nForce2 6-way Motherboard Roundup - December 2002

MSI K7N2-L: Tech Support and RMA

For your reference, we will repost our tech support evaluation procedure here:

The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We then give the manufacturer up to 72 hours to respond over business days and will report not only whether they even responded within the time allotted but also if they were successful in fixing our problems. If we do eventually receive a response after the review is published, we will go back and amend the review with the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.

MSI's RMA process is actually non-existent for end users, and is a follows:

Their policy is pretty straight forward, and hasn't changed since the last time we reviewed a MSI board. As you can clearly see from reading their RMA policy, end users must contact the vendor from which they purchased their MSI motherboard from (like Newegg or Mwave for example) if they want an RMA. MSI does not directly take RMA's according to their web site. The remaining info above only applies to resellers.

MSI's tech support wasn't as responsive this time around unfortunately. We were unable to receive a reply within the 72 hour timeframe we designated. This isn't terribly surprising for two reasons:

MSI still offers a very clear and informative amount of technical support information however. If you go to MSI's U.S. page on technical support you'll find contact information for the Sales, Marketing, and Technical Support departments as well as three different regional offices you can contact during the week if you have any questions about MSI products in general. There are even "Direction and Map" links that offer a way for the user to visit MSI's Regional offices.

MSI is also able to provide tech support and information to many different countries, continents and languages. Some of these countries and continents include Australia, Brazil, China, Czech, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Taiwan, and the USA among others.

As is still the case, MSI's RMA policy is clearly disappointing, especially compared to second tier motherboard makers. Sadly, this is the case with most tier one motherboard makers. MSI's tech support performance was also equally disappointing this time. A redeeming quality though was MSI's sales, marketing and contact information that are clearly illustrated on their web site.