Indeed, this is all starting to sound like it's Expert Infotech. I suffered something pretty similar.

It's all a far cry from companies like Burris and Snap On who warrant their products forever with no BS, no RMAs and no "where is the receipt" rubbish, I must say.

Here is the best course of action.

A nice letter that sticks to the facts detailing purchase date, what the fault is, when it was returned.

Detail what you want done, (refund/repair/replace)

Detail when you want it done by, be reasonable.

Detail what will happen if above does not happen.

Prepare a disputes tribunal claim and include it with your letter, Email and send a copy with tracking and signature required to the company concerned.

Follow through with your disputes tribunal claim if no action is taken.

Some places rely simply on customers giving up and walking away and they keep on getting away with it, if you genuinely believe you are right then stick it out

Sigh....go to Gpforums and look up the retailer rankings.

Anyway....under the CGA they cannot opt out and cannot tell you all this nonsense.

You are entitled to a new board now.

Bring up CGA and Disputes with arrangement, not staff.

Failing that, although that normally works wonders, take it to Disputes.

Update so far:   the guy is still ignoring me and not giving me any details about the test. I'm gonna have to have the board tested by a company I trust. Contacted Gigabyte and they told me to get the store to test it again and to watch them do it-- naive advice really, because I didn't buy it in-store. I asked Gigabyte if they had tested it but they didn't really answer.

The motherboard turned up at my doorstep the other day. It is the same board. They sent it back and are obviously trying to wash their hands of it.

I don't want to narrow it down for anyone, but the store isn't Expert Infotech.

Well at least you weren't burned by them - but this still sounds like shocking service. I may have missed it, but does this place have a physical shop you can walk into and talk to them about this?

They are based in the north and I'm down south, but it turns out they have a toll free number so I'm going to call it on Monday, although I really resent being put into a position where I have to confront someone like this.

I don't think the guy who runs the store is a bad guy, but I suspect that he is a dropshipper (I think I mentioned before that he sent me some guys order, name, and address by accident in the form of an email asking for the goods to be shipped to said person) and maybe he isn't able to fulfill his duties if his dodgy overseas suppliers won't do it for him. I'm just speculating here of course, but the guy was generally fast and polite to begin with, and he packaged the mobo properly (boxed, fragile sticker, air bag filler) when sending it back. Of course, he's still wasted my time and sent me back a motherboard he knows is broken, not to mention trying to contract out his CGA obligations, so there is some level of dishonesty or inexperience going on.

I try to stick to reputable brand motherboard like Gigabyte and Asus but that is no guarantee of trouble free. I have had good luck with Gigabyte motherboards over many years and many upgrade. About 2 years ago when I upgrade to a Intel Haswell CPU with a new Gigabyte motherboard. I kept getting random reboots. Eliminated everything from RAM, Video Card to power supply so it could only be the motherboard.

The retailer was PBTech and they were good to deal with on this warranty claim. It did take the Wholesale distributor about 2 - 2.5 weeks to authorise a full refund. Meanwhile I have lost faith with that motherboard and bought another model (still Gigabyte) while waiting for the warranty claim. The new Gigabyte motherboard has been rock solid.

I think it was just bad luck of me getting a bad batch or a particular model which had design problems.

True. This time I took a risk and went for the best deal, and I guess I got burned for it.

I called today to see if anyone would answer their number, and a guy happened to be at their store. It turns out the store is joint co-run by two people at least, and they have staff on hand. I spoke to one of their staff who couldn't help me with the warranty aspect (apparently "the owners" deal with this sort of thing) but he noted my call down and I'm expecting to hear back tomorrow.

This is why I'm glad I chose not to mention the retailer yet, because this might be the screw-up of an individual and not the store overall.

this staff member you spoke with, you took his name right so when they don't call back you can ask for him by name?

I've been recording the phone calls I have with them as I am concerned they are avoiding emails to stop anything being on record.

I called them back today and spoke to the guy who has been ignoring my emails. He claims the motherboard is working now and that they tested it again themselves. I haven't re-assembled it yet because I didn't want to waste my time, but I will be doing it this afternoon and I trust they wouldn't try to lie about this because it would be easily disproven.

They put it down to a BIOS corruption and claimed Gigabyte fixed it and that I need to ask them about the test (which I did, but Gigabyte customer support were very vague-- see my previous post on it). I'm not sure how this works because I'm no expert, but before I sent the motherboard I tried resetting it myself (connecting the clear_CMOS pins) and I also removed the CMOS battery. Is it possible for the factory backup to get corrupted, and if so, how?

I asked the guy why he has been ignoring my emails for weeks (in which I asked if it was fixed and if there was any test report) and he said a few things. First he claimed the emails in response to me were being handled by someone else, then when I said I sent them directly to him, he claimed he wasn't around to deal with the emails and stated he was "sorry and not trying to make excuses". Sounds awfully strange for the web store manager to not be around to deal with emails during a peak time of the year (cyber Monday and Xmas coming up) but maybe what he means to say is he was busier handling sales-- but that is no excuse for ignoring a customer for several weeks.

The question:  They haven't refunded me the cost of shipping. Can I claim it from them? Neither of us could get the board to work and it required Gigabyte to fix it (presumably, haven't tested it yet). It seems to me that this was a repair under warranty, so am I entitled to get that money back?

Just wanted to bump to say they are still ignoring my emails and it must be on purpose.

Since I am convinced they are not willing to resolve the cost dispute, and that they handled this poorly overall, I'm happy to warn anyone else concerned:  the store is Kiwi Gamer (.co.nz) operated by VR Concepts LTD or something. Typical case of a place who are happy to sell you something but then don't like helping you if there is a problem.

If you're googling the store and you want to know if it's an okay place to buy from, my advice is don't.

Query:  Presumably the motherboard is working for you now? It isn't massively clear from your last post.

How much is the shipping?  I would weight that up against wasting even more of your time.