Best Buy removes 32GB RAM worth $600 to "repair" customer's 64GB gaming laptop

[Hecate91]

Oops.... double post

I'm not saying you're suggesting this, but yes if Bestbuy allows third party sellers to sell systems with upgrades that aren't technically compatible, they should be taking charge and not allowing third party sells to sell PC's with incompatible memory.
Although it seems like the memory was compatible with the system, until the memory failed, unsurprisingly the seller didn't want to replace the memory stick with what RAM costs are anymore.

 

[yRaz]

Yes, because Bestbuy is the seller here, I find absolving Bestbuy of any blame here weird.
Or to use an analogy this would be like a car dealer refusing to fix a car because they're technically not the car manufacturer.

Part of th franchise agreement that dealerships contract with the manufacturer is that they will take honor warranty repairs. If you buy a Honda that someone traded in for a f150 at a Ford dealership the Ford dealership doesn't honor the warranty. The warranty is transferred from owner to owner and Honda still takes over warranty repairs.

Of you look at these listings on Best Buys website, it's not like they are buying these things off the shelf in the store with no information that they are facilitating a sale from a third party. Ebay does this all the time and no one cares, if you want a warranty from Amazon on things like this they try to sell you one before you check out or you're on your own. Infact, Best Buy sells third party warranties for products like this sold on their website and if you don't buy their warranty, you're stuck with the third party seller. This isn't some new thing that people haven't figured out yet. there is a a big difference of buying something from best buy and buying something through Best buy and it's not like they try to hide the difference.

The standard practice in these incidents is to either get your stuff back and handle the warranty through the seller or the retailer offers you a refund and you return the product. The the retailer goes after the seller. This person more than likely choose to have their product returned.

This isn't a bait and switch, best buy isn't trying to steal anything or get out of paying for things. Whether it's Amazon, newegg, best buy, eBay or even Walmart, the warranty and responsibility is through the third party.

If this was a stock laptop with OEM parts then best buy probably would have ate the cost and fixed it, but that's not what happened. They opened it up and found that the parts that need warrantied aren't even OEM parts. At that people the "we'll be nice and fix it anyway" thing goes out the window. Goto best buys website and try to buy something from a third party and goto check, look at all the warnings and notices they make you go through before they let you hit buy. They aren't things hidden in walls of text like a license agreement, they're a few sentences long in bold, highlighted text.

 

[thewelshbrummie]

"this computer was listed with those specs and that's how it was prebuilt/sold."

Sold yes, prebuilt no. And it's out of spec since Lenovo only sold it with 32GB RAM, so anything added on top of that may well be unsupported.

do you not see the issue in your statement ? or just highly OBTUSE ?

Normally I tend to find yraz comments on Techspot to be either of questionable veracity or the opposite of my opinion but on this story they're absolutely correct.

Lenovo themselves state the laptop supports a maximum of 32GB. No more. So the case for the buyer is limited if a 3rd party has doubled the RAM beyond the supported config.

The laptop was marketed and sold with 64GB. It also worked for months with that configuration, meaning it is indeed compatible. Either way, it's the retailer/manufacturer's responsibility to adhere to what was sold. There is no scenario in which cutting an advertised spec in half to fix a problem that manifested months after purchase is the right course of action.

Wrong. Just because something works, does not mean it's compatible. It's the sort of thing that may work until a BIOS update causes an out-of-spec config to fail. Which this laptop is, Lenovo's page clearly states a 32GB RAM maximum.

It's very questionable behaviour by the seller and, to an extent, BestBuy on allowing a reseller to do this without checking the listing first. It's why it's best practice to buy directly and avoid resellers on 1st party

Yes, because Bestbuy is the seller here, I find absolving Bestbuy of any blame here weird.
Or to use an analogy this would be like a car dealer refusing to fix a car because they're technically not the car manufacturer.

BestBuy aren't the seller. They're the middleman facilitating the transaction.

The seller is the company with item in their possession for sale, so in this case it's PC Heaven. BestBuy are simply doing what Amazon have done for years by allowing people to sell via their website, for a commission. Also the same a "Buy it now" purchase from eBay, as in eBay is not the seller.

 

[gderreck]

I sincerely hope that the individual gets satisfaction with respect to the laptop. I've run into this on a number of occasions with Amazon. I no longer buy anything from Amazon that is not at least shipped by them or preferably sold and shipped by them. I should say that in my experience, Amazon typically takes care of the customer whether they even touch the product. But it's the aggravation that is required to get satisfaction. As far as Best Buy goes, I have never bought anything that wasn't sold by Best Buy. That doesn't make me smart, it just means I've never had the need or the opportunity to buy something that was from a marketplace seller. Whether Best Buy is the seller or the shipper or anything in that transaction, I believe they have a responsibility to the purchaser given that they have allowed the item to be sold through their website.

 

[hwertz]

Sold yes, prebuilt no. And it's out of spec since Lenovo only sold it with 32GB RAM, so anything added on top of that may well be unsupported.


....

Lenovo themselves state the laptop supports a maximum of 32GB. No more. So the case for the buyer is limited if a 3rd party has doubled the RAM beyond the supported config.

.........

Wrong. Just because something works, does not mean it's compatible. It's the sort of thing that may work until a BIOS update causes an out-of-spec config to fail. Which this laptop is, Lenovo's page clearly states a 32GB RAM maximum.

.............

It's very questionable behaviour by the seller and, to an extent, BestBuy on allowing a reseller to do this without checking the listing first. It's why it's best practice to buy directly and avoid resellers on 1st party

With all due respect, I disagree. Unsupported does not mean incompatible, or even potentially incompatible, in any way. Vendors (Dell, Lenovo, etc.) routinely only 'support' the amount of RAM you can order as system with, even when the system can take far more with no issues. They don't validate it, but they are not saying or even implying incompatibility.

I don't find the seller putting more RAM in to be questionable behavior. I find it more questionable that vendors don't accurately list the capabilities of their systems.

 

[Mark Fuller]

I've seen this story several times over the last few days and it pisses me off how sensationalized it is. The guy had a bad stick of RAM, they removed the bad stick then mailed him back a working laptop AND the bad stick. This isn't news

I googled the laptop specs and it does say on one website that it supports only 32GB RAM.(https://www.google.com/search?q=Len...aptop+maximum+memory&gs_ivs=1&sourceid=chrome)
Whereas on another website it states up to 128GB. https://www.google.com/search?q=Len...aptop+maximum+memory&gs_ivs=1&sourceid=chrome.
What this means is that the older generations of the laptop (gen 6 with DDR4) support support only 32GB memory whereas the newer generations of the laptop (gen7 with DDR5) support up to 128GB . The work order does say that the laptop had DDR5 memory. This must mean the stick must have been bad like you say. The folks at Best Buy must have googled to too and realized this and took the bad stick out and it made it work as it would. "The documentation also stated that the removed module, worth more than $600 as of August 2026, was returned with the device." Nuff said , he got his memory stick back s and if he wants reparations he should go to the original seller or manufacturer.

 

[yRaz]

I googled the laptop specs and it does say that it supports only 32GB RAM.(https://www.google.com/search?q=Len...aptop+maximum+memory&gs_ivs=1&sourceid=chrome)
Whereas on another website it states up to 128GB. https://www.google.com/search?q=Len...aptop+maximum+memory&gs_ivs=1&sourceid=chrome.
What this means is that the older generations of the laptop (gen6 with DDR4) support support only 32GB memory whereas the newer generations of the laptop (gen7 with DDR5) support up to 128GB . The work order does say that the laptop had DDR5 memory. This must mean the stick must have been bad like you say. The folks at Best Buy must have googled to too and realized this and took the bad stick out and it made it work as it would.

The memory controllers are on these chips are standardized. Lenovo picked and off the shelf chip from Intel and slapped it in their laptop and said their laptop only *officially* supports 32GB, but the chips themselves do support upto 128GB.

 

[Mark Fuller]

The memory controllers are on these chips are standardized. Lenovo picked and off the shelf chip from Intel and slapped it in their laptop and said their laptop only *officially* supports 32GB, but the chips themselves do support upto 128GB.

Which means that the RAM Chip had to be a bad one or incompatible or the computer would not work now and he got his chip back.

 

[yRaz]

Which means that the RAM Chip had to be a bad one or incompatible or the computer would not work now and he got his chip back.

People seem to missing what I'm saying so this is the last time Im saying
>Someone bought a Lenovo laptop
>Put 64GB of ram in it
>Listed it for sale on BB website through their third party sellerprogram(it was never sold by Best buy)
>The stick of RAM goes bad 9 months after buying the laptop
>It was sent back to BB for "warranty work" and they found that failure of after market parts not covered by Lenovos warranty failed
>The warranty on the RAM was denied because it was not the OEM Lenovo RAM, it was wasn't a Lenovo part and was not covered by Lenovos warranty
>BB sent the laptop back to the consumer in working order with documentation saying that the second stick of RAM failed
>That documentation is to be taken to the seller or manufacturer of the memory for warranty work

 

[Mark Fuller]

right

People seem to missing what I'm saying so this is the last time Im saying
>Someone bought a Lenovo laptop
>Put 64GB of ram in it
>Listed it for sale on BB website through their third party sellerprogram(it was never sold by Best buy)
>The stick of RAM goes bad 9 months after buying the laptop
>It was sent back to BB for "warranty work" and they found that failure of after market parts not covered by Lenovos warranty failed
>The warranty on the RAM was denied because it was not the OEM Lenovo RAM, it was wasn't a Lenovo part and was not covered by Lenovos warranty
>BB sent the laptop back to the consumer in working order with documentation saying that the second stick of RAM failed
>That documentation is to be taken to the seller or manufacturer of the memory for warranty work

right on target, the memory of these people is what is bad.

 

[FaTaL]

Lesson learned. NEVER EVER buy (especially PC parts) From 3rd party sellers. I accidentally bought RAM From 3rd party seller on newegg...got bad sticks. Never got refund. Always check who the seller is.

 

[Mark Fuller]

Lesson learned. NEVER EVER buy (especially PC parts) From 3rd party sellers. I accidentally bought RAM From 3rd party seller on newegg...got bad sticks. Never got refund. Always check who the seller is.

There's even a caveat for Amazon. I bought several usb a and usb c to 3.8mm aux adapters and none of them worked. I googled the issue and there is a problem with the wiring and none of them would even work because of wiring issues. Amazon is good for refunds, however.

 

[Zs1996]

The laptop was delivered with 64GB. They refused to repair it because they claimed the laptop only supports up to 32GB. How does that make sense?

It's a cop out to prevent them buying a whole new stick that is now very expensive to purchase but the time was bought when RAM only just started going up in price so the repair will be a huge monetary loss for them so they'd rather claim the laptop is defective with two sticks rather than replace the defective stick