BFG Tech Liquidating

[MaydaX]

BFG has officially begun sending out RMA denial letters to their warranty holders. Claim to be "running down business".

 

It looks like BFG has finally received the final nail within its coffin and is officially "….winding down and liquidating its business" in their own words. Some of their customers who have recently sent in BFG video cards for RMA have begun receiving the following letter from BFG:

 

BFG Technologies Inc. is in the process of winding down and liquidating its business. Unfortunately, our major supplier would not support our business. As a result, we are returning your graphics card without being able to repair it. We apologize for the inconvenience.

 

It seems short and to the point but this will surely yank the short-hairs of people expecting a "lifetime warranty". It goes to show you though that nothing ever lasts forever.

 

Ever since their original statement that they were moving out the the GPU business, customers have been experiencing extensive delays when RMAing cards to BFG but in many cases RMA requests were still being honored. Now it looks like cards are being actively RETURNED to customers UNREPAIRED as BFG just doesn't have access to replacements or the components necessary to repair the cards.

 

We will have more about this in the coming days. The letter below comes from a power supply that was recently returned to a customer.

 

 

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/bfg-tech-sending-rma-denial-letters-winding-business/

 

http://hardwareaware.com/news/bfg-tech-liquidating/

[Crotan]

Sad day, but what company can survive on a business model where they upgrade customers GPU's from half decade old top of the line cards for warranty support.

 

Seeing so many posts from people over the years on tech forums being upgraded again and again from ancient cards, and wondering how they could sustain the model.

 

Well I guess I know the answer now, they couldn't.

 

Though it is sad to see one of the few companies that offered lifetime warranties go under. The first computer I built had a BFG Nforce 4 Ultra Motherboard and I still have a BFG 7800gt running in a secondary computer

[Mcisme]

Im amazed. I have a 7600gt and RMA'd it once and recieved a new card but it wasnt upgraded. Like previous poster said, they did upgrade older cards, but it wasnt all the time. Its sad to see a good company go down the drains. The lifetime warranties must not be the thing to do. I have also seen other card manufacturers start to fade away from Lifetime warranties. Sad is just a understatement on this.

[HSMagnet]

if your product is good, most people will replace it before it dies

 

upgrading an ancient card would be cheaper than trying to source an old card/parts

 

if you are selling something based on Nvidia parts that nukes itself.......

 

then you want to have offered a crap warranty.....

[Crotan]

if your product is good, most people will replace it before it dies

 

upgrading an ancient card would be cheaper than trying to source an old card/parts

 

if you are selling something based on Nvidia parts that nukes itself.......

 

then you want to have offered a crap warranty.....

 

not at all, especially when I'm purchasing cards that are over the $400 these days I don't touch a companies product if it doesn't have a lifetime warranty. In many instances I don't think it was the case that it would be cheaper not to source an older card, because many a time other people would still get the same card back or they would still be selling the older card, but people that put up a fight would get the next gen top of line card back from warranty. They put in the work and they got the reward, but I didn't think it was a good practice for the company or any company and like I said it was just a thought from seeing many a post about such occurances on a popular hardware forum.

 

It encourages people to RMA products that may not have gone through a little testing on their end to find a problem before costing both parties time and money in the hopes of just getting an upgrade. I need to find the statistics on how many RMAs western digital gets that aren't actually defective.

 

And I don't consider offering a lifetime warranty with no expectation of getting a 6870(what ever next gen high-end is called) back from RMA if this one dies a crap warranty but to each their own.

 

There are plenty of companies out there that will drop you with a $400 paper weight in 3 years or less. And in three years time, the low-end of that generation will certainly give the high-end of today a run for its money.

 

When it comes down to it, it was just food for thought and I wasn't seriously saying that was the cause of their downfall. It's a practice that brings in new customers and I do hope it is sustainable.

Edited August 24, 2010 by Crotan

[HSMagnet]

in the end they went tits up

 

what caused it? idk

 

never owned one, but i heard mixed reviews on the product. everyone has told me they liked trading up every other year though :lol:

Edited August 24, 2010 by HSMagnet

[Kolor]

I believe nvidia was not giving them enough 4 series GPUs quite simply.

I managed to offload my BFG 295 just a few weeks ago, glad I did before this happened otherwise I'd have gotten a lot less.

[HSMagnet]

I believe nvidia was not giving them enough 4 series GPUs quite simply.

I managed to offload my BFG 295 just a few weeks ago, glad I did before this happened otherwise I'd have gotten a lot less.

 

well when did they piss off Nvidia?

 

gotta think that was questionable on Nvidia's part killing a major reseller of their product

[Crotan]

well when did they piss off Nvidia?

 

gotta think that was questionable on Nvidia's part killing a major reseller of their product

 

I think companies had to offload a lot of lower end last tier cards for Nvidia in order to get preferable quantities of release Fermi cards. And BFG wasn't able or didn't want to do that. I believe it is the reason why XFX jumped to AMD cards so it wouldn't be put in this exact situation, so it has two venues of product

[HSMagnet]

wow

 

now i don't feel so bad being an ATI fanboi......

 

so "you have to push this inferior crap we have before we will let you have any of our potentially crap new stuff"

 

that will fix the "Nvidia is crap" legacy....