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We've had a couple of KitGuru readers get in touch to let us know that Amazon US and Amazon UK both appear to be willing to follow in Newegg's footsteps and issue 20 per cent refunds to buyers of the GTX 970 graphics card following the recent VRAM fiasco.
Two readers, Tim Spencer and Akaki Mukhigulashvili, sent in chat logs with Amazon customer service, who after a little persuading, agreed to issue 20 per cent refunds on the GTX 970 purchase as a ‘one time exception'. Amazon customer service is usually pretty good and in this case, they are being very generous. These refunds follow on from US retailer, Newegg, which also agreed to give 20 per cent refunds to those that bought a GTX 970.
Click the images to enlarge.
If you are genuinely annoyed about the GTX 970 3.5GB VRAM debacle but don't fancy giving up the card entirely, then this may be an option for you. However, there is no guarantee that everyone will get the same treatment. A 20 per cent refund in this case will amount to around $74 or £58, which is quite a sizable amount.
For those that don't know much about the recent controversy, the GTX 970 was recently discovered to only be using 3.5GB of VRAM, rather than the full 4GB on the GPU. This has caused quite a stir as many expected to be able to use the full amount of VRAM advertised on their new cards. Nvidia has since explained that 500MB of the VRAM is reserved for when it is needed but not all games or programs will take advantage of this technology.
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KitGuru Says: Now that there is the possibility of a partial refund without having to give up the card, I imagine a good number of Amazon users will attempt to get their 20 per cent back. Let us know how you get on if anymore of you decide to have a chat with Amazon.
I might have to try this with Overclockers UK.It performs ok in everything except Dying Light at the moment.Not sure If i’ll be selling it yet or not.
I called newegg and this is what i got “We won’t be doing partial refunds, we will only be doing full refunds with stocking fee”, i reply, “Are you sure? I’m reading here from kitguru that you guys agreed to do 20% refunds to all customers that purchased the gtx 970” he then replied and said “Oh, I’ll be doing a 10% refund”, i find that very suspicious. Well it works through the phone, i tried doing it online in newegg chat a few times and they refused. If it doesn’t work on the first try, do it again later on.
It’s a dick thing to do. I’d rather send back the full card if wanted..
I agree. So people are “so annoyed” by this issue, but are not willing to return the card, just get some money back… Ha, sure.
Trying my luck now (Y)
Successful 🙂
The the us chat, amazon answer “this item warrantly has expired”. Considering the 970 were released less than a year ago, that’s a pretty short warrantly -__-‘
Its a good card for 1080p gaming. But part of the reason I shelled out $350 was because of the 4GB of VRAM since games are getting more ridiculous with their requirements. If I had the option to return fully or get $70 back, I’d keep it and ask for the cash for the 3.5GB card. I’d rather get some money back then go however many days it would take to get a replacement card without a computer…
I am going to try my luck as well,what did you do?
Contacted Amazon about the partial refund yesterday, after a little bit of badgering they told me to contact the cards manufacturer (EVGA) and if they gave me a “poor response” Amazon would give me the 20% refund.
Sent an email to EVGA that night, got a response this morning basically saying “we’re sorry you misunderstood how the 970’s graphics memory works, but you can upgrade to a 980 if you pay the difference.”
Took that email back to amazon and got the 20% refund on both my 970’s with no further hassle. Total of $150 back.
Hi, I’ve just found out that the Nvidia GTX970 only has 3.5gb of usable ram, not the 4GB that is stated, I also found out, that Amazon US and Amazon UK and Newegg, were giving a 20% partial refund as an apology, would I be able to get one, also?
But you should word is differently 🙂
Well, I see it like this. It’s not 4GB as stated, so it’s false advertisement. Amazon don’t even pay taxes anyway, so… Is it a dick thing to do? Or is not paying your taxes as a massive company, a dick move?
I wrote something similar as well,and they went like okay =D,they asked for my order code and then done =D
It’s hard to pay taxes when you’re losing money.
So this post made me have a chat with Newegg (Canada). I bought a gtx 970 last month. Reply I got was:
Hi Stijn. Thank you for providing me with that information. I truly apologize for any inconvenience you have endured. Unfortunately, we do not offer partial refund as of this moment per our internal department. However, we are willing to issue an RMA for store credit as an exception since you are our valued customer.
So yeah, no refunds here, after doing some more complaining/comparing with Amazon I was offered a 10$ gift card. Told them to keep it.
So…. people are getting bent out of shape, because they cant fully allocate the entire 4gb’s of RAM that ‘is’ on the card, as 500mb of it is reserved for the card itself to use incase it needs it. 3.5bg’s of RAM you can use anyway you want, +500mb of ‘video card reserved ram’… is still 4gb’s of ram..
I can see people who are wanting to have 100% total controle of their hardware raising a stink about it.. but not complaining that the video card is being ‘false-advertized’.. as it DOES still have 4gb’s of ram installed.
Just spoke with Amazon (US) – received a 20% refund for both cards i ordered. Thanks to Baljinder with Amazon!!
It’s still a good card. Even at the price point it was at it was a great card. 320 dollars for a Nvidia card with 3.5 VRAM is a really good deal. 250 dollars is a steal. Nobody should be angry or annoyed about it.
Newegg is really shitty about doing returns. PC master race people swear fealty to them because they ONLY sell PC components (Which is a stupid reason) but if you ever need to return something they will drag you through the worst process.
If people found a way to “unlock” the card and get that .5 of RAM free they would find themselves with a much slower inefficient card. This is just another case of people jumping on the “I am mad bandwagon” because they can.
Just tried this, a very short conversation, i told them the issue (pretty much just as the guy in the screenshot did) he asked my order number, i gave it to him and they refunded £58 (20%) This is why i love Amazon!
Superbiiz isn’t giving partial refunds or accepting returns. The card was above average price when I bought it, too.
it is a 4 gig card, and it uses 4 gig, the lie is the number of rops and the speed of the ram not the amount. That’s just something people say because they read other peoples comments.
you got it wrong matey. they lied about the card specs, be it a mistake or whatever it is false advertising and at 300 pounds most of us were looking at the specs closely cause we don’t spend 300 pounds to last 1 year. We want it to last longer like other generation cards, and with the speed of the .5 gig down low it means that it wond sustain the frame rates and settings choices and resolution changes as well as it would have if all 4 gig was used in the same way. That’s just facts even NVidia admits to the marketing mistake so to me NVidia should have at least offered some compensation. the card is excellent its just not as future proof as id like for the money. Like I say its the speed of that 2nd pool of ram that’s the issue not the card using the amount.
not really. If your willing to buy something and when you get home you realize it wasn’t the product they advertised then youd be fine with that? I know im not.
If I had the technical knowledge to know that it isn’t exactly true then yes I would happy. This blowback is a result of ignorance. You can’t look at two numbers and make assumptions based solely on that. There is a reason that the their is 3.5 gigs of vram and .5 gigs of system ram. It works better that way.
Managed to get the 20% refund myself on Amazon with no trouble.
“PC master race people swear fealty to them because they ONLY sell PC components”
Well first off they don’t “ONLY sell PC parts” (good job doing your homework), they have other things on there too like other Electronics and appliances believe it or not.
And secondly, I’m a PC gamer and I don’t buy things exclusively off of Newegg all too often anymore now a days. Their Customer Service is godawful and their shipping is generally slow/overpriced. You can find all the same PC parts on Amazon for usually cheaper and their customer service is phenomenal compared to Newegg (and most other online vendors). Also if you’ve got Amazon prime you’re hooked up with free two-day shipping! Can’t beat that
Cool story bro.