After a back and forth regarding RMA policy and shipping charges with a mod / support agent at Buffalo on their forums, I posted this as a reply:
I live in Montreal, Canada and I have to ship it to Texas, USA. I paid $22.50 after tax for the RAM. The cheapest shipping rate I've found to ship a box (as is required by the RMA procedure) will come out to about $15 before tax at my local Purolator. It will cost about $10 before tax to ship it in an envelope, but then it might get rejected by Buffalo for not being "secure shipping container". So, at best, I have to pay 50% of the original cost of the RAM in order to get a new stick, but it's not even my fault the RAM was faulty. It's Buffalo's! Why does more money have to come out of my pocket when the fault lies entirely on Buffalo's side?
I have been building PCs for years now, and I have yet to run into a company that makes consumers pay for the RMA shipping of products that are in warranty. Furthermore, I have told this story to several friends and every single one of them was taken aback by the idea of having to pay for the shipping on an RMA when the device is defective, which is the company's fault. Why would I buy Buffalo RAM when I can spend $5 more and get another company's RAM that at least has a real, completely covered, warranty? The $5 premium is well worth the ease of the RMA process, with it being free and all.
Basically, regardless of whether this RMA process has been working since 1991, the process itself is outdated and not on par with competing companies. Look, by not covering my $20 shipping, Buffalo not only lost me as a customer, but any of my friends that I inform. Unless Buffalo is planning on having enough defective units to make this scheme worth it, its not a good business model for providing customer satisfaction.
Not to mention, deleting my initial post and banning me. Twice.
-Mike
And they responded with this:
For the 3rd time. Stay classy Buffalo.
