rob was here.

Today I recieved the following message from the "MSI eSupport Team":

Please apply for an RMA Service for the VGA Card. If it is out of parts and labor warranty, we need to charge CAD $ 45.00 + taxes for repair/replace. Thanks.

Ouch! 45 bucks... plus the taxes!... plus the shipping! After some investigation I found out that the parts+labour warrenty lasts 2 years, which I'm just over. However, parts are covered for all 3 years. I included that in my retort:

Hello again!

The serial number of the card starts with 0409, which indicates the card was build September 2004. As I've breached the 2 year part of the warrenty, how much does this mean I will have to pay in total, if I decide to RMA the entire card?

I will apply for an RMA service for the VGA card right now just to get the ball rolling, so you'll have my serial number and required information.

Also, I noticed on your website it says the following:

"Yes, customer can apply for parts (e.g. cooling fan, BIOS chip...etc) from MSI. For within warranty products, FREE for the parts and minium of CAD $ 10.00 shipping and handleing will be charged. For out of warranty products, minium of CAD $ 10.00 shipping and handleing plus the cost of the parts will be charged."

Following that thread of thought, how much would it be to get a cooling fan sent to me? just $ 10.00 shipping? It sounds like that is what the website is saying, since the third year of a CGA warrenty includes the parts! :) :)

I would like to do whatever is the cheapest between RMA'ing the whole card or purchasing a cooling fan and having it sent to me.
Could you please tell me which is the cheaper option: RMAing the card back to MSI or to have a fan sent to me? If the cost of the fan is covered by the 3rd year of the warrenty, then shipping it to me sounds like a viable option.

I'm not getting discouraged. I'm going to fight to spend just $10.00 to get the ol' feller up and running again.