I find this type of most companies across the board. They will NEVER give you a new model, but give you a refurb. Now, what constitutes a refurb to most companies varies. I worked for an outlet (not a manufacturer), whose idea of a refurb, was to turn on the power and if the pilot light came on, it was considered good. Thankfully most major companies are better than that, but they are still limited. When A customer sends in a 'Black Box' on an RMA, they often are not able to either spend the time to find the customers issue or because of the peculiarities of the system and associated components, are not able to reproduce it, so you are going to get someone else's problems and it will usually pop up eventually. It becomes a catch-22 when it comes to some company sending you a $20k device. You paid for a properly working device and they had hopes of making some bucks off of each one they sell. Greed on their part usually wins.
Now when a company has an issue like a recent purchase as I had with an NU Audio (Designed) device, and the CS agent tells me that they "ONLY had a 30% failure rate" imagining that this was a small number, then you really have a problem. If this CS agent's Supervisor ever hears the recording of that conversation, I doubt he will be keeping his job very long.
Now some things to watch out for when following through with an RMA.
You also have to consider their practices on shipping when it comes to RMAs. How are they shipped? Who is the shipper and how are you presented with a shipping label? In one incident a manufacturer gave me Two RMAs on two different items to be sent to two different parts of the country. They didn't tell me which label was for which item. It took me days to get them to understand the problem. Then there was an incident where I sent an item in the original box with the original packing and then had the shipper package Inside another box with extra packing for extra security. First, they tried to tell me they never received the item, but I had the signature of the Wearehousman that signed for it upon receipt. Then they tried to tell me it was damaged in the shipment. I asked to see the photos of the damaged BOX it was shipped in as it was receiver which is a standard procedure and they CLAIMED they never took ANY PHOTOS. They were forced to honor the RMA because I held their feet to the fire. Then on the most recent item, they wanted to do what is called a Cross Shipment. That is supposed to be Both parties shipping at the same time making the waiting time MUCH less. But that isn't what they offered in reality. They wanted me to PAY a Deposit of the FULL PRICE of the item, and they would ship a new one to me and then I would ship the old one back in the same shipping carton with an enclosed prepaid shipping label. Now that may sound simple but first, I could NOT get them to say that the Deposit was ONLY a temporary deposit and was refundable. If this had been a $200k item that is a lot of Spare change to have sitting in their bank account and NOT yours. and then there was some question of if they would honor the return of the deposit. Also in their fine print, it stipulated that they ONLY allowed 14 days for the returned item to get back to them from the date that THEY first shipped the replacement to you. With the current problems with slow shipping in this country it could take 20 or 30 days for an item to be shipped across the town you live in, and then there is the time takes for the return shipment. Fortunately, I was able to get a supervisor to honor a shipping label for me to sip first and then they return the new or repaired item. Now deposit is needed, and no additional cost to them for shipping. How simple is that?
