MSI RMA is literally worse than useless

Flatoftheblade

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I could go on in excruciating detail about the incredibly unproductive experiences I had with MSI's online support tickets (they can't even read and process what a customer writes, ever) and customer service line, but the short version is:

My notebook's adapter was defective and started to die after a month (literally just past the newegg return window). At the time I did not know that was the issue (I could have spared myself a lot of grief by conferring with reddit then instead of trusting MSI to have any idea what they were doing).

Their RMA service not only failed to properly diagnose and fix the issue, but they replaced my functional motherboard with a problematic motherboard where I'm pretty sure they didn't replace the thermal paste at all (so it runs at 95C with only 20% usage and games that should get 80-100 FPS on high settings get 30).

After receiving the notebook back from the first RMA with the original issues still present in addition to new issues, I (with the help of reddit, not MSI) diagnosed and fixed the adapter issue myself, only for the new motherboard issue (courtesy of MSI) to be apparent.

I am now having to do a second RMA (being without the computer for 2 months in total after having it for only a month) and I had to spend $200 on shipping and insurance for the pleasure of them failing to fix my issue and creating a new one.

I have almost gotten past the stage of anger and almost become impressed with the sheer consistency of the abject incompetence on display from every MSI employee at every stage.
 
Can't really say much about it. I won't deny that MSI's service and support isn't great, but I will say it's generally been acceptable so far in my experience. However, I'm in the USA and it can definitely vary by country.
I can't say much about how it is in the country you are in.
 
MSI has an office in Canada so RMA is rapid when legit.

What are you talking about? MSI has had my notebook for this RMA for a month now and will not respond to my inquiries about the status. Two weeks ago they claimed they needed to ship a part from a warehouse and would prioritize my unit after that happened. They have ducked me since. Newegg has a next-day turnaround for shipped products. When I shipped the notebook in, it arrived at MSI's RMA department the next day. It should not take weeks and weeks to ship a part form a factory to the RMA dept.

This is my second RMA after the first time they not only failed to properly diagnose my issue, but they replaced functioning parts with non-functioning ones.

At this point I am writing up a demand letter with a deadline and will be filing a notice of claim and going after MSI in small claims if they don't make me whole. I really cannot believe it has to come to this and they will not honour a warranty. Their warranty is worse than worthless (at this point I will call it a straight up scam), their RMA department is apparently staffed by untrained chimps, their customer service people do nothing except pawn everything off to the useless RMA dept with false promises of speed and efficacy and refuse to do anything else. Their approach is that they will not provide refunds or replacement units; they expect people to repeatedly ship defective units to their RMA dept (at their own expense), have the RMA dept repeatedly take forever before sending back the unit unfixed, and they seem to just hope that eventually customers get so frustrated they give up attempting to get MSI to honour their warranty (or alternatively the warranty runs out after a year of repeated useless RMAs).

I refuse to believe that my experience is an anomaly because I've been dealing with this issue for over 2 months now and I've encountered problems with MSI at every step of the way. This is well-passed the point of there just being some understandable, honest mistake. It should not be this difficult and time-consuming to get a warranty honored.
 
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Oh also it took them 11 business days simply to unpack my unit and scan it into the system, then determine they apparently need to order a part. And they only did that after I followed up with them to investigate what the hell was going on and whether they had even received it (who knows how long they would have let it gather dust if I didn't follow-up).

Again, this was during my second RMA, which I only went through very reluctantly because a customer service supervisor ensured me he was on top of it and they would give my RMA priority (what a joke) due to them completely dropping the ball with the first RMA.
 
I know how ya feel. I sent in my laptop to get a repair in late Sep. On the website it didn't register into the repair phase until mid october. On the phone I was told it was going to be about $60 to get a new hinge put on and come to find out near the end of October when they supposably just recieved my laptop the $60 was just a diagnostic fee. Wish they would have said that on the phone. Anyway, after the diagnostic process was done they sent me an e-mail saying that I was going to have to pay $395 for the repair, which I paid for, and now here we are in december I got a call from my credit card company asking about an authorization for another $395 from MSI. Why should I pay twice? I tried calling the MSI hotline but the operator obviousely didn't care to talk to customers. I guess since I had sent it back with all the factory packaging and formatted the laptop before I sent it to them for repairs that they probably already repaired it and sold the laptop off to someone else. I should have gone with my gut and just brought it to local repair shop. Maybe someday I'll get the laptop back but if I never do I'll just try my best to warn others. Time will tell...
 
I know how ya feel. I sent in my laptop to get a repair in late Sep. On the website it didn't register into the repair phase until mid october. On the phone I was told it was going to be about $60 to get a new hinge put on and come to find out near the end of October when they supposably just recieved my laptop the $60 was just a diagnostic fee. Wish they would have said that on the phone. Anyway, after the diagnostic process was done they sent me an e-mail saying that I was going to have to pay $395 for the repair, which I paid for, and now here we are in december I got a call from my credit card company asking about an authorization for another $395 from MSI. Why should I pay twice? I tried calling the MSI hotline but the operator obviousely didn't care to talk to customers. I guess since I had sent it back with all the factory packaging and formatted the laptop before I sent it to them for repairs that they probably already repaired it and sold the laptop off to someone else. I should have gone with my gut and just brought it to local repair shop. Maybe someday I'll get the laptop back but if I never do I'll just try my best to warn others. Time will tell...
Wait, they charged you twice over for the repair AND didn't even send the unit back to you? And it's been over two and a half months?
What country are you in?
 
Wait, they charged you twice over for the repair AND didn't even send the unit back to you? And it's been over two and a half months?
What country are you in?

I am in the USA, they tried to charge me twice but I refused to let the 2nd charge go through. I'm so glad Bank of America caught it.
 
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I just got an e-mail about 2 hours ago saying that they got what they say is the "LAST" part for the repair. Now we will see how long it will take to finish the repair and send it back. Also I hope they are only working on the frame and not touching the motherboard or anything. The only part that was broken was the black plastic covering the lower left hand side where it connects the monitor to the unit. There was nothing wrong with the operating system. As I said before "Time will tell."
 
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I bought a broken 3080 at the beginning of November. I sent the 3080 to MSI Canada nov 16th for an RMA. I got an email on nov 27th saying they needed my apartment #. I called them last week because Ive been trying to track the RMA progress but have been unable to get any information online no matter what I tried.... finally I got someone on the phone. I simple asked for an update, he asked me for the RMA# and my name and then told me with an attitude " it's being fixed, don't worry you'll get it back!" Its been gone a month and I'm still unable to see the status of my RMA and dont expect I will well into the new year! I know theres a shortage with stock and times are crazy but I've bought the product already and should be compensated with new stock as soon as its available. Instead new stock has been going out to well known retailers and back-orders. Believe me, Ive been watching stock pop up here and there. Fix problems before creating new ones.... Extremely unacceptable!
 
I know right, this is crazy :wall:, I have seen the models at the local BestBuy store recently myself. If they got the time to make so many new laptops how about they just give us one of the new $2000.00 models ;) or electronic $2000.00 gift card through e-mail so we can go pick one of the new model of our choosing our selves from Amazon.com or our favorite local retail store website. The only thing I don't like about most of the new laptops, not just MSI, but all brands of laptops being released is the fact that they do not have a built in CD/DVD drive. Makes no sense not to install them. Not everyone of us is rich enough to personally afford the new gadgets or even want to buy a new model while ours are still perfectly functioning.
 
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I feel both of your pain.

Guys, after two and a half months of getting jerked around (and having no confidence MSI would ever resolve my issue, since they consistently refused to offer me a refund or replacement and kept insisting I go through the RMA service repeatedly after they sent back my unit butchered worse than it originally was the first time) on Friday I drafted a demand letter and sent it in. For those unfamiliar, you basically send that in advance of pursuing a civil claim, letting them know what remedy you are seeking to avoid litigation.

To my shock, I actually got a call from an MSI employee in California the same day. He seemed reasonable and responsive and wanting to resolve my issue finally (granted, now that I was getting legal). He offered a replacement and without prompting said it should arrive on Tuesday (yesterday) or Wednesday (today) at the latest. I was agreeable to this (he also offered a refund and I knew I should have taken it, but he said that would take a bit more time to process and I just wanted this over ASAP and the fact that I'd accept a replacement unit just goes to how reasonable I am about this I thought). I thought this was finally going to be over.

Now I've been in contact via email without another MSI guy who has told me he's waiting for the replacement unit to arrive. I have followed up asking for what sort of timeline he anticipates because that does not align with what the gentleman on the phone told me, and of course they have gone back to ignoring my emails. I am concerned because the last time they told me they were waiting on parts to arrive for my RMA, they kept me in the dark for two and a half weeks and ignored my emails until I sent in the demand letter. Looks like I may have to file that statement of claim after all (I really did not want to have to do that).

This is absolutely ridiculous. Even after sending in a demand letter and them initially seeming responsive to that, they have gone back to lying to me and jerking me around. Obviously I should have insisted upon the refund but I naively thought they were finally getting serious and wouldn't dick me around and we could resolve this quickly and amicably. MSI North America seems to actively HATE their customers and go out of the way to provide aggressively bad service.

I seriously can't believe how much I've had to fight with them over the past two and a half months. At this point I will outright say, without qualification, that MSI's manufacturer's warranties are (at least in Canada, where our consumer protection laws are crap) a straight up scam.

To anyone coming across this: NEVER BUY MSI PRODUCTS.
 
I just checking the RMA status page and now magically it says it is being shipped. Hopefully they did the repair and not sending back still damaged. If it is still in the damaged state that I sent it too them in I may take your advice about taking legal action about getting a refund for not providing the service I paid for. I got all the e-mails that I have had and I got pictures of the unit before I sent it to them. Once again, time will tell. I'll post a status update once I get the unit back.
 
I just checking the RMA status page and now magically it says it is being shipped. Hopefully they did the repair and not sending back still damaged. If it is still in the damaged state that I sent it too them in I may take your advice about taking legal action about getting a refund for not providing the service I paid for. I got all the e-mails that I have had and I got pictures of the unit before I sent it to them. Once again, time will tell. I'll post a status update once I get the unit back.

Good stuff, dude. I miraculously have a tracking number myself now, after a few more calls and emails...fingers crossed for this being the end of this ordeal.
 
OMG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, I am so stupid :wall: , I knew something didn't seem right all this time. I should never have been charged for $395.00 when they already charged my credit card the $59.95. I was just looking over my e-mails from Sep when I first submitted the RMA. They should never have even had to turn on or open the laptop beyond just the basic opening to see the hinge of my laptop cause all that was damaged was the black plastic covering the hinge. They shouldn't have had to do any soldering and such. The metal frame that holds the monitor wasn't damaged . You could only see the metal cause the black plastic cover was missing. Nothing was damaged inside or on the main unit and the main hard drive was perfect. That's why when he quoted me on the phone he said it was going to be $59.95 that I had agreed too. I am so stupid for not realizing it earlier but now charged me on 11/24 for $395.00 that I did not agree too and I'm really wondering what they did to the unit. If any other part of the unit is damaged in anyway I am going to be pissed. Man did I sure get scammed. This is going to bug me all night.
 
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Everyone, I received a laptop today in the mail, It looks and works great but I don't think it was the one I sent in cause all the labels, serial number stickers, and stickers about what the extra features are no longer on the front of or bottom of the unit. Also the left front USB reader is very sensitive and won't read most of my flash drives. However a simple thing that was done is that there is more bloatware on the unit but that's not a really big deal for me cause I can always uninstall it with CCleaner very easily. Some things I am happy about is that they managed to get the laptop with the CD/DVD drive feature. Thank god I won't need to get a portable one that would have to be carried around. I now know why they charged the $395.00 for the repairs. They did so much work when all I expected was the hinge repaired, keep up the great work. The laptop works better than ever. Maybe now my siblings can be quiet and stop complaining over trivial issues. It was very stressful with 7 people complaining so much.

Oh and one more thing I would like to tell the MSI team, who ever your phone operator is needs better training in customer service. Whoever they are were very rude and that help cause me to be upset and lose faith with your team. Also the RMA tickets should be handled quicker. The few of us that were waiting so long shouldn't have to threaten to take legal action to get the service rendered. You got the whole thing done in less than a week after that. I'm sure you two Flashoftheblade & DyedInTheWoolKillerProduction158e02e1 agree with me on that.
 
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I know for sure now that the laptop is a different unit cause in the system properties the product key is completely different and my recovery drive no longer works. I had to make a new one so I got the backup if ever needed.
 
I could go on in excruciating detail about the incredibly unproductive experiences I had with MSI's online support tickets (they can't even read and process what a customer writes, ever) and customer service line, but the short version is:

My notebook's adapter was defective and started to die after a month (literally just past the newegg return window). At the time I did not know that was the issue (I could have spared myself a lot of grief by conferring with reddit then instead of trusting MSI to have any idea what they were doing).

Their RMA service not only failed to properly diagnose and fix the issue, but they replaced my functional motherboard with a problematic motherboard where I'm pretty sure they didn't replace the thermal paste at all (so it runs at 95C with only 20% usage and games that should get 80-100 FPS on high settings get 30).

After receiving the notebook back from the first RMA with the original issues still present in addition to new issues, I (with the help of reddit, not MSI) diagnosed and fixed the adapter issue myself, only for the new motherboard issue (courtesy of MSI) to be apparent.

I am now having to do a second RMA (being without the computer for 2 months in total after having it for only a month) and I had to spend $200 on shipping and insurance for the pleasure of them failing to fix my issue and creating a new one.

I have almost gotten past the stage of anger and almost become impressed with the sheer consistency of the abject incompetence on display from every MSI employee at every stage.
its not changed in 2024....

Summary:
I've got a motherboard that reaches temperatures in excess of 120°C on the PCB between the VRM phase 1 components and the CPU sockets, its started to show signs on heat damage on the rear of the motherboard, so I can only guess the layers of the PCB are probably also damaged. It's also unstable when its been running for a few hours, say while playing warzone or any single player game, I give up on the RMA process and bought an ASUS motherboard and the VRM and surrounding PCB doesn't exceed 70°C under load, and the CPU boosts much higher and the ram can now clock much higher, I've read heat can cause frequency instability so I presume its all linked to that +120°C its reaching.

Screenshot_20231126_170049_Video Player.jpg

I'm using a 5950x and this happens, with and without PBO enabled with stock limits applied, it looks like this VRM can't supply the Amps/Vaults/Watts the 5950x needs to maintain its high clock speeds across all 16c/32t.

So I send it in for testing, low and behold, no fault found, so I ask for details of the testing..... I get sent a shoddy video where the motherboard isn't even setup in any kind of test bench its just on the workbench, bent out of shape under the weight of the GPU or the pressure needed to seat the GPU in the PCIe port, and some guy randomly waving a thermal probe around, clearly has no clue how the power is delivered to the CPU and hasn't check the images I've sent over.
WhatsApp Image 2024-10-16 at 09.01.12_cc5643c4.jpg


Then I spotted this.... and thought there is no way that's keeping a 5950x cool under load
WhatsApp Image 2024-10-16 at 09.02.28_6ac30834.jpg


But then I remembered the technician flashed the screen in a way to try and be smart as in, see look the temperatures are low, as you can see in this video the technician run the rest for a whopping 4 minutes and 37 seconds and.... they really must pay minimum hourly rate for this service. but then if you look closely the CPU is only pulling 1.14v at peak 🤔 that isn't right... o wait is that a 5600... a 65w part that should clock at 4.4-4.6Ghz doing this test, as its a light load test.... it looks like they've also undervolted the CPU I wonder why... would that be to keep temperatures down, so that cant be running within spec right...

undervolted.jpg

Well according to MSI that's running withing spec with no signs of heat damage or bending of the motherboard and they're returning the motherboard back to scan for me to collect from there, what a waste of time, all they have done is hide the issue by testing with an under spec CPU and undervolted it so it doesn't boost too high pulling the watts/v needed to sustain the given boost frequencies.

It doesn't show that well on the picture but those dark spots are the rear of the motherboard, directly behind where the heat is building up.
WhatsApp Image 2024-10-15 at 16.53.08_f8fe726f.jpg




I'm hoping this is just down to UK RMA services being outsources to third parties, otherwise they should change the dragon to a jester...

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
 
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