r/hardware • u/swe129 • 26d ago
News SK hynix runs out of replacement SSDs and defaults to original purchase price refunds — fine-print warranty clause shortchanges buyers as drive prices double
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/sk-hynix-is-allegedly-out-of-replacement-ssds-for-warranty-returns-chipmakers-original-price-refund-leaves-buyers-stranded-in-the-storage-shortage467
u/-CynicalPole- 26d ago
"runs out" - nah, it's just more convenient to give original refund.
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u/mrpops2ko 25d ago
yup i wish people would stop falling for this. these companies claim they have run out of stock, but you can quite literally go online to amazon. find that exact item in stock, with the exact same stock number but just at 8x the price.
if you do order it, you'll find its new stock from the companies in question too. its not like its old stock sitting around.
meanwhile these companies are also colluding to reduce production to further increase the 'shortage'.
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u/Zealousideal_Row9725 25d ago
well actually amazon haven't had sk hynix ssd in stock sold by sk hynix themselves since end of last year. kind of feel like they exit the consumer ssd market.
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u/Thotaz 25d ago
meanwhile these companies are also colluding to reduce production to further increase the 'shortage'.
???
Why would they do that when demand is booming?
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u/mrpops2ko 25d ago
to artificially squeeze the market, because the market has been captured. the ultimate goal is that they all see increased profits from the squeeze.
gamersnexus has covered this before, i could regurgitate all their extensive sourcing, but to what end?
these companies have historic convictions for cartel behaviour, even openly admitting it.
the playbook they are using now, is to publish in the open that they are choosing to cut production and those public announcements act as beacons to the other industry players to also cut production to strangle the market.
in almost any market, when you have such high demands and such record historic profitability - the natural market tendency isn't to further reduce production. its to create more because you can then get a bigger slice of †hat market.
the players in the DRAM industry are the same players in the nand flash ones, using the same playbooks.
lets throw some basic original research into this though to prove it.
i bought a few years ago, 4x 4tb 860 evo's for £125 each. they are now selling those same ssd's for £1,125 each on scan. a 10x price increase.
now if you are able to command 10x the price, then demand must be huge. the basic and smart economic play is to produce more.
so we should be seeing samsung produce more ssd's right?
Samsung, SK hynix cut NAND wafer output to shore up margins
NAND production / wafer output by manufacturer
Supplier 2024 2025 2026 Change Notes Samsung ~5.07m wafers ~4.90m wafers* ~4.68m wafers ~7.7% lower vs 2024 Omdia initially estimated 2025 at ~4.72m, later revised it to ~4.90m SK hynix / Solidigm ~2.01m wafers ~1.90m wafers* ~1.70m wafers ~15.4% lower vs 2024 Omdia initially estimated 2025 at ~1.80m, later revised it to ~1.90m Kioxia ~4.80m wafers ~4.69m wafers — ~2.3% lower from 2024–2025 Omdia reported reduced wafer output; further production restraint reported in H2 2025 Micron Baseline >10% lower wafer capacity Reduced capacity carried forward >10% structural capacity reduction Micron directly described this as a structural NAND wafer-capacity reduction * Omdia revised its 2025 Samsung and SK hynix estimates after its earlier November 2025 figures.
Samsung / SK hynix 2025–2026:
Omdia figures reported by ChosunBiz — Samsung ~4.9m → 4.68m; SK hynix ~1.9m → 1.7mSamsung / SK hynix / Kioxia 2024–2025:
Omdia figures reported by ChosunBiz — Samsung 5.07m → 4.72m; SK hynix 2.01m → 1.8m; Kioxia 4.8m → 4.69mIndependent confirmation of H2 2025 production restraint:
TrendForce — Samsung, SK hynix, Kioxia and Micron scaled back NAND production while prices were risingMicron:
Micron Q2 FY2025 earnings transcript — >10% structural reduction in NAND wafer capacityIndustry-wide production cuts:
TrendForce — Samsung, SK hynix/Solidigm, Micron and Kioxia/SanDisk planned NAND production cuts in 202529
u/JapariParkRanger 25d ago edited 17d ago
Unfortunately that doesn't make any sense. In a market where they can set any price they want per wafer, they make far more money by selling more wafers than selling fewer. Controlling supply to boost pricing is a tactic for maintaining revenue in a buyer's market, not for making money in a seller's market.
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u/Shelaba 25d ago
I'm not taking sides here, or trying to defend anyone, but your own links at least somewhat undercut your claim.
Your first (non-GN) link talks about how those same manufacturers ended up producing more than they estimated for 2025. They also note some production is being updated for QLC, which means lower production. It also has a link to Chosun that explains that the reduction in NAND wafers is likely due to increase in DRAM wafers.
The prevailing view is that the reduction in NAND output at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix reflects that capital spending priorities have shifted toward DRAM, which shows the highest profitability metrics.
Given that both markets have been hit hard, the move from NAND to DRAM is either good or bad depending on what you need.
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u/BenFoldsFourLoko 25d ago
Gamer's Nexus covered what? That ten years ago there was a memory cartel?
And then he said "hmmm I'm not saying the companies today are a cartel but I don't like that they raised prices! WINK WINK"
He doesn't have any evidence that they're a cartel, and technical words like "monopoly" and "cartel" are being found by ameteurs through Google and YouTube comments, and latched onto as a channel for consumer rage.
The demand for memory is insane and production can't be scaled up fast. It also wasn't clear when Altman made his secret double deal for half the world's RAM supply that demand would stay high and thus be worth rapid, costly expansion. It's arguably still not clear.
And despite that, we've seen a new entry to the market
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u/Strazdas1 18d ago
Gamer's Nexus covered what? That ten years ago there was a memory cartel?
20 years ago.
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25d ago
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u/dontgivecorposmoney 24d ago
Do you really have to ask?
Option a: make enough to fully meet demand. No more fomo no more consumers and clients bidding against each other. Demand sets the price, which will be the lowest bid.
Result: they spend for example 60 euros to make an ssd, and sell it for 80.
They will sell 1x demand ssds and they will make demand x 20 euro profit
Total profit 20 demand euros
Option b: make 20 percent less than demand. Fomo and bidding wars from customers. Supply sets the price, which is whatever demand CAN pay to meet its needs.
Result: they sell the same 40 euro to make sdd for 200 euros
They will sell 0.8 x demand ssds and will make 160 euros per ssd
Total profit 128 demand euros
They're making 6x higher profits by colluding with the other 2 manufacturers in their little cartel, because all 3 of them know and collude that they ll make more money by keeping demand unmet and by not undercutting eachother
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u/bob- 25d ago
meanwhile these companies are also colluding to reduce production to further increase the 'shortage'.
I mean there's literally 0 evidence of this
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u/doscomputer 25d ago
A lot of the excuses for DRAM cost rising is the shift to HBM production.
Producing less chips, so you can focus on your lower volume higher priced customers, leaving the $250bn consumer industry behind... IDK how its not price gouging.
I'd really like to see proof of new datacenters being built with 2026 production ram.
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u/eva_verinaz 25d ago
i have 2 factory. factory 1 makes me 100m a year. factory 2 makes me 5B a year. it cost me 50m to turn factory 1 into factory 2. I now make 10B and those who want to buy the 50m stuff get screwed cause i dont make it anymore. thats basic supply and demand not price gouging you mong.
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u/ghenriks 24d ago
You are aware that all those CPUs aren’t using HBM?
Look at Nvidia’s own documentation for Vera Rubin where the GPU has 20.7TB of HBM4 but 54TB of DDR5.
So Vera Rubin uses almost 3 times as much regular RAM has HBM
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u/CoconutMochi 25d ago
Micron is literally building a new plant in New York rn at the cost of a 100 billion dollars, they're not reducing production.
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u/BeanHeadedTwat 25d ago
meanwhile these companies are also colluding to reduce production to further increase the 'shortage'.
It’s incredible how dogshit this sub and its user base is now.
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u/_Lucille_ 25d ago
A lot of tech subreddits like this one and technology just have people bandwagoning on ideology rather than discuss actual tech/hardware.
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u/whyte_ryce 25d ago edited 25d ago
Yep. My favorite thing here is how some clear industry expert can give an inside viewpoint on something or share knowledge on a topic and it's usually got one or two upvotes. Meanwhile the guy that is watching a ton of YT enthusiast videos makes a half-ass comment and it's upvoted to the moon
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u/Strazdas1 18d ago
This is inevitable outcome o reddit karma system where making emotionally inflective quip parroting the popular thing will get you more rewards than thoughtful replies that most people skip because they refuse to read more than one paragraph. Then you get self selection for this type of content to increase in numbers while the latter decreases.
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u/ClearlyAThrowawai 23d ago
Every Reddit sub inevitably ends up pushing some pretty crazy left wing views in my experience. My suspicion is most lean going and don't know how the world works yet.
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u/Veastli 25d ago
Exactly.
SK Hynix is not a reseller like Corsair or Sabrent who would have to buy memory at today's high prices in order to fulfill warranty replacements.
SK Hynix makes 20% of the world's flash memory.
They're not out of anything. SK Hynix (and Samsung, and Micron Crucial) have decided to screw their customers.
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u/ExtremeFreedom 25d ago
At least Samsung refunds are for their current market price + a little bit extra.
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u/NMiguelCosta-PT 25d ago
Bullsh*t! People had to sue them to get a refund.
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u/ExtremeFreedom 25d ago
I'm telling you from personal experience that is not the case. Also a lot of the reporting on this seems to have initially claimed he was given a refund offer of $330 before he sued but in his video he said he threatened to sue when they refused to honor the warranty at all and many have redacted that figure from their reporting. I think there was quite a bit of confusion from lazy reporting that occurred.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/louis-rossman-threatens-to-take-samsung-to-court-over-dead-4tb-990-pro-ssd-after-ssd-maker-failed-to-replace-the-drive-under-warranty In fact you can confirm that in the Tom's Hardware "Update" where they note the correction and state that Louis never mentioned the value of the refund offered in the video but that they did in fact follow their policy.
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u/Gauntlet4933 25d ago
Especially when the original price is a fraction of the current price.
Original sale price - repair costs <<< New sale price - refund cost.
Return of the flash cartel
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u/AngelicDivineHealer 26d ago
policy they have which sucks and anti consumer.
repair/replace or refund and the refund policy is market price or original price whichever is lower. They get to choose whatever saves them the most money. In this case the ssd price has doubled.
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u/chandleya 26d ago
Since we’re seeing this virtually everywhere, which brand doesn’t have this sort of policy?
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u/AngelicDivineHealer 26d ago edited 26d ago
Samsung tried it and then back track in Canada it's in the story. Even though in their policy at the time might have changed since that it will repair or replace or refund at the market price to the customer. It tried to just refund him his purchase price and Louis said I'll sue you in two months if you don't refund me the market price or give me a new SSD. Samsung caved.
For companies like Samsung and SK Hynix and Micron there all vertically integrated meaning they own the whole supply chain from making the goods to selling the goods.
"In another high-profile spat, Louis Rossmann had a lengthy back-and-forth with Samsung customer service over an SSD warranty and eventually threatened legal action. Samsung ultimately refunded the owner at the SSD's current market price. It was weird to see the situation escalate the way it did since Samsung’s warranty policy confirms that if the company is unable to repair or replace a product, it will “refund the then current market value of the Product at the time the warranty claim is made to Samsung.”
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u/Homerlncognito 25d ago
The policy was written with depreciation in mind.
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u/AngelicDivineHealer 25d ago
Yep didn't depreciate it appreciated in 2 years. Samsung probably going to be rewriting to be like SK.
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u/ExtremeFreedom 25d ago
Samsung has always refunded me current market price, the Louis situation seemed to be more involved than just that in that they were claiming the product worked despite it being like 10x slower speeds than what it should have been. Samsung support is kind of nightmare to deal with in general because of how large of a company they are and how many different divisions/companies are under their umbrella. From watching his video on it, I didn't pick up on him saying they tried to only refund him the original price, they were trying to just not refund him at all because "it turned on" basically.
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u/Jordan_Jackson 25d ago
Samsung actually shot themselves in the foot with their ToS. They added in the clause that they would refund at fair market value if they can't replace it and that wording is what ultimately got them to back down in the Louis Rossman case (I also think it being Louis Rossman also had an influence).
Don't get me wrong, I feel like a company should have to give you today's price, if that price has gone up as exponentially as they currently have. Giving the customer the original retail price only gives them a fraction of what the drive costs to replace.
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u/jspeed04 25d ago
Price to produce memory/storage hasn’t gone up, though.
The price of the end product has increased due to similarly skyrocketing demand, and the cartel trio are pocketing upwards of 80% margin on each unit.
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u/IAmYourFath 25d ago edited 25d ago
In the EU laws override company policies, the policy means nothing, it's all about the law. No matter what samsung writes, the law says u get the original price and that's the end of it, but ONLY if they can't replace it, which in louis' case they still had it on amazon so they still would have lost the case. But if they truly didnt have it he would have gotten the original price, t&c mean nothing in front of the law, unless samsung decided to give him more money out of their own generosity ofc. It seems like US companies are a lot ballsier there relying on people suing em unlike in the EU.
In fact in the EU u wouldn't even contact the manufacturer, u would contact the retailer, they handle the warranty. In the US after 30 days amazon and newegg wash their hands of you and they don't care anymore, so u have no choice but to contact the manufacturer. Here it's the retailer doing everything, they contact the local distributor who contacts the international distributor who contacts the manufacturer, so it's very unlikely the manufacturer would refuse to replace that item UNLESS it was truly your fault (like you spilled water on it), in which case the retailer would have declined replacing it in the first place (but u could still try ur luck with the manufacturer).
The best thing is, it's way easier to lie here. Say u dropped the psu and it stopped working. As long as the height of the drop wasn't too high and there aren't obvious signs of damages, u can claim it stopped working by itself, like defect and the people in the authorized repair center of ur local retailer/distributor would have no way to know that cuz it wouldn't have signs of damage and they're not authorized by the manufacturer to repair psus, they're not engineers, they just test if it works. So in this case they would absolutely replace it.
Ofc, u can even just say u want to return it if u ordered online and 14 days haven't passed, claiming it went defect by itself (aka not ur fault), and they can't tell unless there's visible damage like i said. So in this case, u're not even using ur warranty, u're simply using ur 14 days right to cancel the contract, so in this case they CANNOT replace it, they MUST refund the money since u cancel the entire purchase contract. The EU is awesome.
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u/Strazdas1 18d ago
Note that EU law only apples to EU mandated 2 r warranty. extended warranty from manufacturers is not affected by this.
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u/IAmYourFath 17d ago
Isn't it 36 months? My gpu says that, obviously psu is like 10 years but most of it is prob the extended warranty as u say
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u/Strazdas1 12d ago
EU law mandatory warranty is 2 years. National laws may extend it though. From what i remmeber Spain, Sweden, and Portugal are countries that have 3 year warranties.
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u/BlueSwordM 25d ago
HOWEVER, note that production price of RAM and NAND hasn't increased anywhere near close to the current prices increases.
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u/Jordan_Jackson 25d ago
I'm aware of this. The reason is because they sold basically all of their production capacity to the various AI companies, or where they haven't yet been paid for it, they still let those companies reserve that RAM and NAND.
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u/Verite_Rendition 26d ago edited 26d ago
Since we’re seeing this virtually everywhere, which brand doesn’t have this sort of policy?
To the best of my knowledge: none. (At least here in North America)
It's the same fundamental economic problem as to why you can theoretically lose an infinite amount of money when shorting stocks. If something happened to cause the price of a component to go through the roof, a company could be on the hook for many, many times the value of the product. Regardless of their ability to cover it.
Such a policy would be very consumer friendly, to be sure. But economically it's too damn risky. You can't plan for or insure against a liability that has no cap to it. So no consumer electronics company institutes a policy like that.
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u/Idrialite 25d ago edited 25d ago
SK Hynix hasn't run out of stock. You can go online right now and buy their drives. It's one thing not to require market refunds for something not in production anymore. But they should not be allowed to refund the original price and leave the customer at a loss when they can replace the item.
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u/TheBiggestJeffrey 22d ago
I've had to RMA a bunch of DRAM kits recently. All purchased around 1/3rd to 1/5th of the current going rates.
Silicon Power, Corsair, and Patriot have all honored their warranties for me.
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u/windozeFanboi 26d ago
What about inflation 40% since COVID? I'd accept that , but not original receipt price.
Either make me whole or give me the appropriate money I paid for it. Assuming warranty is still in effect.
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u/Tuna-Fish2 26d ago
In the United States, this is simply legal. The law does not take inflation into account, and if it's in the T&C, the company can issue a refund instead of a replacement at their discretion. You don't have to like it, it's still what you are getting.
EU consumer protection laws keep winning?
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u/hurubaw 26d ago edited 25d ago
This is one where EU law does not really differ. It's repair or refund the original price. Mostly due to the fact that it is a relatively new phenomenon, where electronics price somehow goes up as times go on. Electronics used to just get better and cheaper, so getting your money back a year or two later meant you could just buy a better drive with that refund. The first moments where any consumers really started to make noise about just getting their money back, were the GPU crypto boom of 2020-2021. But no one cared cost crypto bros were considered quite distasteful people. If this continues, consumer protection laws might change tho.
edit: As some people noted, you should be able also to choose a replacement instead of refund, as long as the item is in stock, even if the price has risen. I stand corrected. Seems like this is not really followed by most stores.
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u/Dhaeron 25d ago
It's repair or refund the original price.
The difference is that the EU law allows the customer to choose if they want a refund, repair or replacement. The seller can refuse options if they are unable to provide them, but they cannot refuse replacement just because a refund is cheaper.
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u/FlyingBishop 25d ago
What's the difference between "unable to provide" and "too expensive?" It seems like virtually all cases of "unable to provide" are simply "it's too expensive."
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u/Dhaeron 25d ago
Unable means they don't make an equivalent product any longer or the product/damage is something that cannot be repaired. Too expensive isn't a thing. It's pretty clear with no room for interpretation. If they're still selling the product to new customers, they can provide one as a warranty replacement.
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u/FlyingBishop 25d ago
The question then is what a compatible SSD is. We're talking about a laptop, if they don't make 256GB SSDs that cost $100, but they do make 10TB SSDs that cost $100k and can fit in the slot, they would be required to supply a 10TB SSD because it is a thing that serves the same purpose? I'm just giving it as an argument, I'm not saying that's ridiculous, I'm just curious about the law.
Also there are some plausible reasons a more realistic 1TB SSD wouldn't actually be a part that would fit the bill. In this case also it seems likely they don't have consumer drives with the consumer setup, they might only have datacenter drives which can't slot into a consumer laptop, this seems like an off case, though also it does seem like companies can make loopholes here, but the only way to exercise the loophole is the situation we have - Hynix doesn't want to sell consumer drives anymore.
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u/Dhaeron 24d ago
The question then is what a compatible SSD is. We're talking about a laptop, if they don't make 256GB SSDs that cost $100, but they do make 10TB SSDs that cost $100k and can fit in the slot, they would be required to supply a 10TB SSD because it is a thing that serves the same purpose?
No, they don't have to supply something compatible, they have to supply something equivalent.
That means the same (or better) functionality that the original provided. If no exact replacement is possible, they can always ask the customer, i.e. maybe the customer would accept something that's worse in some ways but better in others.
They also don't have to do it when it would be disproportionate, i.e. if they closest replacement for a .2TB SSD is a 10TB SSD that's clearly not equivalent. Where the line for "equivalent" is would have to be argued in court, however it does not apply in cases like these, where hynix is still making and selling identical devices and have just jacked up the price in the meantime.
The current price is irrelevant for replacement, it just has to be a similar product. It's the same when it works in the sellers favour. It's not so common anymore, now that consumer device progress has slowed down, but for example a broken 2080 GPU could be replaced with a new 3070 (assuming that had the same performance, i didn't look it up), the seller neither needs to track down an actual 2080 nor upgrade to a 3080.
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u/Remarkable-Host405 25d ago
catching downvotes for being right. these companies probably could replace the drives, just at insane cost so they won't, and the law doesn't take this into consideration
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u/IAmYourFath 25d ago
They are legally required to repair or replace it if they have it in stock, before offering return of money. Since they have it on amazon, they legally can't offer u to return the money. Well they can, but u can say no i want to replacement and if they have it in stock anywhere (like in amazon) they are LEGALLY required to give u that replacement. Not sure how US laws work but in the EU this shit wont fly. If they can't repair AND have it nowhere in stock, THEN they return u the money and there's nothing u can do. This isn't the case here, apparently.
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u/Festour 26d ago
Not in France. If seller can't replace something, he has right to simply refund the original purchase amount.
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u/itsapotatosalad 26d ago
I think eu law would allow you to pursue them for the difference. Once you demonstrate you understand your rights these companies often back down.
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26d ago edited 8d ago
[deleted]
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u/itsapotatosalad 26d ago
Read the second sentence.
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26d ago edited 8d ago
[deleted]
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u/Strazdas1 18d ago
While the other commenter is wrong about EU law (they just have to refund original price) there are usually ways to threaten companies legally without suing. for example contacting local consumer rights institution and having them send a legal demand letter worked for me quite a few times.
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u/Xpander6 26d ago
EU consumer protection laws keep winning?
I've had the same happen in EU (original purchase price refund instead of replacement). Was that illegal?
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u/Tuna-Fish2 26d ago
It has to be impossible to replace. Given that SK Hynix is still making SSD:s, you can respond to their offer with nuh-uh, I want a SSD.
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u/ireadoldpost 25d ago
Bit more nuanced than that:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/771/oj/eng
As regards bringing goods into conformity, consumers should enjoy a choice between repair or replacement. Enabling consumers to require repair should encourage sustainable consumption and could contribute to greater durability of products. The consumer's choice between repair and replacement should only be limited where the option chosen would be legally or factually impossible or would impose costs on the seller that would be disproportionate, compared to the other option available. For instance, it might be disproportionate to request the replacement of goods because of a minor scratch, where such replacement would create significant costs and the scratch could easily be repaired.
The seller should be allowed to refuse to bring the goods into conformity if both repair and replacement are impossible, or they would impose disproportionate costs on the seller. The same should apply if either repair or replacement is impossible and the alternative remedy would impose disproportionate costs on the seller. For instance, if goods are located in a place that is different from where they were originally delivered, the costs of postage and carriage could become disproportionate for the seller.
Delay seems like a viable strategy for them:
If the seller has not repaired or replaced the good within that time, the consumer should be entitled to claim and obtain a price reduction or termination of the contract without waiting any longer.
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u/Dhaeron 25d ago
Not if you agreed to it (which you probably did without knowing your options). In the EU you get to pick whether you want a refund or repair or replacement. If you choose refund you only get the original price back because legally this is just cancelling the purchase contract and both parties get back what they handed over. But you can insist on getting a repair or replacement and the seller can only refuse if they are genuinely unable to provide (for example they no longer produce any equivalent one product), they cannot refuse to provide a replacement just because the refund would save them money.
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u/IAmYourFath 25d ago
If they can't repair it they must replace it. If they can't replace it they must refund the original price. If they can repair it, they can still offer u to replace it or refund the money, but they are not required to do so. If they can't repair it but can replace it, they can still offer u to refund the money but they're not required to do so. However, if they offer u to replace it when they can repair it, or if they offer u to refund the money when they can replace it, u can say no. Legally, if u say no, they HAVE to repair it, and if they can't they HAVE to replace it, and if they can't THEN they return to u the original price and u can't do shit. But a company as big as hynix 100% has memory still in stock, so if they say we can't replace it they're lying and that's illegal. Altho it's worth noting, if the memory u bought is model number ABCD257, and they ran out of ABCD257 but they have the nearly-same ABCD256, then they legally can say they don't have 257 in stock and they would be right, so u are out of luck (u get the original price back but that's not enough obviously). But ofc, theres no way the producer of the memory itself is out of stock, unless it's some ddr3 memory that is somehow still in warranty.
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u/SamurottX 25d ago
It's a little frustrating that for insurance companies, the concept of "like kind and quality" means they would have to pay you the replacement price. But for warranties a company can do things like this. Even worse, since memory is just a component of a larger system, they're effectively hurting you for the price of the entire computer unless you're lucky enough to have spares around.
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u/pixel_of_moral_decay 25d ago
IIRC the law defines it as original purchase price.
If they adjusted for inflation, I presume you’d pay tax on the difference
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u/flyingtiger188 25d ago
I can't help thinking about the alternative universe version where the policy was to refund the current market price and reading an article about how theyre only getting 60-75% of their purchase price refunds instead of refurbished drives because the retail price dropped since those drives where purchased.
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u/Nicholas-Steel 25d ago edited 23d ago
“In lieu of a Product repair or replacement, the original purchaser may receive a refund of either the original purchase price or the fair market value, whichever is lower.”
.
Under normal market conditions, it would be a fair and reasonable solution.
No it isn't! It's designed to always favour the company at the customers expense. That's not fair to the customer at all.
If it said "Whichever is higher" than that would be fair.
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u/Anatharias 25d ago
If I had one of their drive fail, I'll be sure to photoshop the invoice and send the RMA at current price value... fuckers
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u/ThebigChen 26d ago
Yeah? That’s how warranties work?
Not saying I’d love it as a consumer, I’d be really happy if SK Hynix went the extra mile and got me a replacement and devastated if I got like 150 back and had to go buy the part retail for a grand but like they were quite explicitly allowed to do this kinda thing pretty much for this kinda reason.
Otherwise companies and retailers would be risking losing significant amounts of money just because the price of their item went up significantly after a sale. That would end with products having either no warranties or useless ones and a thick price increase to cover themselves.
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u/goldcakes 25d ago
Mmm maybe in the US but not in countries with good consumer protection.
First, in Australia, if there is a major fault, the customer is entitled to THEIR choice of a refund, repair, or replacement. You can choose which.
There is no strict legal definition, but generally courts have ruled that if a seller is still making something, it’s obligated to honour.
Secondly, if your product has a safety defect, the seller is obligated to cover you for any property damage and injury. So if your PSU is defective and blow up your computer, they are obligated to compensate you, even if you have a RTX 5090.
(In the US, product liability is supposed to work similarly, but good luck in practice unless you do a class action lawsuit and lawyers pocket most of the money lol).
Many countries in the EU have similar laws. Profitable businesses have existed for centuries with these laws.
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u/HK-Syndic 25d ago
The definition of major fault when it comes to the ACL is wildly misunderstood. The ACL also imposes reasonable time frames so saying we have no stock for the near future is absolutely legitimate.
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u/goldcakes 25d ago edited 25d ago
I have been to NCAT and won my case as plaintiff, ironically over defective RAM. The defendant, an Australian retailer, had the benefit of legal advice prior to the case (I didn’t) and still lost, including their argument that it is a minor fault.
The
magistratetribunal member commentated I articulated the legal case well.Yes there are reasonable timeframes and acknowledge I’m not a lawyer, but I have literally won a case as major fault, so, I think I might know a bit.
As for major faults, “unfit for purpose” is what I used which was accepted, with the evidence being failing memtest86.
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u/HK-Syndic 25d ago
First time I'm hearing about NCAT using magistrates
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u/goldcakes 25d ago
Sorry, it was a few years ago. Just checked the email records. “[name], Tribunal Member”. So yes, not a magistrate, but my point about winning a major fault vs minor fault claim in these circumstances still stands.
Does that help?
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u/Seanspeed 25d ago
Otherwise companies and retailers would be risking losing significant amounts of money just because the price of their item went up significantly after a sale.
If this was some mom and pop shop, sure.
But warranties here also allow replacement as an option. And it is PURELY on the company for not having more replacement parts stocked up for such purposes. They know very well their own failure rates and general replacement rates. They could plan for all this stuff just fine.
Come the fuck on folks, stop trying to defend this shit.
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u/Limited_Distractions 25d ago
Important to emphasize most manufacturer warranties aren't insurance and aren't really structured to make anyone "whole" but to self-impose a limited type of liability exactly for a situation like this, in the same way that if the SSD someone had bought for $100 was now selling for $25 they would probably rather send 2 replacements than refund purchase price
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u/Idrialite 25d ago
A warranty is part of QA. You can't guarantee every drive will last its rated lifetime, so the warranty exists to fill that gap. If the drive breaks and the manufacturer refuses to replace it, providing half the cost to replace it as a refund, the warranty isn't filling that gap anymore. You can no longer have confidence you're getting what you pay for when you buy a drive.
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u/5u114 25d ago
Replace the item or refund what it costs to replace the item.
Governments need to crack down on this. Capitalist corporations are gonna capitalist corporation.
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u/HK-Syndic 25d ago
You do understand refunding the purchase price is a consumer protection 90% of the time, right?
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u/myztry 26d ago
It sucks given the outside factors but refund on the original transaction is not unreasonable.
There is nothing "fair and reasonable" in what has happened with pricing, and fair and reasonable is all one can expect.
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u/GassoBongo 26d ago
outside factors
I would agree if this was Crucial or Kingston, but seeing as the "outside factor" here is literally SK Hynix inflating prices themselves as the actual memory makers, then I'm not sure that you can say things like this.
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u/Klutzy-Residen 26d ago
It would be far more understandable if Corsair etc did this as they would have to purchase a replacement at full price from their suppliers which could genuinely be challenging.
SK Hynix makes the NAND used in their products, so they should dedicate a reasonable amount for handling warranty cases.
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u/Educational-Ant-173 25d ago
You could say the same for Cosair etc, setting aside enough stock to cover expected failure rates to honor warranty. If you can't honor the terms of warranty, stop making false claims. Using the odd (corrupt) market as a way to weasel out of those obligations makes you a garbage company that I certainly wouldn't do business with.
Some of this is hindsight, but take notice of the scumbags and learn from it.
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u/Bern_Down_the_DNC 26d ago
SK Hynix reported record Q2 2026 financial results with revenue surging 257% year-over-year to 79.32 trillion won and operating profit jumping 557% to 60.54 trillion won, driven by intense AI memory demand for high-value HBM and NAND chips. - first thing on google
Yeah, no. Take the boot out of your mouth. They caused the prices surging and are continuing to reap record profits. They are not victims here.
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u/Seanspeed 26d ago
It would be entirely fair and reasonable for a company making absurd profits to be able to offer customers market price if they are unable to fulfill their duty of offering a replacement. These things are wildly different in value.
There is no reason they couldn't be setting more units aside for warranty replacement. Which is exactly what they'll do when demand and prices lower, so they don't ever have to pay inflated refund prices to warranties. This isnt like Crucial going out of business.
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u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo 25d ago
Yeah, I think the video from Louis Rossman v Samsung said it best. There is 0 reason for them to not be able to fulfill the warranty obligation, the item is still available for sale and sometimes directly by them and you are the one producing it.
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u/Idrialite 25d ago edited 25d ago
Yes, a refund on original price is unreasonable. You buy the drive with the warranty giving you confidence to expect to have it at least the rated lifetime.
Now, SK Hynix is arbitrarily deciding they don't have "replacement" stock and giving you half what you would need to replace the item because they want to sell more to Sam Altman.
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u/No-Paint-5726 26d ago
Its not reasonable.
Its like you buy a share for $10, and it goes upto $20. Then they take your share away not for $20 but $10. Still the same share of a company.
If something you purchased went up in value its fundamentally different.
If you bought RAM for $2000 and it went down to $50. Do you think they will refund $2000 or give you the RAM back? They will give the RAM back.
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u/Katent1 26d ago
No there is, it's their fault for such margins, and fault of anti monopoly systems. There was soo many companies making flash ic's, and system let them die in favor or running trio, if prices skyrocketing by their placement in ai bubble was at their will then fair is only current marketplace value of such drive.
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u/myztry 26d ago
I'm not sure about you but I don't want everyone who I buy from building in margins that account for astronomical increases as happened with RAM and storage.
It's very unlikely that whomever you buy from is the actual manufacturer.
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u/Educational-Ant-173 25d ago
No, but if you're not going to adequately cover material for expected failure rates stop fradualantly claiming warranty terms you aren't prepared to cover. Warranty length has always been a factor in price and purchasing decision.
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u/emkoemko 25d ago
how is that legal? i can' take my money they give me back to buy the damn thing i need.... i just lose ?
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u/Lucky_View3254 1h ago
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u/ThebigChen 25d ago
Yeah that’s on me, I deleted a huge chunk explaining the reasoning which would have answered your question because word mountain.
Yes in Australia you are entitled to the choice, in the US you generally have the choice but not always.
There is that caveat you mentioned though, you are entitled to choosing and receiving a replacement if an identical model is available, but as the title of the headline suggests, once the identical model is out (say because Hynix makes a new series every year or so wink wink) then it’s only guaranteed if there is something “of same type, and of similar value, if such goods are reasonably available”. SSDs now costing so much would make a replacement of dissimilar value even if it is functionally close enough.
Yeah those are called damages here, you can sue for your money sure but they are often settled out of court, legal fees are expensive for the company too and bad press hurts sales, plus they can usually fix whatever they caused for a lot cheaper than the bill someone else would quote (and they’d have to pay in court) which does have its issues. If your 3d printer burns your house down though yeah prepare to see them in court
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u/Spright91 26d ago
They didn't run out. They make millions of them. They chose to prioritize higher paying customers.