ATI Cuts Video Card Warranty To One Year

[Apoptosis]

ATI silently lowered its warranty down to 1 year for ALL of their desktop graphics cards. This shouldn’t have any impact on the warranty that offered by third party companies like Sapphire, ASUS, or VisionTek but it I find it interesting. Are they doing it to push more sales through their partners or as a cost saving move? I'm not sure, but I sent e-mails to both ATI and nVidia asking their thoughts about ATI's warranty reduction.

Source: ATI's Warranty Page

The Old Warranty was Three Years:

RETAIL Warranty Durations
ATI Technologies Inc. warrants to the original purchaser of the hardware that the product is in good working condition, according to its specifications at the time of shipment, for a period of one to five years from the date of original purchase. The warranty term depends on the product. RADEON 7000 and newer products have a three year warranty. DV Wonder cards have a two year warranty. The Remote Wonder has a one year warranty. All other ATI products have a five year warranty.

The New Warranty is One Year:

PRODUCT WARRANTY
ATI warrants to the original purchaser of the hardware product, that the product is free from defects in materials or workmanship under normal use and service for a period of one (1) year from the date of purchase at retail. If this product is a Workstation product such as ATI’s FireGL™ or FireMV™ family of products, ATI warrants to the original purchaser of the hardware product, that the Workstation product is free from defects in materials or workmanship under normal use and service for a period of three (3) years from the date of purchase at retail. All cables and accessories provided with an ATI product are warranted to be free from defects in materials or workmanship under normal use and service for a period of for (90) ninety days from date of purchase at retail.

[kenc51]

EVGA / BFG with their lifetime warranties now look soo good...

[stereo55]

Geez .... what is ATI thinking .

This could (will) have a very bad impact on future revenue and sales for ATI . Many people rely on a substantial warranty period for $400-500+ v/card investments .

I know that I will be taking this lesser warranty into heavy consideration on my next high-end card purchase .

Just look what happened to the hard drive industry .... made many people look elsewhere (brand wise) when buying retail/oem brands that carried 3-5 years vs 1 year .

You have to "stand by" your product in order to KEEP current customers and to attract potential new .

Thx for the info ..

[jtm55]

Hi All,

I think ATI is having some serious trouble in their leadership. Consider this, what type of message are you sending, when you lower your warranty? It suggest to me that you have no confidence in your product.

Warranties are a way that a company says to it's customers that this product will perform as advertised. If a company has been giving three year warranties & then extends them to lets say ten years, folk are going to say that company has confidence in their product & are willing to stand by it.

On the other side, a company goes from three years to one year, suggests,that company isn't confident in their product & is unwilling to stand behind it.

Whoever is making these decisions over at ATI needs to rethink them.

[Apoptosis]

I sent e-mails to both ATI and nVidia (why not) to get their thoughts on the changes...

nVidia did not want to comment

ATI told Legit Reviews that they were going to talk to the customer support team tomorrow to get some info for us.

No new info from either companies #1 marketing peeps.

[-mogwai]

totally lame

[rhino56]

EVGA / BFG with their lifetime warranties now look soo good...

i believe that lifetime is for as long as the cards are in production. once they discontinue them their lifetime is over.
i may be wrong but thats what i have heard.

[[AK]Zip]

EVGA / BFG with their lifetime warranties now look soo good...

i believe that lifetime is for as long as the cards are in production. once they discontinue them their lifetime is over.
i may be wrong but thats what i have heard.

I dunno about EVGA, but BFG is Lifetime Lifetime.

[capper5016]

Don't forget XFX's "Double" lifetime warranty

[Duke3d87]

EVGA / BFG with their lifetime warranties now look soo good...

i believe that lifetime is for as long as the cards are in production. once they discontinue them their lifetime is over.
i may be wrong but thats what i have heard.

I don't think so. My friends FX5700 died, and he mailed it back to BFG. They gave him a FX5950 Ultra. Not bad if i say so myself.

[Apoptosis]

After doing some digging we have an article up on the warranty reduction on ATI's graphics cards...

When we spoke to ATI about the warranty changes they explained that it was done for a number of reasons. After studying the average "return rate over time" charts it was discovered that nearly 90% of all video card returns were done in the first 60 days. This means that consumers very seldom used their warranty on the second and third years per the old warranty plan.

Article Link: ATI Explains Their Warranty Reduction

Hopefully you now better understand the warranty changes.

[Cyberdyne]

Nice article. It makes sense now.

[stereo55]

Nice article and thx for the follow-up .

[Nobahar]

I believe EVGA has special warrantee's for people who want to modify/overclock their vid cars, they may even do it for you.

[gvblake22]

HMMM, this is interesting news. It could really go either way in favor or against ATI.
One thing I wonder about though is the statement that "nearly 90% of all video card returns were done in the first 60 days."
What is the definition of a "return"?
Defective/broken card?
Unsatisfied purchase?
Exchange?
All of the above?

Overclockers.com wrote a similar article on ATI's warranty reduction but in a slighly more negative light:
http://www.overclockers.com/tips00846/

Either way, it's never a good thing to see a company reducing their warranty's. It really does kindof send out the message to consumers that the manufacturer doesn't have that much faith in their products to stay reliable for any problems for very long. Hopefully though there is a good ammount of accuracy behind ATI's statements regarding the warranty reduction and maybe we'll see cheaper cards, or maybe better yeilds, or maybe better products?

[Apoptosis]

glad they called us a naive website...

The whole point of the article was to inform consumers that the warranty length was changed. We did that and got the ball rolling. Why they had to take a stab at Legit Reviews and bash our article in their article is beyond me. Some websites like to flame other sites and we have never done that before.

[gvblake22]

glad they called us a naive website...

The whole point of the article was to inform consumers that the warranty length was changed. We did that and got the ball rolling. Why they had to take a stab at Legit Reviews and bash our article in their article is beyond me. Some websites like to flame other sites and we have never done that before.

HOLY CRAP. I totally did not even realize that they linked to here by calling LR a naive website! That's lame.
I wasn't trying to start a flame war or rip on anyone's article, honest!

[Apoptosis]

There is too much to write about rather than rip on anothers review. He could have made his point without that comment. Or like gee thanks for pointing out the issue, but here is my thoughts or something along those lines. I'm laughing it off. After writing articles now for several years and having millions of visitors read them I learned quickly that you just need to blow some things off.

I mean honestly I called ATI... Spoke with them several times about the issues... they had to get back to me and I reported their comments and some of my own in the aritcle. I asked for specific return numbers and information but they didn't have any. Should I have been upset with ATI for not having numbers for me? No, of course not. It was two days before the X1800 launch and I am happy that ATI spent a couple hours working with me to get the correct information out there. Is this not correct journalism?

[gvblake22]

I mean honestly I called ATI... Spoke with them several times about the issues... they had to get back to me and I reported their comments and some of my own in the aritcle. Is this not correct journalism?

Seriously, you were reporting the facts as you recieved them from the true source. That is all we can really ask!

I think just laughing it off is a good way to go about it

[junkymagi]

Naive is the right word for Ligit Reviews review of the warranty reduction.

This statement in the review which is an opinion by the reviewer, not information received from ATI:
"We hope that it will increase warranty competition among the third party builders and in the end it will be the consumers who win."

This opinion is naive. Consumers win when warranties are extended. Competition is the extension of warranties, not the reduction of warranties. ATI (a major maker of video cards) reducing their warranty will NOT make other companies extend theirs. It will also make them decide to lower their warranties to 1 year which means the companies gain and the consumers lose.

Thinking otherwise is (in the nicest word) naive.