Wow. EVGA was always the gold standard for Nvidia cards IMO (until Nvidia started producing and selling their own). Unbeatable warranty. Cooler designs that weren't too offensive or jarring. Decent software. What a shame.
Oof, this sentence just proves their point.
They turned from god tier to trash tier after Brexit. Literally the only company that didn't invest in a UK-based repair centre, so when I recently had to send my broken EVGA Black 2080Ti for repair, I was told to ship it to Germany, then got charged £200 in customs duties for replacement shipped back to me. The thing is, there is a way to avoid customs on replacement items following warranty claim - but EVGA doesn't care to fill out the customs documents properly. I messaged them telling them exactly how to fill it out properly so it will go through without charges(we do this kind of thing all the time), they basically said yeah sorry not our problem, we gave you a new GPU for free so why are you complaining. And I'm not the only one with this issue - quick look at their forums shows loads of UK-based people getting charged customs duties for parts sent by EVGA. They just advise to appeal to HMRC for a refund(which is actually pretty difficult to do and can take months), like it wasn't their bloody issue in the first place.
Already made a vow to never buy anything from EVGA again after that, so I'm pretty glad this won't even be a risk now.
When a country is deliberately harming its international trade ability, it's not on companies for not playing ball—it's on the country not to pull the ground out from under its citizens and companies doing commerce there.
EVGA did nothing wrong. Your country changed the deal, EVGA chose to not humor it.
But to stay and then make your customers responsible for unexpected charges when your own product turns out to be faulty, seems like a bad sign.
And typically, companies and people will just ignore you if you ask them to do something they think is illegal, like saying an item is gift when shipping internationally. People try to get me to pull this when shipping on eBay to save on the import costs all the time.
"For replacements, you will be charged VAT on the full VAT replacement value."
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... & https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers...
>>EVGA did nothing wrong.
Yes they did. You can't fill out customs documents incorrectly and then just throw your hands in the air and say "well it's your fault for brexit, what do you want us to do? file official paperwork correctly? Fuck you for buying a £1200 GPU from us I guess".
I'd honestly much rather that they just said "look, we are too lazy to read up how to fill out customs declarions, so we are just going to stop providing warranty services to our UK customers". Would have been more honest at least.
It is your country's fault that Brexit happened, not EVGA's. EVGA did what they were supposed to—replace your GPU. You choose to stay in England, as an immigrant, meaning that while you may not like Brexit, you consent to the country's laws.
Also this isn't a "pre Brexit policy" - if you buy anything from EVGA right now here in UK, are you aware that having it repaired/replaced will incur customs duties due to EVGA's incompetence? You won't have this problem buying any product from almost any other manufacturer, so not disclosing this information is dishonest at best and fraudulent at worst.
You bought your card before Brexit. They're honoring the deal they made with you—not their fault they had the ground pulled out from under them with laws you consented to.
>>You bought your card before Brexit. They're honoring the deal they made with you
If I bought it after Brexit I would have had the exact same issue. Would it change how you feel about EVGA's behaviour then?
I have nothing against England, mind you, but I do have a problem with the English whining about tariffs, tourism, or whatnot after Brexit. Seriously.
If EVGA were addicting your country to drugs, shipping you off for slavery, and stealing your artifacts, you'd have a case. Complaining about someone not filling out your tariff form the way you'd like is sheer entitlement and hypocrisy. Boohoo.
Good thing I'm not British then.
>>. Complaining about someone not filling out your tariff form the way you'd like is sheer entitlement and hypocrisy.
Really? Not filling out customs documents correctly is now anything other than lazy and incompetent? Wow.
I'm not quite sure what you are. Can you clarify?
Brexit only affects the British. Do you mean you're not English?
For the general public: England is a country. Britain is an island, which includes England, Scotland, and Wales. The British Isles are a set of islands, which adds principally Ireland and the Isle of Man. The UK is a union of several countries, including Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland. Most of the English have nearly as poor a grasp of the differences here as they do of the random former imperial belongings they screwed up. Most assume Britain=England and call the English "Brits."
> Really? Not filling out customs documents correctly is now anything other than lazy and incompetent? Wow.
You mean like randomly drawing maps on a line to divide up the Middle East, without getting anyone local involved? Yes! It is.
Fortunately, it only costs you a couple hundred bucks, and not decades of war.
I have nothing against the "Brits," but each time they do this, I have this image of a rich, spoiled brat yelling at a minimum wage barista for 15 minutes about screwing up an order. Yes, she should have made a DOUBLE soy latte, but get over yourself. Sheesh.
As a footnote, I've met people who make "mistakes" like this precisely because they're annoyed at the "Brits" for any of a variety of reasons. I find it funny.
I take the issue with you calling my approach entitled. There's a correct way to do paperwork and incorrect way. EVGA does their paperwork in an incorrect way - demanding it to be correct is not entitlement, because....how can it be? It's like saying that asking someone to follow the speed limit is entitlement.
Or to give another example - it's as if I opened a company sending products to American customers, but never bothered to read up on American customs forms, so my customers would end up getting charged extra duties unnecessarily.
If they complained about it, would you call them entitled?
>>You mean like randomly drawing maps on a line to divide up the Middle East, without getting anyone local involved? Yes! It is.
So British imperial past means that EVGA can simply not bother to fill out their paperwork correctly? That's a leap of logic if I have ever seen one.
>>Most assume Britain=England and call the English "Brits."
I think you actually have a really poor understanding of how it works. English, Welsh and Scottish people are all British, so calling English people Brits is 100% correct. The only citizens of the United Kingdom who are not British are the people of Northern Ireland who are simply Northern Irish, but I'm just not sure how that's relevant to this discussion or why am I explaining this to you.
Stopping/banning the trans Atlantic slave trade started by other European nations?
Still has artifacts from around the world? Many musuems do and previous owner often took item in battle from another nation.
Wouldn't Americans be more responsible for killing most Native Americans?
What you should have done was taken them to tribunal for the missing warranty item they owed you.
Amazon told me to go get bent recently when one of their own products products broke after 18 months.
I guess it doesn’t mean much when you have to prove the defect was there originally. It seems like one of those laws that sounds good on paper if you highlight small parts in isolation.
That being said, I think this is a good, principled move. Nvidia is infamous for being unpleasant to work with, but their overwhelming dominance of such a large market forces people to do it anyways, so it's nice to see someone stand up to that.
I seem to recall their 3080 launch also being a bit bumpy...