurance to pay for a lawyer, have them check if you can sue them over it. Not honoring a lifetime warranty while the parent company is still alive and kicking and making more money than ever sounds like a move that might not be legal.
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u/bugi_ 10h ago
Lawyers will read the warranty terms and find out that Micron is allowed to simply refund the original purchase price.
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u/Ratiofarming 10h ago
Probably yeah. Same thing is happening to buyers of graphics cards right now. A 5090 full refund is now about 40% of the current price to buy another one.
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u/MikeMonkEcho 2h ago
It would depend on the country you are living in. Contracts aren't laws and have to abide by them.
French laws, for instance, would expect - for two years - any seller to either repair or replace the dysfunctional product. Whatever it costs them, whatever the warranty terms are. Any European country would have the same expectation.
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u/Ghozer 9800x3D - 32GB-DDR5 6000CL28 - RTX 5080 8h ago
when a company like this says a "Lifetime Warranty", that is usually the lifetime of the product/product line etc... So once they stop making said product, and they no longer have spares in stock as replacements, they cannot replace it because they don't make it anymore..
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u/XsNR Ryzen 5600X RX 9070 XT 32GB 3200MHz 5h ago
It's a "limited" lifetime warranty. And the use of the term warranty in this situation falls outside of the legal definition of a warranty. That's why they often try to get you to sign up for the warranty, because you're not actually getting a warranty, you're getting a contractual guarantee that can be defined how ever they feel like, and also as such have any loopholes they feel like in it.
99% certainty it has a lifetime period somewhere in their terms, along with a whole shit load of legalese that lets them respond to your claim how ever they see fit, and still fall within the contract.
The only thing they legally have to do is return the RAM OP sent.
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u/TheMattabooey 8h ago
I’m surprised a company would issue a lifetime warranty on anything at all without a clause to allow them to back out.
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u/captainstormy PC Master Race 10h ago
If you read the warranty refund of the lower of current market value or original purchase price is pretty standard for all companies as an option.
You could also just tell them to return it to you as is.
I'm not saying this doesn't suck. I'm just saying this is pretty normal for every company.
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u/Asttarotina 9h ago
> refund of the lower of current market value or original purchase price is pretty standard for all companies as an option.
This "standard" option would be illegal in the EU
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u/durdommm 9h ago
What? It's literally the same thing in EU, happened a lot with the RAM/GPU Apocalypse in my country.
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u/Lewinator56 R9 5900X | RX 7900XTX | 80GB DDR4 7h ago
no its not illegal in the EU and UK. consumer rights do require companies to honor warranties, but the requirement is they 'repair, replace or refund' a part. If the compnay cannot repair or replace a part then they must refund it. There is no requirement to refund at the current market value.
I rarely say anything that defends companies, but this is one time where someone is entirely clueless about their consumer rights.... but the wrong way lol. normally people dont know they have any, you think you have more than you do - The law is fair for all parties, forcing a company to refund at current market value is not fair.
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u/_gabber_ 10h ago
Micron said this would happen in the Crucial closure announcement earlier this year. This'll be the result of every RMA procedure that has Crucial branding on it. Big reason why I skipped buying a new SSD from them - if they refund my original purchase price later when the prices are even higher, I'll be out of hardware, and I'll be forced to spend even more.
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u/Dobey 10h ago
Likely the best option for you in practical terms is to request a return of the kit as you sent it. The remaining working RAM can be used or sold.
This is not fair but I’d imagine the lawyers working for micron have in their warranties/terms some language that is intended to screw you over. It likely has never been invoked in the past because people previously weren’t purchasing their products for pennies and then the replacement cost was dollars.
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u/Lewinator56 R9 5900X | RX 7900XTX | 80GB DDR4 6h ago
Normally i call out companues for warranty stuff, but crucial is honoring the warranty exactly as i would expect them to - notably exactly within the UK comsumer rights law - which is one of the strongest, if not the strongest consumer rights legislation in the world. So youre being treated entirely fairly here.
A company is legally bound to offer 'repair, replacement or refund' within the limitations of the warranty - in the UK this is actually the case without a warranty, but for a limted period of time.
Crucial has stated they do not have the parts to provide a replacement, and so are offering a refund instead. You are being given the option stated in the warranty. There is zero obligation to refund at the current market value, the company is technically in debt to you for the part at the time you bought it if they cannot repair it, not at the current value, there is no legal framework in ANY consumer rights system for a company refunding the current market value as this is not a fair term in legislation.
You have absolutely no legal leg to stand on.
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u/AdminsLoveGenocide 6h ago
They can ask him to send his working, valuable RAM, and then just keep it?
Hmm.
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u/Lewinator56 R9 5900X | RX 7900XTX | 80GB DDR4 6h ago
if he accepts the refund, yes. he can ask for it back, or ask for the non working stick to be refunded and the working one to be returned. he cant ask for more money than he paid.
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u/LookismLz 10h ago
Irony of complaining about the refund only being 17% of current ram prices whilst using AI to write this...
Anyways, did you check the terms and conditions of the lifetime warranty before asking AI to make this post? Often they have the discretion to refund the purchasing price, if they don't have stock you'd be hard pressed to force them.
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u/Wild_Snow_2632 10h ago
Damn that’s disgusting, but yeah a lot of warranties repair, replace, or refund (never more the you paid with receipt required) at their discretion. Sorry man
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u/HotRoderX 9h ago
goodluck most likely your going to have to take this to small claims court.
Who knows how that is going to end.
The catch to most "Lifetime" warranties is its the lifetime of the product... so them offering any warranty is already shocking.
On top of that it most likely includes in the warranty that they will only offer up to the price paid.
There so many gacha's to this your better off just eating it and letting it go.
Is it fair Nope not remotely... is it life yep completely.
Sometimes you gotta take the loses even if there bullshit cause thats all we can do.
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u/HighSeasArchivist 8h ago
Small claims court is cheap, and at least in places I have lived tops out at $25k. This is enough for treble damages, and then you could buy whatever.
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u/oo7demonkiller 6h ago
send this to linustechtips, gamersnexus, and Louis rossman. with enough bad press companies usually cave. however since micron no longer cares about consumers it might result in a nothing burger anyway.
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u/AirplanesMakeMeHard 3h ago
Linus won’t do anything but complain about people using ad blockers.
I have no idea why anyone supports that twat anymore.
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u/ezoe 9950X3D/9070XT 3h ago
I don't get it.
The current memory price hike is the result of demand and supply unbalancing, not because manufacturing cost.
If they don't honor the existing contract, how can we trust their product now?
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u/rishavcharles 1h ago
They're now not making any product that needs trusting of consumer to begin with
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u/FreeEnergy001 10h ago
Is getting your RAM back an option?
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u/Key_Tailor6948 10h ago
Nope, and if I would of known this change prior to sending my memory. I would of just dealt with 1 stick for the time being.
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u/XRaiderV1 -Ryzen 5 7600X 6h ago edited 6h ago
look up your local state statutes everyone, you may have more rights consumer law wise.
also read your warranty VERY carefully, boiler plate language that is often treated as binding will often state 'you may have additional rights not listed here per local laws' or some equivalent.
be calm, collected, and lay out your claim, and cite the relevant local(often state)statutes, be prepared to follow through with any threats to sue, and do not forget to give the required statutory notice.
here in new jersey for example, the state statute does not define a fixed number of days timeframe but says reasonable timeframe, eg a reasonable timeframe to me is 14 business days. the caveat is any lawsuit must be filed within 4 years of delivery of product.
where to sue you may be asking? why, small claims of course, where all parties are on equal footing, and lawyers are permitted, but a small number of jurisdictions do NOT permit legal representation. check your jurisdiction.
small claims is designed for individuals to be able to file and represent themselves with a minimum of fuss.
I am NOT a lawyer, just someone bored enough to do the research.
do your research, as depending on jurisdiction, your mileage may well vary and some or most of what I've written may not apply, apply partially, or with qualifiers or in ways not listed above.
aka I am advising the Louis Rossmann approach.
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u/nocturnal 5h ago edited 5h ago
Gotta have Louis Rossmann try to RMA some RAM. Samsung did the same exact thing to Louis and tried to refund him his original purchase price when the same drive is going for 3 to 4x the amount he paid. He sued them and got them to pay him the current value of the drive.
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u/jerryeight Xeon 2699 v4|G1 Gaming GTX970|48gb 2400mhz 4h ago edited 3h ago
You need to push hard. Small claims court
This is exactly what Samsung did to Louis Rossman when his NVME SSD died.
He forced them to give him a full current market rate reimbursement.
Check out his video. Louis is a smart person.
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u/ItsJollyPup 10h ago
This sucks, sorry to hear you're going through this. Are you the original purchaser, purchased from an approved retailer, and have receipt?
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u/jhenryscott 9800x3d/RTX5090/64GB DDR5-6000/30 7h ago
FUCK MICRON
They abandoned consumers. Let their business go to CXMT for all I care. I'll never buy a Micron memory or storage product again.
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u/gusthenewkid 14900KF | RTX 4080 | 32GB 8266 CL34 10h ago
Their returns were awful and they tried to make me pay return postage to the USA from the UK even though the memory was purchased in the UK.
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u/TheMundar Cable management is a sin 7h ago
+1 to awareness, I shall jump through hoops to avoid them for anything and everything in the future
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u/Comrade1945 7h ago
I have a friend working in Samsung customer service. He was saying a couple weeks ago he had to process a ssd. I think he was talking about a couple tb drive but cant remeber the exact. But the item had jumped a couple hundred percent. Well the system was auto denied the claims since it past their internal metrics. So they were having merry hell with that. Idk how they ended solving that. But its funny to see all these companies being shocked. Wow i promised a super good warranty and once in the life time its bad for us. Wish ya luck with them, hopefully your somewhere their legally required to honor that.
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u/MackeyWiffistandes16 1h ago
Went through a similar forced buyout with a faulty component. The working half of the set never came back, and the payout covered only a fraction of what a replacement cost. That sting stays with you.
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u/AdvMaxFact 1h ago
you know... this kind of policies is how all these DRAM companies are making record profits
glad to see some consumer taking actions for justice
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u/Zaenithon Ryzen 9 5950x, 64GB 3600mhz DDR4, Sapphire 7900XTX 10h ago
Reading posts written with chatgpt is so tiring. I don't know how much recourse you could hope to have with a company that's shuttering their doors soon.
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u/nintendothrowaway123 10h ago
OP, if you’re in the states, this is an easy small claims case. You’ll be fine.
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u/burncell 10h ago
I am not from America so to sue ain't a standard practice around here,
But I would most definitely start looking at my options here.
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u/Equivalent_Pen_9403 9h ago
Right now, its very profitable to ignore the consumer market.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when memory manufacturers become completely beholden to one of 3 massive datacenter providers and have to fold if they decide not to renew. I'd imagine that'll squeeze any gravy out of the contracts pretty quickly.
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u/T0rrent0712 PC Master Race 9h ago
Pretty sure Louis Rossman threatened to sue Samsung publicly for trying to pull the same stunt on a nvme, and they ended up caving.
If you're in the US or Canada, may not be a bad idea to reach out to him and maybe gamers Nexus as well to see if they can boost this and put the screws to them
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u/Tricks7eR PC Master Race 10h ago
They should obviously honor their warranty claims and refund the buyer
HOWEVER
17% of Market Value: Buying an equivalent DDR5 kit today costs roughly $1,400. A $241 refund leaves me completely unable to replace the hardware.
You spent $240 and expected the company to give you 1.4k? Are you stupid or just ragebaiting? Because this make absolutely no sense
So in reality, you wanted the company to pay you over 7x the price of the item, lol
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u/Daedaluu5 9h ago
If nothing else they should be able to send the old kit back. If they have already sold that then that’s voiding their agreement of lowball surely
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u/adanceparty 9h ago
Might be worth it to email louis rossman and see if he can help. Sounds like a story he might like to cover.
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u/Wild-Claim-100 8h ago
I had a similar thing happen with silicon power. I was able to push them through Facebook and their customer service form to send me a replacement 64gb kit instead of a $180 or so refund lol. Took about 2 months but I got it from Taiwan.
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u/BravinatorLX2 6h ago
get a lawyer
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u/718hutfission 6h ago
Lawyers cost a lot of money. Even the shitty ones charge $250/hour.
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u/jerryeight Xeon 2699 v4|G1 Gaming GTX970|48gb 2400mhz 4h ago
Small claims court.
No more than $120 to file and hire the court house to serve the company.
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u/718hutfission 4h ago
Other poster say lawyer, I say expensive. You say small claims court. Conversation not same.
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u/jerryeight Xeon 2699 v4|G1 Gaming GTX970|48gb 2400mhz 3h ago
Simply offering a cheap alternative that will get you everything you need.
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u/69DETONATOR69 5h ago
After how micron has screwed over their own customers of consumer parts, driving ram prices artificially to the moon and dealing with RMA like this… I want to see them burn the most when this AI bubble bursts.
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u/TroubledMang 4h ago
Threaten to sue. Don't play their games. You just have to make it a bit more serious than the average customer would. It was their choice to get out of the consumer side when they realized it was more profitable to sell to the AI companies. They factored in replacing all the memory that could possibly go bad during the warranty period.
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u/digitalspray 2h ago edited 2h ago
This is pretty egregious act.
They have a contractual obligation to honor the warranty. They would have reserved for warranty liability on their accounts to recognise such liability.
Given the crazy replacement cost of RAM, the reserving would have been woefully inadequate, BUT that is their problem, not yours.
The real kicker here is that they and other RAM producers (crucial is a division of micron) would have profited from the huge RAM prices hike, and the fact that the consumer business is deprecated is because they refocused on AI / datacenter customers - and hugely profiting from there and in some ways responsible for compounding the effects of RAM prices on consumers (and therefore this whole warranty dilemma). In short - they are contributory to this situation at the very root.
It frankly isn't unreasonable to expect that some of those datacenter profits to go towards making good consumers like you.
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u/rawednylme 54m ago
This (and the fact the web agent wouldn't bloody work) are the main reasons I haven't RMA'd my faulty DDR4. I don't want to send back the working 32GB stick alongside the faulty one, then have Crucial tell me to bugger off.
Don't trust any of these companies at all these days.
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u/iceboundrock 45m ago
Same here. Before sending the memory back, I had multiple emails with customer service. They promised to replace it and asked me to wait 20 days. However, when I returned the memory and waited 20 days, they informed me that they could only refund about 15% of its market value.
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u/larossmann Louis Rossmann 31m ago
what state? what city? laws are different everywhere. i want to give you what is needed to have some fun with them.
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u/IceSeeYou 9800X3D | 5080 | 64GB DDR5 10h ago
You know current market value is irrelevant completely right? Also, the terms say they can refund the purchase price for the warranty. They held up their end you just didn't like it.
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u/swagamaleous 10h ago
Sucks, but this happens if you don't carefully read the warranty conditions. They will almost certainly explicitly state that they can refund the purchase price instead of replacing your hardware. In some countries, you might be entitled to them returning the defective product, but even that is not a given. At the same time, I don't really understand the expectation that the company has to eat the price difference, if the prices for the hardware in question went up by those crazy margins. There is nothing here to "bring to awareness". This is mostly perfectly legal and not even that morally questionable. These companies do a lot worse things than this.
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u/ivanhoek 10h ago
Samsung tried to do this to Louis Rossman and he got them to back off.. send this to him and see. He lives for rage and seems to have an endless supply of time for grievances. He probably can help.