The law of commerce says, in all the civilized countries of the world, that if a product breaks down during the warranty periodand it is proven to be a manufacturing fault, the manufacturer has to replace it with another one. But The RAM memory crisis has disrupted everythingto the point that some stores no longer even respect the guarantee itself.
This is the story of a PC user named Goran, who a little over a year ago bought 32 GB of DDR5-5600 memory in the Australian hardware store chain Umartone of the most important in the country. It cost him 155 Australian dollars, about 95 euros.
A few weeks ago the RAM started to fail, so he went to the store to replace it. Despite being under warranty and having memory in stock, they refused to give him another kit. Things get interesting when They didn’t want to return his RAM either…
The problem of replacements in the RAM crisis
In Australia, it is the stores that manage the product guarantee. If an item is proven to have a manufacturing defect, They must offer the customer a replacement or money back. And, here is the key point, It is the client who decides what he wants. If you order a replacement and the store cannot offer it, you must contact the manufacturer to order it.
This user took the defective RAM to Umart, where they tested it with the PassMark software and, indeed, it gave errors. But, instead of replacing it, and despite having stock in the store, Umart only offered to refund what he paid: 155 Australian dollarsabout 95 euros. What is the problem? That the same memory now costs between 500 and 600 dollars, about 368 euros. Almost four times more.
By law, the customer has the right to a replacement, if they do not want a return. If Umart had memory in stock… Why didn’t it offer it to you? The store argued that RAM now costs four times more, so It is not considered the same product, but an “update”and that’s why he only offered him the money he paid. This is where the mess begins.
For Goran, accepting the money back made him lose the RAM, unless he paid four times as much. So he ordered his defective RAM, to send it directly to Corsair. His surprise was that Umart did not have it.. He told her that it had been sent to the supplier, and that “they had issued a credit instead of a replacement.” But what credit? The price before or now?
Goran sent all the information to Corsair, but within three weeks he received no response.
The story reached the ears of the YouTube channel Hardware Unboxedwho began to investigate and found other users in the same situation with this chain of stores: defective RAM memories that, instead of replacing them, return the money, keeping the RAM. You can see it in the video:
Some suspect that, supposedly, the store returns the failed RAM to the manufacturer, sends another one, but instead of delivering it to the customer, it refunds the money they paid, at the old price, and puts the new one on sale: brand new memory for $600, which only cost $155.
At the moment, the case is not resolved. Corsair has said it is investigating what happened. Perhaps the store is telling the truth and the supplier issued you a credit, but has not said how much value. If, on the other hand, you have done the aforementioned dealing, you could get into trouble.
The RAM memory crisis continuesand it is increasingly surreal. There is still no light at the end of the tunnel.