In a nutshell: There's been a depressing trend recently in which hardware companies refuse warranty claims for questionable reasons – or refund the customer's original purchase amount – as a result of their products' prices skyrocketing. But it seems not every firm is being greedy. One person has praised G.Skill for replacing a 64 GB DDR5 RAM kit bought from eBay for $150 with a brand-new kit worth $1,199.
According to Redditor Double-South8863, one of the RAM sticks from their Trident Z5 64 GB DDR5 RAM kit died. They tested both sticks individually and tried them in another machine to confirm only one was dead, then used the single 32GB stick in their PC for a while.
A week later, the user checked G.Skill's RAM policy and found that the kit came with a lifetime warranty, so they filled out the paperwork and sent the kit away to the shipping address.
What's even more surprising about this incident is that the kit was bought as an open-box package in May 2025 from eBay. So, one can imagine Double-South8863's shock when G.Skill not only accepted the RMA, but also sent out a brand new replacement kit that's priced at $1,199 on Amazon, or 699% more than what they paid. The Redditor has now pledged never to buy another RAM kit from anyone other than G.Skill.
I will never buy any RAM other than Gskill for as long as I live. RMA for the RAM
by u/Double-South8863 in pcmasterrace
There have been a number of reports about companies refusing to replace broken hardware and offering to refund only the original, rather than the current, market value. Thanks to the memory crisis, prices are often treble (or more) what they were a year or so ago.
YouTuber Louis Rossmann said in June that he would take Samsung to court over a broken 990 Pro SSD. He claimed the company isn't honoring its warranty policy because of the memory crisis, though Samsung later said that, in cases where a warranty replacement is unavailable, customers receive a refund based on the device's current market value.
There was also a recent case where an RTX 5090 owner said PNY denied a warranty claim because they didn't use the included cable or adapter. There have also been cases of Nvidia rejecting RMA claims due to fading serial numbers.
Several comments praise G.Skill for its actions, though some say it is only doing what is legally required of it. The company's warranty policy states that any replacements provided will be with the same product model. For obsolete or discontinued products, it says that if the same product is unavailable, G.Skill can substitute a comparable product with similar specifications or functionality. Nevertheless, the state of the industry means not all companies honor these policies, especially when the product was bought second-hand from eBay.
