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I am in the Air Force. I'm currently stationed in South Korea...I got here less than a month ago. Thanks to this overseas assignment, I have discovered how truly terrible MSI customer service is, and that they refuse to support American military members stationed overseas. How do I know this? Let me tell you my story.
Back in January, when the ATI 7970 first came out, I eagerly grabbed one from Newegg. Due to the limited supply at the time (everyone was selling out of them almost immediately, just like with the nVidia GTX 680 right now) I purchased the MSI R7970 as it was the only one in stock. It worked fine while I was in the states. My belongings were packaged up in February and sent to South Korea ahead of my arrival and I thought nothing of it. Once I got here, and my belongings were unpacked, my system began to show some instability. It would artifact across the monitor and then the video driver would crash. It would look like this:
It would do this both in games and during web browsing/regular desktop usage. Whenever it happened in a game, the game would immediately crash. The card was not overclocked at all. My processor (an i5 2500K) was. So during the course of troubleshooting, I tried everything I could think of: I reverted my overclock on my CPU to stock, I reseated memory, I tried several different ATI Catalyst driver versions...it was only when I took the card and swapped in an older ATI 5850 I had lying around that the problem went away. So obvious my R7970 was dying.
This is where MSI's terrible customer service comes in. I immediately submitted an RMA request to the US version of the MSI website. I was told that they could not help me because they would not ship to an APO (military overseas) address. This is bull
- an APO address is a STATESIDE address. The package would be shipped by USPS to the appropriate port of call IN THE UNITED STATES, and from there the military would ship it the rest of the way. For Europe (APO, AE), that port of call is in New York. For the Pacific region (APO, AP) where I'm at, it would be California. There is absolutely no reason that the card could not be shipped to APO, AP 96266 (note the California zip code) but the RMA technician insisted that it could not be done. He told me I need to contact the Korean branch in Seoul. I am not fluent in Korean, nor do I have a Korean mailing address. So I took my card to a local electronics and computer store downtown, and asked them if they could send the card in to Seoul for me. They told me the next day that they called, and that MSI told them that the warranty replacement HAS to be done through the United States, that the Korean branch cannot replace a US card. So now I'm stuck.
I am shocked and appalled at the piss-poor level of customer service I have received. I expect better when I buy a premium product from a company. This isn't a $20 basic video card we're talking about -- it cost me almost $600.
MSI - never again.
Back in January, when the ATI 7970 first came out, I eagerly grabbed one from Newegg. Due to the limited supply at the time (everyone was selling out of them almost immediately, just like with the nVidia GTX 680 right now) I purchased the MSI R7970 as it was the only one in stock. It worked fine while I was in the states. My belongings were packaged up in February and sent to South Korea ahead of my arrival and I thought nothing of it. Once I got here, and my belongings were unpacked, my system began to show some instability. It would artifact across the monitor and then the video driver would crash. It would look like this:
It would do this both in games and during web browsing/regular desktop usage. Whenever it happened in a game, the game would immediately crash. The card was not overclocked at all. My processor (an i5 2500K) was. So during the course of troubleshooting, I tried everything I could think of: I reverted my overclock on my CPU to stock, I reseated memory, I tried several different ATI Catalyst driver versions...it was only when I took the card and swapped in an older ATI 5850 I had lying around that the problem went away. So obvious my R7970 was dying.
This is where MSI's terrible customer service comes in. I immediately submitted an RMA request to the US version of the MSI website. I was told that they could not help me because they would not ship to an APO (military overseas) address. This is bull
- an APO address is a STATESIDE address. The package would be shipped by USPS to the appropriate port of call IN THE UNITED STATES, and from there the military would ship it the rest of the way. For Europe (APO, AE), that port of call is in New York. For the Pacific region (APO, AP) where I'm at, it would be California. There is absolutely no reason that the card could not be shipped to APO, AP 96266 (note the California zip code) but the RMA technician insisted that it could not be done. He told me I need to contact the Korean branch in Seoul. I am not fluent in Korean, nor do I have a Korean mailing address. So I took my card to a local electronics and computer store downtown, and asked them if they could send the card in to Seoul for me. They told me the next day that they called, and that MSI told them that the warranty replacement HAS to be done through the United States, that the Korean branch cannot replace a US card. So now I'm stuck.I am shocked and appalled at the piss-poor level of customer service I have received. I expect better when I buy a premium product from a company. This isn't a $20 basic video card we're talking about -- it cost me almost $600.
MSI - never again.