Since I've never actually had to RMA anything, I'm just curious to see how often others have had to return things because they were broken right out of the gate.
I've never had to RMA anything. That's mainly because I can't RMA any of it to begin with. The stuff I buy is almost always used. All my laptops, all my networking gear, most of my video cards, motherboards and virtually every CPU I have ever owned came out of a used section or some old-timer's basement. Sure, it means there's no warranty, but from my experience, if something is gonna die, it's usually either gonna be DOA or die within the first few weeks to months. I figure if the stuff I buy used works now, it's gonna keep on working for another 5-10 years. So long as I don't get something super sketchy, that is usually how it is.
I got 3 fkn DOA graphics cards from Gigabyte for my first build (bad batch or something, Newegg rating tanked between first and third cards). When I got a refund and switched brands, it turned out that they gave me a dead mobo also. Took like 3 months to diagnose and wait overall since I didn't have any known-good parts. That was fun.
Oddly, I put a mark on the corner of my mobo when I was installing it, and my replacement board had the same mark—i.e. they fixed the board instead of replacing it. Wonder if that's common practice, or if the board had a common failure mode they tested for.
For stuff i've bought personally? 1 kit of gskill ddr2 about 5 years ago, got a replacement in less than a week.
for work: easily 100+. Gigabyte z87m-d3h boards had some weird issues, about 4 i5 6600's (can't rmember if k or not), stacks of seagate drives (7200.11 fiasco, the 3tb drives for the past couple years), a few sets of crucial memory (we sell fucktons of it, though, failure rates on ram are suprisingly good), pretty much every ocz vertex 2 ssd we sold died within a year, 75% within the first 3 months (we've not carried any ocz stuff since because of it), kingston flash drives ( the slow ass blocky white ones with colored loops on the end), a dozen or so video cards (gigabyte,msi, pny, zotac)... Honestly i can't recall ever having an evga or xfx card die.
A handful of pulled/refurb laptop parts (mainly motherboards, 1 lcd, a couple of oddball daughterboards (usb/audio/power combo shits).
countless Various wireless routers/AP/repeaters... Pretty much anything networking related with firmware/web interface under $50.
1 tp-link 16 port managed gigabit switch.
A couple of cases (though they were damaged in transit to the store). RIP C70, you didn't deserve getting bashed like that
Acer x34 monitor which are famous for BLB but mine was shipping damage. Then I had 2 Gigabyte X99 boards die and the 3rd has survived ever since when a BIOS was released that fixed the cold boot DDR4 memory issues which was killing them.
Since then I've actually bought several RMA'd devices from the OCUK clearance section and not one thing has been faulty or failed in several months.
2 Ducky Shine 3 keyboards because of dead LEDs behind some keys (the ö key to be exact). I ordered a refund after the second keyboard "failed".
1 Corsair CM450 powersupply because the fan made some scratchy noises once in a while.
I might have to tell you: The Duckys were from Caseking.de : Absolutely Zero issues in the RMA process. Packages arrived in 1-2 business days The PSU was mindfactory.de: No issues with the process either
OHOHOHOHOHOHOOOOO do i have a tale to tell you all , so i bought a 980ti ( well ok i didn't buy it exactly but i did an EVGA step up )and shortly after receiving my shiny new top of the line gpu i unboxed it , proud to show off that i managed to get one before all my nerd friends. little did i know the turn of fate i would have after installing it in my freshly repained and cable managed chassis. tldr , it fried. the core was unstable at stock clocks (i was heartbroken yes) so i remember that it has that thing , called a.... warranty . So i sent my card back to EVGA where they confirmed it was faulty and sent me another BNIB card , this one wasn't doa (yay me my luck changed, or so i thought) after a month the memory took a shit , it artifacted hard as well but only in strange loads , i was even more heart broken after this. i again sent that one back. i received another after a week (it was hard , i couldn't game. i couldn't really do much of anything except sob quietly at my bad luck) i received another replacement , it was not bnib. the cooler was bent and the shroud damaged. i called evga this time , and ripped them a new one over this. i expect my card not to come out of the box pre broken and destroyed. they apologized and asked for me to send picture proof it was damaged ect. so i did , sent that back and another week goes by. I get my other replacement in the mail , and as i open the box i notice there was no packing at all , and that it was another non bnib card , and lone and behold ... it was broken as well. actually the whole pcb was bent and the cooler was damaged ect. same as the last one , by now ive gone through many weeks having my pc down and unusable for its job of gaming , im pissed off and sick of evga half assing my rma claims. after that happening 6 times , im finally on a card that works* *it now has a burn on the pcb where the vrm is , and im not rmaing this card. im done with their piss poor rma as of recent. TL:DR : EVGA fucked me over 6/7 times in a row after i bought a 980ti through step up program , im going back to msi next upgrade. also im not even mad i cost them at least $2k can. in express shipping my rma claims.
In the process of RMA for a MSI GTX 980, hopefully they will just send me the fans as I really dont want to mail the card to them for something so small. (15-35 business days is their turn around time - shipping)
I only had to RMA 2 items, but it was totally my fault.
I had an EVGA motherboard Core2Quad system with SATA II. When I got my first SSD I bought a RocketRAID card to get SATA III, so I figured I would make a RAID. I didn't know that enterprise RAID cards have a list of compatible enterprise drives. The WD Blue drives I used quickly fried. WD replaced them, no problem. I still use them as external occasional back-ups that stay in the closet.
Corsair Force 3 SSD 240GB (easy RMA) - It stopped working after six months.
Patriot 16GB (8x2) DDR3 1600 kit (easy RMA) - One stick started kicking out errors after 2.5 years.
Logitech G603 (easiest RMA) - MMB stopped working, switch failure. I still have the faulty unit, and Logitech sent me a new one. It is still in the box, unopened.
1st RMA in the last 6 yrs happened in 2012 - Silvertek PSU I bought in 2012 was showing signs of failure, luckily I caught it a/b a wk before my warranty expired... However Silvertek's RMA process at the time was a little archaic b/c I was required to fill out physical paper forms and return it back to them by mail to streamline the process. 2nd RMA: Bought a Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 RAM from Amazon in the beginning of 2013... One of the sticks was bad. Filled out the online form on Corsair's site and got a replacement in a/b a week and a half. Thought things were gonna turn out better till a/b 2 months later another stick went bad. Had to RMA the whole 4 pack to them again, smh. 3rd RMA: This was entirely my fault but I didn't know any better: In the beginning of 2016 I bought a Mushkin Enhanced ECO2 2.5" 512GB SSD from Newegg which was being powered by a CORSAIR CX750M PSU. I hated the cables Corsair included w/ the PSU so I switched them out for some EVGA PSU cables instead: big mistake. Corsair's PSU requires its own proprietary cables to operate any plugged peripherals properly and the SSD I connected with the EVGA cable got fried. 4th RMA: Had to RMA a second-hand EVGA motherboard I purchased from a seller off ebay last Dec. USB 3.0 didn't work on it after troubleshooting and the mobo was acting retarded after switching out my GTX 680 for a GTX 1070. Long story short, the deceitful seller never mentioned to me that he bent the CPU pins (which EVGA made the revelation to me) or that the mobo was already a replacement board (which had already been RMA'd before, which the warranty didn't apply to anymore)... After explaining to the manager my situation and b/c I was a long-time EVGA customer, the manager didn't require me to pay the $90 repair fee ... Last RMA: Happened in Feb 2017 - my blower style GTX 1070 I bought off Amazon would constantly blow at 100% even after using numerous fan control software (Afterburner, GPUTweak, and ExperTool). After numerous attempts at troubleshooting by myself and w/ a useless Asus phone rep, I was finally able to RMA the GPU which revealed that the card was malfunctioning from no error of my own and was defective.