Computers & Electronics

Be Quite! RMA process

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  • Apr 11th, 2022 2:10 am
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Nov 25, 2004
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Be Quite! RMA process

my first time dealing with them and there don't seem to be alot of stories about rma with them online so figured id tell

Got a Be Quite Straight power 11 850w 80+ gold. it failed after only 2 months psu would not turn on no fan spin nothing.

RMA process with BE quite is dif them most companies u don't have to contact them first to troubleshoot or even get an RMA number they just say ship the unit in with a paper in the box that says what your problem is and your shipping info also need to include a copy of the invoice there website says though on a case by case bases they can choose to do the RMA without the invoice though.

i did try contacting them first to see if they would provide a shipping label considering there unit failed so embarrassingly fast they absolutely would not budge and basically said to bad its your problem even called in and asked if i could talk to a manger and they claimed there wasn't one.

they also refuse to offer advanced RMA even though pretty much every other psu maker out there offer that.


so had to ship it to them at my cost to there warehouse witch is

Listan USA Inc. / be quiet! USA
(RMA department)
727 Brea Canyon Rd suite #3
Walnut, CA. 91789

so no Canadian RMA location. cheapest options was netparcel for ups about $14. but i went with frightcom via ups as there insurance was cheaper i wanted to insurance for full value as many companies like to pull the it was damaged in shipping and deny ur RMA and since i never dealt with them before didn't want to chance it. so shipping with full insurance was $20.

so shipped it to them ups ground took 5 working days to get there. same day ups dropped off got an email saying they got the psu and would test in the next 3-5 working days and get back to me. very next day i got an email saying psu failed testing oddly enough they claimed it powered on for them even though i couldn't get it to power up at all even with just the 24 pin cable connected using a psu jumper.

so they said to make up for the hassle and for it failing so quickly they would upgrade to the dark power 12 850w witch is an 80+ titanium vs gold and that they will send a brand new unit factory sealed with all cables. the same day ups emailed me that the shipment was on the way.


so now the waiting game for it to come and i guess i get to see if they declared it right so i don't get jacked for customs fees.

so some bad points no label offered even if the unit failed with in a couple months. most psu makers like corsair or evga would have at least sent u the label if something failed that fast.

also no advanced RMA option witch is pretty common among psu makers evga, corsair seasonic all offer advanced options.

the good points they had a very quick turn around. offered an upgrade. they don't make u contact them first and jump though a bunch of hoops just to get an RMA number.
Last edited by aaron158 on Apr 12th, 2022 10:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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great to hear some feedback. It's nice to hear they will upgrade you to a better model, though I'm wary of these happy ending stories as they are huge YMMV.

I've bought from companies that had great reviews about CS and these feel good stories of how the company took care of them, based my purchase decision partially on this and then got let down when CS didn't live up to the reputation. Maui Jim was one such brand, may have had awesome CS in years past but when I reached out got standard treatment of repair offered at almost replacement cost.
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Aug 15, 2007
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Thanks for sharing and that is nice of them to upgrade your PSU.
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M1K3Z0R wrote: great to hear some feedback. It's nice to hear they will upgrade you to a better model, though I'm wary of these happy ending stories as they are huge YMMV.

I've bought from companies that had great reviews about CS and these feel good stories of how the company took care of them, based my purchase decision partially on this and then got let down when CS didn't live up to the reputation. Maui Jim was one such brand, may have had awesome CS in years past but when I reached out got standard treatment of repair offered at almost replacement cost.
well i think they only did the upgrade because i gave them a little bit of a chew out about the psu being dead after only 2 months and them expecting me to pay to ship it in at my cost after such a short amount of time. that's pretty lame for a psu that sells for $200+ dollars. heck i have an old ocz psu that's from like 2000 and i used it in an old system for playing old games and it still works perfectly.

but at the least if u have to deal with them the turn around for them processing things was quick and didn't have to jump though all the annoying hoops most companies want try this try that try this and that before they will even give u an RMA number sometimes it can take 1-2 weeks of back and forth just to get the RMA number.

about the only thing i can say they could do better give there c/s reps the power to make exceptions to provide a free label if there is a legit reason such as psu dies with in the first say 90 days but its past retailer return time or if the person has had to RMA the same item more then once. also in 2022 with people working from home and needing there computer advance RMA is like a must for companies to offer id say 90% of companies these days offer that option either they take down your cc on put a hold for the value of the item or they will give a company paypal account tell u to paypal them the value of the item with the RMA number in the notes then the refund your paypal back once they get the item back. some companies don't even ask for that like for Eg ring door bells they will ship u the item up front overnight shipping no questions asked with the pre paid label in the box to return to old one.
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Let's talk about the retailer you bought it from. Even canada computers will help you in the first 3 months of purchase if it dies, and they will send it off on their coin to their distributor.
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evilYoda wrote: Let's talk about the retailer you bought it from. Even canada computers will help you in the first 3 months of purchase if it dies, and they will send it off on their coin to their distributor.
actually cc claims they will do it for the first year. good luck getting them to do it though. when i contacted them to do some ram before they at first denied it and said that's only if u pay for there warranty i had to copy paste the policy on there site to even get them to admit they do it. then the guy tells me it could take 4-6 months for them get the replacement!!!! he said months not weeks... funny enough i did the RMA with corsair for the ram and took 2 weeks to do it my self corsair even helped out with a free label.

memory express says the same thing but never tired with them so can't comment on how good or bad they are.

this was from amazon and i probably could have got them to take it back they will bend there return policy way after 30 days but i try not to return stuff to amazon unless i have no choice since they are known to ban people who return to much.
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The lack of advanced RMA option for something that can be mission critical is a negative in my books, even if you got upgraded. That's too bad. Thanks for posting your experience.
Deal with it.
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Bitfenix is worse.

Their PSU is high or highest tier, but they dont have a RMA depot in Canada, or in the USA. What happens is that they may or may not ask you to ship to Taiwan depending on situation, and at your own cost. They depend on the retailer to help you with that during their whole 7 year (shorter than other brands) warranty. Of course the retailer will not do that past one year.

And Bitfenix wont ship you back a product to Canada. They will ship to a USA address and hope that you have an American friend willing to ship it to Canada at your friend's cost.

Bitfenix has been out of the PSU game since 2017 but their stock is still floating around the GTA until it runs out and isnt available anymore.
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evilYoda wrote: Bitfenix is worse.

Their PSU is high or highest tier, but they dont have a RMA depot in Canada, or in the USA. What happens is that they may or may not ask you to ship to Taiwan depending on situation, and at your own cost. They depend on the retailer to help you with that during their whole 7 year (shorter than other brands) warranty. Of course the retailer will not do that past one year.

And Bitfenix wont ship you back a product to Canada. They will ship to a USA address and hope that you have an American friend willing to ship it to Canada at your friend's cost.

Bitfenix has been out of the PSU game since 2017 but their stock is still floating around the GTA until it runs out and isnt available anymore.
i don't think Bitfenix was ever all that popular in North America though. i think they had like 1 or two computer cases that were sought after for a short while but no one has really talked about them in years.

they were probably thinking Canada is like Europe were the retailers will just exchange the product and then the retailer will RMA it and gets a credit from the manufacture. but that only works there because of laws they have that force the retailer to deal with warranty for the customer. but even there i see people complain they buy something from some small shady computer store who tells them to go fly a kite then if they want to RMA with the manufacture its really hard there as they will normally only have 1 office somewhere in Europe witch is rarely in the persons country.

be quite only opened there US warehouse for RMA in 2018 apparently before that if u had to RMA something to Be Quite it had to be done with there Head office in Germany. apparently the person who runs there Us RMA department use to be a customer service manger for NCIX us division.
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evilYoda wrote: Let's talk about the retailer you bought it from. Even canada computers will help you in the first 3 months of purchase if it dies, and they will send it off on their coin to their distributor.
When did CC change their 30 day policy?
After 30 days, they refer you to the manufacturer, well, unless you purchase a warranty with them.

Follow up: I just called the Etobike store and they confirmed that they still only have a 30 day policy.
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Canuck_TO wrote: When did CC change their 30 day policy?
After 30 days, they refer you to the manufacturer, well, unless you purchase a warranty with them.

Follow up: I just called the Etobike store and they confirmed that they still only have a 30 day policy.
30 days for a direct exchange. but after that for the first year they claim they will do the RMA for you on there dime.

this was the policy when i looked on there site in feb

One year courtesy warranty service

Canada Computers will ship the defective product for repair or replacement to the manufacturer, at no cost to our customer, within one year from the original date of invoice. The product must still be under Manufacturer Warranty (some restrictions apply). For warranty requests after one year from the date of the product's original invoice, Canada Computers will offer to ship the defective product for repair or replacement to the manufacturer at a minimal cost.

when i contacted them to inquire this was there respones

Hi Aaron,



We can RMA the Ram out for you but I can not do anything with a advance RMA with corsair. The only thing I can do is a normal RMA with us but this will take anywhere from four to six months at the moment.



If you want to do that I would just need you to come in with the ram and the packaging for the ram.





Thanks,



Aaron McMillan

ya you heard that right 4 to 6 months so i told him to forget it and went directly to corsair and had everything resolved in 2 weeks via an advanced RMA corsair even offered me a free label although not part of there normal policy.

just now looking on there website though i can no longer find that policy posted it only talks about 30 days returns or a one time replacement if u buy into there total tech warranty.

memory express has a similar policy

Warranty

Memory Express will help facilitate the return of defective product(s) to the manufacturer for repair or replacement at no cost to our customer with in the first year, unless otherwise specified.
For Refurbished and Clearance items this period is thirty (30) days, unless otherwise specified.
Warranty may be void for product(s) with excessive wear or used outside their intended purpose (i.e mining / farming). Warranty for Hard Drives / SSDs / Graphics Cards may be denied if parameters (Power On Hours, Tetabytes Written, etc; ) exceed nominal usage during the warranty period.
Within this period Memory Express will facilitate the return of defective product(s) to the manufacturer for repair or replacement at no cost to our customer.
Some manufacturers may require customers to contact them directly for warranty support

i can't say how good or bad there's is as memory express is pretty new to my town so haven't bought anything there that needed to be warranted.
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Update on the RMA process ups emailed me and there trying to jack me for over $100 in customs fees


Import Charges

Hide Details

NOTE: the total value used for calculation of all Duty-based fees is 0.00.

Brokerage Fee:
63.30
UPS Customs Brokerage Charges:
71.53
Permit:
0.00
Government Charges:
40.86
Brokerage QST:
0.00
Brokerage GST/HST:
8.23
Freight Charges:
0.00
Duty:
0.00
HST or GST + PST:
40.86
Other Government Charges:
0.00
Excise:
0.00

Total Due CAD:
112.39

i called ups lady said she looked at the customs papers and the invoice says nothing on it about being a warranty item be quite declared it as a purchase at full retail value. emailed Be quite waiting on a reply to see if they fix this.
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actually already got an email back to the message i sent to be quite at 10 am they said they would pay for the customs fees ups already emailed back that the customs fees have now been paid for by credit card and were billed to be quite.

so someone def messed up but be quite took care of it. i emailed them back to let them know that they should be declaring these items as warranty replacements on the customs papers for future Canadian customers so ups don't try jack people for over $100 in fees. so hopefully the $112 lesson to BE quite will make them learn and fill the papers out properly next time.
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Thanks OP for the RMA info. This is incredibly useful for someone in the market for a PSU.

I personally try to stay with the more popular brands like EVGA, Corsair, Seasonic to name a few. I've done a RAM RMA with Corsair and it was good for the most part. I had to pay shipping to get my RAM back to them, but they ship (and paid for) new replacement RAM So it's fair to me and cheaper than buying new RAM.

I also recently did a motherboard replacement with EVGA and they were really good. They paid for the shipping to and from and I was able get to an RMA number quite quickly.

I've never had a PSU fail yet and as others have said, I also have an OCZ PSU from 2007 and it still works the same as the day I bought it. Pretty amazing when you invest in a better PSU and I certainly got my money's worth and plenty of mileage out of it.

Even though Be Quiet was able to replace your PSU at end of the day, there are some very huge headaches and red flags:

  • Just sending in your defective product out of the blue is a huge gamble and hoping they would test, verify, and send your replacement in a timely manner. If it was broken to begin with, it's not much use for you to keep it anyways, but you have one less bargaining chip. They have both your money (not directly) and your PSU.
  • Something doesn't smell right when they insist your PSU works fine when you cannot get it to power on -- assuming you tested it properly and changed the power cord as well just to be sure. It should never power on when it's stone-cold dead. A PSU is generally binary: it either turns on or it doesn't. There's no maybe.
  • You had to really ride their butts hard to get them to budge a little and "upgraded" you to keep you quiet (no pun intended).
  • They sell to Canadian customers (maybe not directly), but they should be declaring warranty replacements properly. The screw up is indicative of their inexperience and causes a ton of stress and confusion for the customer. At least they were nice enough to take care of the duties for you when you complained -- again.
  • For something that's supposed to be quick, there's too much back and forth to have anything working and there's just too much hand-holding and babysitting on your part.
  • Be Quiet sounds like a much smaller company and naturally wouldn't have the resources to be answering RMA calls and tickets and just deal with whatever that comes in on a case-by-case basis unlike someone bigger like EVGA which has a formal process for that.
  • Premature failure of the PSU is also indicative of quality control. It might have been bad luck or a bad batch, but that should rarely happen -- and to suddenly fail at 2 months -- then "resurrect" itself after you sent it to Be Quiet is highly suspicious and I wouldn't trust a PSU for doing that. A PSU is the lifeblood of your system and a bad PSU could take significant chunks of your system with it.

Anyways, thanks for sharing and I'll learn to tread carefully and not buy any mission critical components from Be Quiet. I'm glad it all worked out in your favour, but just reading your experience and the subsequent follow up stresses me out! Face With Tears Of JoyAngry Face
Why settle for full retail price when you can wait and get it at a lower price for better value (even better if there's a bundled freebies deal)? 😉
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well be quite is pretty new to the NA market i believe they only started selling there stuff over here around 2017 or 18 and didn't even open there NA RMA location till 2019.

i def would not Rate them an A. but a B would probably be about right.

they are most likely small currently but they seem to be blowing a lot of budget on getting youtubers to market there products for them so i can see them most likely starting to grow over the next few years.

hopefully they learned on the customs thing although after him replying back that they paid the fees. i reply back telling them he should make sure whoever is in charge of filling out that paper work for the shipment gets some better training and didn't even get one of those replies that says something lame like will forward your feedback so it don't happen in the future or anything.

surely this wasn't there first time RMAing a psu to Canada so just makes u wonder how many others have gotten ripped off on customs fees who just paid them and didn't say nothing
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You may want to correct the spelling: Be Quiet, not Be Quite, in case someone does a search in the future.

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