Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

dallasreed wrote:http://www.msicomputer.com/msiforms2/stolen.asp

I don't get it though...Woot isn't an auction where a person with a couple boxes full of cards can just sell off his merchandise. And I highly doubt that Woot itself, bieng an established organization, rob an MSI truck.

THIS CARD THAT woot! SOLD US IS STOLEN GOODS. PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT RELEASED BY MSI, MAKER OF THE CARDS.

http://msicomputer.com/msiforms2/stolen.asp

DON'T DELET THIS MESSAGE woot! AS IT IS INFORMING BUYERS OF A VERY IMPORTANT MATTER.

LET IT BE KNOWN THAT I DON'T FEEL woot! WAS AWARE THAT THE VID CARDS WERE STOLEN.

saadc82 wrote:

I don't get it though...Woot isn't an auction where a person with a couple boxes full of cards can just sell off his merchandise. And I highly doubt that Woot itself, bieng an established organization, rob an MSI truck.

Weird...Well, I don't think Woot had anything to do with it either, they just bought it off of someone who was involved directly or indirectly (if the letter is true). It's also weird that they singled out woot.com in that letter, but then it's not that surprising as it was advertised on some major sites and they (woot.com) sold about 3000 of them. That's some major money for people who sold it to Woot (as they got it for free - probably about $300k). Well, if it was stolen, then it's too bad that I didn't pay less for it. sheeesh.

Reading last few pages here, I guess I've been lucky (so far) to have received a great card. No freezes, no problems. Deep freeze passes smoothly, and everything else's been great. I only replaced a HSF for a Zalman's vf-900Cu and the temp is about 40C (idle), while gaming it never goes over 48C, and under major stress, it reaches about 51C. Also, it's an unbelieavable overclocker.

Edit: You would think that you'd hear it somewhere that a big lot of MSI cards is stolen (Retail price of stolen cards would be over $600.000). They were comparing the stolen card and the "cahnnel" card. Differences in color, HSF,... Does that mean that even 7900GS cards in Dell systems, that was released months ago, are also stolen. It's starting not to add up.

I also have had no problems. Deep Freeze on 3DMark06 passes with flying colors. I currently have the card at 584 clock and 752 memory with a 3DMark05 score of 7,950.

Here is a thought...could it be that MSI and woot! are both in on this and it's a bit of a scheme? For instance: MSI had some defective or in some way unsellable cards that they needed to get rid of. Woot has the ability to take these cards and sell all of them in a very quick and somewhat quiet manner. Then the second part of the plan comes in, MSI tells everyone that these cards are stolen so now they nor woot has to honor the warranty. They both get their money and wash their hands of the bad cards at the same time. Is there really a police report? Let's see it then.

This would explain why woot! sold these at such a low price. I mean I know that woot! sells stuff for cheaper than other places but the price on this card was WAY below current retail prices. I guess if you don't have to factor in refunds then you can set your selling price lower than normal and still hit the profit margin.

This is all just a theory of course and I could be way off. I mean if woot! does indeed honor ALL returns and refunds 100% of ALL monies then we know that they were a victim just like us.

SCANDAL!!!

I'd buy that this is an elaborate defect cover up over a massive stolen property auction.

I've read posts of people calling/emailing about the defects found on these OEM cards and MSI turned them down without mention of stolen property, but instead were told that they do not support OEM cards...

Something Extremely Fishy is going on here!!!

Shodin10k wrote:just tried 3dmark06

3767 points

no artifacts on the last test, ill do more benching in alittle bit

I just try my card on my Dell 8400 and received a 3780 score with 3DMark06, no problems once so ever. I have been running COD2 hard on this machine.

They sold 2000 cards and I think about 30 were duds, less than 2%. I also think a few people have "whacked" systems which probably contributed about 0.5% of the 2% failures. This was a great Woot, beats the hell of stupid watches! Thanks Woot - now we need a USB KVM Switch!! Go find one woot. Sold my Nvidia 6800 for $81 on Ebay , great upgrade!

If you ask me, I think MSI is just saying that it's stolen just to have customers off there backs. I've seen what an OEM card looks like in many systems, they don't have any fancy design on the heatsink (maybe the standard design graphic card manufactur's design (in this case, nVidia's)) most of the time.

If you ask me, I think Dell just sold woot a bunch of bad cards that MSI now needs to take care of and because of how many cards that woot sold they were like, "screw that, lets just say that those cards are stolen."

Now, if it was stolen, lets see the police report with the date because if it was stolen they should of reported it LONG before woot had the chance to sell them. And yes, I am saying that it is possible that a shipment of original stock cards that was being shipped from nVidia to MSI could of gotten stolen but if that's the case, a police report should of been reported LONG before woot got there hands on it.

scsa20 wrote:Now, if it was stolen, lets see the police report with the date because if it was stolen they should of reported it LONG before woot had the chance to sell them.

Yep, I said the same thing a few posts above...let's see that police report.

rja12 wrote:

Yep, I said the same thing a few posts above...let's see that police report.

agreed...how would woot be in business still???

dallasreed wrote:http://www.msicomputer.com/msiforms2/stolen.asp

They're using the image from the woot! front page as their example...

Remember that they are in Taiwan. They don't have to file a police report here.

VanMan4311 wrote:Remember that they are in Taiwan. They don't have to file a police report here.

Unless the cards were stolen here. Then they do.

Not sure about the whole stolen issue but as to the issue many seem to be having with their cards failing I have an idea. I didn't buy one of these cards but I did buy one from eVGA recently. I am noticing something different from what the picture of the card and my card. On the card pictured on this WOOT item along the top of the heatsink there are 6 chips that are exposed. On my card (and MSI for that matter) they are covered by the heatsink. I believe these are the memory modules and In my opinion THAT is your problem. The cards work great at first but as they are used and pushed by the new games on the market the memory is not getting sufficient cooling and are beginning to fail. That would cause the textures to not be loaded / accessed properly and could cause the problems you all are talking about. So my suggestion is to RMA ASAP or if you havn't really started to see any problems to go get yourself the CORRECT heatsink to hopefully stop the issue before your card suffers.

Anyway that's my $0.02 I may be wrong but that's just my idea for you all to ponder.

according to fedex woot got my card today. Hopefully They give me my refund and I hope they can work something out to find the thief.

People, people....I didn't get in on this deal but I just wanted to point out that when companies say something is stolen, it doesn't neccessarily mean someone hijacked a truck at gunpoint.

A *much* more likely scenario is that MSI made a batch of cards for an OEM partner to use, but that partner might not have been legit, and basically took the cards and bailed. Or that partner went bankrupt and MSI was supposed to get their cards back, but someone liquidating the company sold them off to a third party even though MSI might rightly have ownership of the cards, etc. There's a bazillion ways in which these cards may qualify as "stolen" somehow.

Remember how the guy who ran APEX was buying DVD players from factories in China then never actually paying for them-which is why he ended up being arrested. That's a type of theft too.

My point is that nobody should get too paranoid thinking that woot went and hijacked a truck of MSI cards, lol. They probably bought the cards from someone who was liquidating them, and whatever company these cards were originally made for probably never paid MSI so MSI is labeling these as stolen cards.

Anyways I guess the sad thing is no warranties for anyone.

Tekdemon wrote:A *much* more likely scenario is that MSI made a batch of cards for an OEM partner to use, but that partner might not have been legit, and basically took the cards and bailed. Or that partner went bankrupt and MSI was supposed to get their cards back, but someone liquidating the company sold them off to a third party even though MSI might rightly have ownership of the cards, etc. There's a bazillion ways in which these cards may qualify as "stolen" somehow.

Remember how the guy who ran APEX was buying DVD players from factories in China then never actually paying for them-which is why he ended up being arrested. That's a type of theft too.

My point is that nobody should get too paranoid thinking that woot went and hijacked a truck of MSI cards, lol. They probably bought the cards from someone who was liquidating them, and whatever company these cards were originally made for probably never paid MSI so MSI is labeling these as stolen cards.

That's true but my post was just saying something like as a scenario. You could think once you find out that you were ripped off that you could file a police report (which would still be filed long before woot.com got there hands on them unless the guy worked really fast).

And, honestly, I don't care as long as I get my refund (FedEx tracking showed mine was delivered to woot.com on Monday).

scsa20 wrote:If you ask me, I think MSI is just saying that it's stolen just to have customers off there backs. I've seen what an OEM card looks like in many systems, they don't have any fancy design on the heatsink (maybe the standard design graphic card manufactur's design (in this case, nVidia's)) most of the time.

If you ask me, I think Dell just sold woot a bunch of bad cards that MSI now needs to take care of and because of how many cards that woot sold they were like, "screw that, lets just say that those cards are stolen."

Now, if it was stolen, lets see the police report with the date because if it was stolen they should of reported it LONG before woot had the chance to sell them. And yes, I am saying that it is possible that a shipment of original stock cards that was being shipped from nVidia to MSI could of gotten stolen but if that's the case, a police report should of been reported LONG before woot got there hands on it.

Exactly - sounds to me like MSI is trying to pass the buck. This card is IDENTICAL to the one that came in my Dell XPS system. So I guess Dell stole them too, and I guess MSI will be sending the police to Michael Dell's house soon to arrest him for selling stolen goods.

Also of note, they obviously haven't filed a police report or done any research on Woot since they say (in perfect Engrish) something like "some person are selling stoled VGA cards on woot auction" Really? The Woot auction huh? And VGA? It doesnt have a VGA output on it - it has dual DVI. And they just found out? A month after Woot sold them? How bad are your controls if someone "steals" thousands of cards worth $200 each and it takes you over a month to figure it out. Sounds to me like MSI is grossly incompetent and either someone there is desperately trying to cover their a** after selling these or they are making up an excuse to try to keep from covering the warranty.

okay, for the people that still have the card

i ran a loop of 3dmark06 for 12 hours straight

still no problems, so far

This is absolutely ridiculous. woot! should take MSI to court. That is outright slander. They didn't even get their facts straight about what kind of site woot! is. You'd think if there *cough* actually were stolen cards being sold by woot, they'd at least bother to check woot's website...

This marks the end of me buying ANYTHING made by MSI. As far as business practices go, this is like rolling in the mud.

KiTchMe wrote:

Weird...Well, I don't think Woot had anything to do with it either, they just bought it off of someone who was involved directly or indirectly (if the letter is true). It's also weird that they singled out woot.com in that letter, but then it's not that surprising as it was advertised on some major sites and they (woot.com) sold about 3000 of them. That's some major money for people who sold it to Woot (as they got it for free - probably about $300k). Well, if it was stolen, then it's too bad that I didn't pay less for it. sheeesh.

Reading last few pages here, I guess I've been lucky (so far) to have received a great card. No freezes, no problems. Deep freeze passes smoothly, and everything else's been great. I only replaced a HSF for a Zalman's vf-900Cu and the temp is about 40C (idle), while gaming it never goes over 48C, and under major stress, it reaches about 51C. Also, it's an unbelieavable overclocker.

Edit: You would think that you'd hear it somewhere that a big lot of MSI cards is stolen (Retail price of stolen cards would be over $600.000). They were comparing the stolen card and the "cahnnel" card. Differences in color, HSF,... Does that mean that even 7900GS cards in Dell systems, that was released months ago, are also stolen. It's starting not to add up.

i totally agree.that link just said that the card pictured was stolen,does that mean ALL OF THEM WERE STOLEN.they should have found that out been.or they should fix the letter up and say a batch was stolen

Shodin10k wrote:okay, for the people that still have the card

i ran a loop of 3dmark06 for 12 hours straight

still no problems, so far

If only my card is your card.

It's hard to believe that Woot would risk to 'Launch' the stolen product so openly. I truly believe that MSI prematurely released some half-baked information about stolen cards 'auctioned' (wtf) by Woot, and I hope they pay the price for it. I'm sticking with Woot all the way, and after all, I'm very pleased with the purchase (fortunately no problems with the card like some described). I don't really care what happened with those cards before coming to Woot. Woot is giving us 90-day warranty on those, and I'm sure thay will fulfill all RMAs until warranty expiration. Considering the number of those cards sold, it's bound that a small percent of cards have problems. Woot!

I now know who shot JFK, it was Woot - actually this was a great Woot! My Card is still working like a charm and I do not think it was stolen nor do I accept any of the conspiracy theories that have been posted.

A small percentage of folks got stuck with bad cards. The rest of us have ones that work and probably will until the next upgrade time rolls around.

I know my opinions probably don't hold any credibility (since none of us personally know the others, save for our login names), but I agree with most here...

And I really think that MSI's statement was constructed extremely poorly and reflects rather badly onto Woot. Honestly, if there were a grand scheme behind this, Woot wouldn't be giving you a refund and paying for return shipping.

And again, the people who had success with their cards are enjoying them and playing games. They have no reason to return to this forum and post, which is why most of the people still posting here are the ones that had problems or are trying to help others who did.

This was an extremely good woot, and I applaud the woot employees for bringing it to us. I lost nothing in it...I had a chance to get a great deal, I did, and when it didn't work out, I got my money back.

WOW

I bought two of these cards from Woot, and have been running them in SLI with zero issues. I found out about the stolen claims from a thread over at hardocp's forums.

As someone else posted, these are the same exact cards that come in Dells. The sticker on the outside of my anti-static bags even LOOKS like a Dell part number sticker. I'm definately going to dig and see if it is indeed a Dell sticker. Very interesting.

Personally I think this is MSI's way to bail on warranty support for OEM cards. They know that ones shipped in OEM systems will be supported by the OEM vendor, and anything outside of that will just be lumped into this supposed theft so they can bail on it - probably doesn't matter where you got it from. This is the last time I will buy an MSI video card.

Id be interested in hearing WOOTs take on this matter. Quite a few comments regarding the "Stolen" issue but no response from Woot.
And to the person who stated that they looked like they had stickers that looked like Dell Part#s. They could have been slated for delivery to Dell and stolen off the truck.

I think Woot should just announce WHERE they got them from. Unless they have some sort of confidentiality agreement, that would help clear thier name, and give MSI\police someone else's door to knock on...

"Small Percentage of Defects?!?"

I'm THREE FOR THREE with Defects... If there is such a SMALL percentage of defect the odds of this would be astronomically small.

Guess I'm just one of the unluckiest wooters there has ever been...

OR

Some people out there aren't pushing their cards as hard in the right/wrong areas (playing COD2 instead of FEAR on max settings), and as such they aren't having problems.

I'm not saying that ALL of the cards are defective, but I am saying that there is a higher percentage of defective cards than some of you optimists would believe is acceptable. With this percentage of bad cards reported out of 2000, obviously there was a production design flaw, and this isn't a case of "oh I just got a bad card".

spyderwebab wrote:"Small Percentage of Defects?!?"I'm THREE FOR THREE with Defects... If there is such a SMALL percentage of defect the odds of this would be astronomically small. Guess I'm just one of the unluckiest wooters there has ever been...

OR

Some people out there aren't pushing their cards as hard in the right/wrong areas (playing COD2 instead of FEAR on max settings), and as such they aren't having problems.

I'm not saying that ALL of the cards are defective, but I am saying that there is a higher percentage of defective cards than some of you optimists would believe is acceptable. With this percentage of bad cards reported out of 2000, obviously there was a production design flaw, and this isn't a case of "oh I just got a bad card".

Yes, a small percentage of defects. With 2000 sold here, do you see 200 people here complaining about defects? No, there's well under 100.
Do you know what the average defect ratio is on electronics?
Or how it increases when it's a product that must be installed by the end user?
Or how it increases more when the user might not have the correct power supply?
Or not enough ventilation in their machine?
Or when beta or early versioni drivers are involved?
Or on a product that can be overclocked beyond manufacturer guidelines?
Seriously - with those factors taken into account - go to Frys or BestBuy and ask what there returns are - I promise they are above 10%

Dutchhater wrote:
Yes, a small percentage of defects. With 2000 sold here, do you see 200 people here complaining about defects? No, there's well under 100.

I don't think 200 hundred different people have even posted in this thread. I barely found this thread.

Its fine to be agrumentative but you can't deny the facts:

I have three defective cards, all of which were tested on two systems with adequate power and cooling by 2 computer scientists (myself and a friend) and were each found to be defective ...

Sure it could be a Beta Driver issue and not a Production Defect, but then again, if that were the case EVERYONE using the Drivers would be affected.

What are the ODDS I get 3 bad cards out of 2000 with a 3% defect rate?

Got my refund, replacing with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130056
Hopefull this one isn't "Stolen" too.

My woot loyalty just entered into the family range. And thank you for the extended warranty.

Woot for life

Snapster wrote:
To our members, We would like to take advantage of this opportunity to extend a 2 year Woot direct warranty on all purchased OEM-MSI video cards

Thanks woot, we're with you all the way!

Odds are very small, but you managed to beat them.

spyderwebab wrote:
all of which were tested on two systems with adequate power and cooling by 2 computer scientists (myself and a friend)

Y'know, we all study "computer science", but I don't think I've ever heard someone call HIMSELF a "computer scientist" before. What do you research?

MTHead wrote:

Y'know, we all study "computer science", but I don't think I've ever heard someone call HIMSELF a "computer scientist" before. What do you research?

What does a Biology major call himself once he graduates...? I call him a Biologist
What does a Computer Science major call himself after he graduates? I call him a Computer Scientist

And FYI, I actually am employed under the title of "Scientist", and I will not discuss the nature of my job in a public forum ;)

spyderwebab wrote:
it seems these are more than likely Dell cards which are meant to be clocked at 375Mhz core and 500 (1000) mhz Memory (DDR3). But as seen here (http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/377/2/) our cards are probably clocked at 450 MHz core and has a default memory frequency of 660 (1320) MHz. This would explain the stability some users have found after underclocking their memory.

Far from truth. Read some previous posts and some stable results with high overclocks with these cards. If these are default at 375/500, then they easily overclock at least 100% (on core). I can't remember which class in computer science covers overclocking though, but it's unheard of. You were just unlucky and your 3 cards are among those 38 that were returned to Woot (out of 2000). Percentage please: 1.9%

Snapster wrote:We would like to take advantage of this opportunity to extend a 2 year Woot direct warranty on all purchased OEM-MSI video cards, un-real/imaginary as they may be.

I didn't get in on this deal, but I returned to this forum this morning after seeing MSI's announcement on [H]ardOCP. So I came here out of curiosity, and find: 1) as always, Woot! is a class act, and 2) we Wooters in the forums tend to be paranoid, spoiled, and unreasonable. Our speeling, grammar, and punctuation also tend to be at about fourth-grade level.

As soon as each Woot! is posted, there are bound to be five guys claiming to have found it for half the price on eBay or some liquidation site - I have yet to see a single one of those pan out, but does that stop my fellow Wooters? Hell no.
Every single Woot! also generates a chorus of "fugly!" and "Worst. Woot. Ever." posts, regardless of the product involved.
And any time there are quality issues - which are inevitable anyway, but are surprisingly low considering that our bunch write like people I wouldn't trust to turn off the power before pulling out the video card - there's a chorus of conspiracy theorist who seem convinced that Woot! is going to run off with the astronomical profits they make from selling us $15 MP3 players and go live the high life in Kazakhstan.
We all act like Woot! owes us something... "I stayed up late for THIS?" (No, you stayed up 'cause you got no life. Do I hear your girlfriend calling you to bed? No.) Woot! doesn't owe us anything - except to deliver the goods we order, and to honor their warranty on 'em if they're junk. The contests, the funny (OK, sometimes funny, sometimes just really tasteless) descriptions, the podcast, even these forums - they're all gravy. True, a lot of us keep coming back because of them, but we're not owed.

So thank you, Woot! for putting up with us and treating us right, and kudos for stepping up with the two-year warranty. One favor, please: don't ever deal with MSI again. I just hate to see you get hurt.

Snapster wrote:Good morning.

For now, this comment is being made only here in the specific product thread. As more information is gathered, an email will be sent to all Wooters who participated in this deal. There's a good amount of anger and calls to action from our staff with regards to this bizarre attack, but for now I'm going to just jot down and organize the basics for quick understanding to any members checking in:

1. fact: MSI has publicly claimed Woot has sold stolen goods.
2. fact: Woot has not been contacted by MSI or by any legal authority (as of time of this post)
3. fact: MSI is denying warranty on these cards and implying for whatever reason that they are not "real" (Woot offered these as MSI-OEM cards without any MSI warranty implied and a 90 day Woot warranty only.)

Our intial reaction:

Woot of course denies any wrong-doing in this proposed infringement against MSI. We do not believe that any cards transacted were 'stolen merchandise' -- we transact only with reputable manufacturers and vendors. We will of course cooperate fully with any investigation that is called for. Obviously, we feel harm has been done to our reputation with this claim and we reserve all rights to defend ourselves with further action.

To our members, We would like to take advantage of this opportunity to extend a 2 year Woot direct warranty on all purchased OEM-MSI video cards, un-real/imaginary as they may be. Unfortunately, as we do not have the support of MSI for replacement cards, this will continue to be a full refund only warranty from Woot. This has been automatically implemented on your purchase.

We will update here, or via email as necesssary if there is any news.

Thank you for your past and continued support.

Snapster (and rest of Woot Staff)

Thanks Snapster.

I have only used one of the two card I ordered so far and that has bgun artifacting on BF2. I will try the second card this weekend and see if that performs better. I will also try the underclocking of the memeory and maybe some different drivers. I really hope this can be fixed with a new driver.