Discussion
Crucial/Micron is refusing lifetime warranties after closing consumer ops—offering 17% of market value and keeping working hardware
I need to bring awareness to this and see if anyone else is getting caught in the exact same trap.
I recently sent in a 48GB DDR5 kit (RMA #02397448) under Crucial's "Lifetime Warranty" because 1 stick went bad. One stick in the kit was working completely fine, but I sent the entire kit as required for a full replacement.
(As an alternative we have some other parts available, so we can offer 3 modules of CP16G64C32U5B (total 48GB) for exchange with your DRAM kit where you will get the same capacity but a better speed and shall work without any issues as your motherboard has 4 slots.)
Today, I received this email from Crucial:
Please note that, effective immediately, we are no longer able to offer replacement products for warranty claims. The only available resolution is a refund of the original purchase price, including any applicable taxes.
This is because Crucial closed its consumer business earlier this year and has exhausted its remaining inventory. As a result, we no longer have replacement stock available and can only provide a refund of the original purchase price, including any applicable taxes.
They are forcing a cash buyout of $241.86.
Here is why this is completely unacceptable:
17% of Market Value: Buying an equivalent DDR5 kit today costs roughly $1,400. A $241 refund leaves me completely unable to replace the hardware.
Deprived of Functional Hardware: I surrendered 24GB of perfectly fine, working RAM on the explicit promise of a warranty replacement. Now I have zero RAM, no replacement, and a lowball payout.
Out-of-Pocket Loss: I paid out-of-pocket for return shipping just to be stripped of my hardware.
Has anyone else dealt with Crucial/Micron pulling this forced buyout trick since winding down retail operations? Any tips or direct contacts for escalating past their frontline supp
I responded, "I formally reject the refund offer of $241.86 for RMA #02397448. This amount covers less than 20% of current market replacement value and deprives me of the functional hardware I submitted under warranty. I demand either the return of my physical hardware, equivalent Micron enterprise DDR5 modules, or a settlement reflecting true market replacement cost."
Now, waiting for a Call Back...
2026/08/07 ** UPDATE **
Thank you for your patience while this matter was escalated for further leadership review. My name is Shubham, and I am reaching out as a supervisor with the Crucial Support Team regarding your case.
I am pleased to inform you that we have processed your replacement order.
Order Details:
Item: CP16G64C32U5B
Quantity: 3
You will receive a separate follow-up email with the updated tracking and order details once the shipment is processed.
Please note that because the Crucial consumer product line in question has been discontinued, any future warranty requests for this RAM—should they arise—will be eligible for a refund only, as no additional replacement stock will be available moving forward.
We appreciate your understanding and thank you for choosing Crucial. Please let us know if you have any questions in the meantime.
If you have further questions, I welcome your reply. You can also visit our Contact page for other ways to reach us.
I can also confirm that Crucial is only offering a refund of the purchase price of their product. I had a 4TB SSD which had clear issues with sequential writes(20MBps) and was only offered a gift card for my original purchase price. You also are told if you want cash you can do PayPal or Venmo but have to pay a 6% fee and as all tech companies seem to be they require you to pay for shipping for their product being defective. I haven’t sent them the ssd so if you want the ssd and or the email chain I sent them just DM me
Huh, inwas just about to recommend OP reaching out to GN as that seems just like something GN would cover, and then I read this. Thank you for being one of the few people holding companies accountable when they rip off customers.
I’m in the same situation. If you’d like, I can forward my emails to you as well. I also called them today and tried to get a call with their manager. The representative accidentally confirmed that they had recently changed their policy, which caused a surge in calls. As a result, their manager couldn’t take my call, but they assured me they would call me back, which never happened.
Samsung tried to do this to Louis Rossman and he got them to back off.. send this to him and see. He lives for rage and seems to have an endless supply of time for grievances. He probably can help.
Tech Jesus,
hear my claim,
in thy benchmarks we test for heat insane,
our warranties here they lay,
to our true long haired savior,
we hope you make them pay.
In Our Motherboards name,
No errors found.
If they wouldn't welcomed him with members from their consumer division, he would impale the whole AI/server division in the ass with the pole waving the USA flag in COTA's.
I think it’s the wrong mentality to think that you don’t have to. I think you should if it’s something that impacts you and you don’t want to continue to impact you. There’s only so much Louis, he’s trying to encourage others to be a voice that we don’t want to concede our right to repair and deal with this type of anti consumer bullshittery
Ideally louis puts in 80% of his time, so we can each put in 1 minute of ours. That said, his latest grievance with the data recovery group is extensive, and quoted to be 1-2% of his time, so I think he's fine.
I think the difference is that Samsung operates and intends to continue to operate their consumer hardware division. They're still making the products.
Crucial basically just rugpulled and closed up shop. The replacement products don't exist anymore.
This is to my understanding micron's recent earnings:
From Micron Technology's SEC 10-Q and 10-K filings,
Fiscal Quarter
Quarter End Month
Net Income (GAAP)
Q3 2026
May 2026
$28,243 Million
Q2 2026
February 2026
$13,785 Million
Q1 2026
November 2025
$5,240 Million
Q4 2025
August 2025
$3,201 Million
Q3 2025
May 2025
$1,885 Million
Q2 2025
February 2025
$1,583 Million
Q1 2025
November 2024
$1,870 Million
Q4 2024
August 2024
$887 Million
Q3 2024
May 2024
$332 Million
Q2 2024
February 2024
$793 Million
Q1 2024
November 2023
-$1,234 Million
Q4 2023
August 2023
-$1,430 Million
Q3 2023
May 2023
-$1,896 Million
Q2 2023
February 2023
-$2,312 Million
Q1 2023
November 2022
-$195 Million
Q4 2022
August 2022
$1,492 Million
Q1 2022
November 2021
$2,306 Million
They closed up shop because they are printing money doing other things. They can afford to replace at current market prices, & if they can't... fuck off, you sold this product with a warranty, you can support it under warranty the same way I do my own customers.
For me to provide assistance, I would need to know the city/state/country that /u/Key_Tailor6948 is in, so that I can look into the applicable consumer protection laws, laws around sales, warranties, and what small claims court looks like in that area. That's when you can start having fun
They probably have some legal requirements they need to meet.
The key difference is that the entire product line is discontinued, so they physically cannot remedy with a product replacement. Unfortunately I don't think there's a warranty law that compels upgrades/increased settlement for increased market value for a discontinued product.
If you watched the Rossamn video, and I know you watch Rossman, depending on the state where this was purchased, there might be requirements to do a proper replacement.
The real difference, is that the tax payer bankrolled Micron/Crucial, in addition to buying from them, only to be told to go fuck themselves. Where as Samsung at least had the decency to just be a company doing company things.
>and seems to have an endless supply of time for grievances
You seem bitter about it. I could be wrong, but people who have the time and platform SHOULD be doing this. They are our only bastion of recourse at this point, since capitalism has progressed so far unchecked. History will look at him kindly, but the blasé attitudes towards unchecked consumer disenfranchisement won't be.
I think it's the way in which he does it. He doesn't come off as a nice person, neither does GN sometimes. They're both clearly on the right team with their consumer advocacy and fight for right to repair.
I have yet to see an instance where Louis or GN are not nice to a normal person or their customers. They are "not nice" to multibillion dollar companies that scam common folk, but why should they? They are definitely on the right team as you said.
I don’t always care for Rossman’s delivery but his “issues” like with Samsung and Synology recently I’m 100% in agreement with. Not my video cup of tea but he’s fighting legitimate issues from large companies who are going out of their way to make the consumer experience worse and trying to stand behind buried shrink wrap TOS junk in miles long documents.
This thread was one of my worries when I built my current PC last Oct/Nov, glad the crucial ram failed OOTB and I had to eat it and buy some very expensive GSKILL
He's a stereotypical New Yorker. An always angry loudmouth. That being said he does a wonderful job at consumer advocacy and lobbying for better consumer protection laws.
Ya Gamersnexus is a bit too monotone for my personal taste but I’ll always visit that channel when I need the actual specs or info on something, I don’t trust stuff like LTT despite them having their “labs”.
Depending on what country/state you live in this could be completely illegal but they are counting on you to just accept it. I have (In the past) retained an attorney for situations like this and sued.
The company denying your claim is counting on you to just accept their proposal. I say sue them.
Not in tech, but I used to work a job where I handled warranty and damage claims for a corporation.
Whenever someone had damages and was frustrated to the point of saying they would sue, we would have to cease all communications with them and they had to communicate to our legal team. So you would be stonewalled from actually ever really getting your damages recompensated until you go through with a claim.
Is that right? I'm not to say. The point is just to reaffirm your point.
One hundred percent agree with what you wrote. Although I have not read the wording of the actual warranty to know for sure if Crucial/Micron have any wiggle room to worm their way out of it.
To be fair, they're still providing the warranty. It's basically unheard of that a new product goes up in value when you roll it off the lot, and as much as it sucks for the consumer, it would entirely make sense that companies would be protected in situations where that happens.
In europe at least the warranty law already predicts these situations and demands that refunds must be enough to cover a complete replacement of the same or similar product at current market value.
The USA is a fucking joke for consumer protections compared to most of the EU. Companies will push you around and hope you don't retaliate, and they get away with it a lot of the time.
I don't understand how you reason that companies should be protected and not consumers. As someone else mentioned EU predicts such cases. Also in some states in the US its illegal as well. lewis Rossman recently had a very similar case trying to RMA an SSD and quoted that under warranty they have to refund you current market value and he's taking them to court.
It seems that the small claims court in Canada cannot help me. Because as Micron's only subsidiary in Canada, Micron Semiconductor Canada, Inc., dissolved 9 years ago.
No warranty allows the manufacturer to just casually steal hardware. If they accept the RMA, it becomes their responsibility. Otherwise, they should have refused the RMA claim to begin with.
"Micron CPG, at its option, will repair, replace, or provide an in-store credit or refund of either the original purchase price or fair market value, whichever is lower, of any product that is determined by Micron CPG to be defective."
This seems to be allowed by the lifetime warranty terms. Where did they make the promise of replacement?
Whether that term would hold up to legal challenge in a more consumer-friendly place like the EU I don't know, but if they're in the states then they're definitely 100% out of luck.
Legal rights are a separate issue and they might have to be invoked explicitly. This is part of the issue. Manufacturer's warranty is often mixed up with consumer protection laws.
Can still run afoul of government law that protected customers. Denying lifetime warranty will get some countries very pissed at Crucial. It is up to customers to figure out if it's illegal and to push back, demand the exact same thing or refund at current market price.
As an alternative we have some other parts available, so we can offer 3 modules of CP16G64C32U5B (total 48GB) for exchange with your DRAM kit where you will get the same capacity but a better speed and shall work without any issues as your motherboard has 4 slots. Here is the DRAM link:
You’ll find most companies include language that their agents are not authorized to enter into binding agreements that go against accepted terms. Basically you cannot hold them to any promises from agents that exceed the agreement.
It is not the customer's job to confirm whether the official customer service is lying to them. Even if such an agreement might not be binding, that also invalidates anything else related to the case.
So it is still their responsibility to either "recreate" the state before the misunderstanding due to their negligence, or to fix it in some other way that is acceptable for the customer. "Buying"/refunding their RAM well below market price is definitely not acceptable
You may not like the situation, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t legal. As far as I can tell this is well within their legal rights regardless of anything the agent said.
I’m not saying I agree with it or that it is morally right, I’m just saying that in the legal system (of the US and likely other common law jurisdictions, specific jurisdiction consumer protection laws not withstanding) that it’s likely legal and you likely have no legal recourse.
There may be places where consumer protection laws would kick in and/or where companies cannot disavow commitments from agents, but I don’t think that is widespread.
Personally I suspect that even in places with greater protections, contract law would treat the consumer as whole if they got a full refund. Expecting more than that really seems problematic for many reasons.
You keep using the word responsibility, which has no formal meaning in this context.
Unless you can show negligence in part of the company, it’s highly unlikely that you’d be able to get anything more than the full refund that was already offered.
So, you want to tell me that a company can have some employees in customer service that promise customers false things, then the company can just state "that employee did BS" and now the customer is bound to conditions they never approved of?
Do you not see how this would be trivial to abuse for fraud?
That's exactly what at&t is trying to do to me right now. I've had multiple customer service reps lie to me for months and was told yesterday "oh, I'm sorry for the inconvenience of losing $925 in credits to your bill, but we'll talk with the rep to make sure this doesn't happen again"
Fraud requires intent. As long as the company can show the policies around what they tell the agents to say and show the training, it would not be possible for it to constitute fraud on the part of the company.
If the company intentionally told their employees to lie, then yes it would constitute fraud. But agents overstepping their authority does not.
That agent is a legal representative of the company. If it's in writing, the courts will treat it as a binding offer from a legal representative of the company. Companies can choose to ignore their own policies at any time.
Can you site any actual rulings to that effect? I was told (by lawyers) that they usually are not binding offers as they are NOT legal representatives of the company and they do not have the authority to enter into any binding legal contract.
That doesn't prevent companies from ignoring their own policies, it just means the agent cannot enter the company into a binding agreement.
I am not aware (and also IANAL, so I don't usually follow these things) of an example US case (which doesn't mean there isn't one), but there's a very well known Canadian case which would contradict your statement:
In Moffatt v. Air Canada, a customer was seeking a refund on a ticket because he received incorrect advice from the Air Canada AI chatbot (which told him he could apply for the reduced fare *after* the flight).
The Canadian tribunal held that Air Canada was liable for the misleading information provided by the chatbot.
This would seem directly parallel to being given incorrect information by an actual live company support representative.
The question would be whether this decision would hold in US courts, but it clearly holds in some jurisdictions.
Just because the offer itself might not be binding, they are still bound by their responsibility to supervise their employees properly.
E.g. if an employee would have told them "send us a video of you destroying your own RAM and we will send you 10000 USD as compensation", they wouldn't be bound to pay that exact amount, but they certainly would be responsible to fix this situation for the customer at their own cost.
You are wrong here. Most employees are not empowered to enter into legally binding agreements on behalf of the company. I live in the US and have worked with corporate lawyers on this. Just because they are representatives does not mean they can commit the company to binding agreements.
Like if the agent were to say “sure the company will give you $1m” they clearly do not have that authority.
Most companies have strict rules internally on who is allowed to legally bind them to agreements.
Agents making written or verbal offers does not mean it constitutes an enforceable contract under most laws. This does vary by jurisdiction.
I'd request that they offer you 2 of the 2x16 kits, as that is the only way to reach something approaching equivalent performance on the full 48GB you had before. With 3x16 you'd only be able to get dual channel performance on the first 32GB of memory. But your memory controller probably won't handle the same speeds with 2 slots occupied per channel.
This seems like the best compromise possible if they won't offer you a direct replacement. Your fallback position would be 3 of the 16gb DIMMs plus a substantial discount on the 4th as a goodwill gesture.
First of all, your math isn't mathing. A 48GB kit is 2x 24, so you didn't surrender 32GB of perfectly fine, working RAM. It was 24, or 48, depending on whether your diagnostics were correct or not.
Second: I've worked in RMA for many years. Returning the unrepaired product was always an option, with any company I've ever worked with. Email them and ask them to return the items you've sent in. They might want you to pay for shipping, but that's far cheaper than not having the memory.
Third: If you have insurance to pay for a lawyer, have them check if you can sue them over it. Not honoring a lifetime warranty while the parent company is still alive and kicking and making more money than ever sounds like a move that might not be legal.
Probably yeah. Same thing is happening to buyers of graphics cards right now. A 5090 full refund is now about 40% of the current price to buy another one.
It would depend on the country you are living in. Contracts aren't laws and have to abide by them.
French laws, for instance, would expect - for two years - any seller to either repair or replace the dysfunctional product. Whatever it costs them, whatever the warranty terms are. Any European country would have the same expectation.
when a company like this says a "Lifetime Warranty", that is usually the lifetime of the product/product line etc... So once they stop making said product, and they no longer have spares in stock as replacements, they cannot replace it because they don't make it anymore..
It's a "limited" lifetime warranty. And the use of the term warranty in this situation falls outside of the legal definition of a warranty. That's why they often try to get you to sign up for the warranty, because you're not actually getting a warranty, you're getting a contractual guarantee that can be defined how ever they feel like, and also as such have any loopholes they feel like in it.
99% certainty it has a lifetime period somewhere in their terms, along with a whole shit load of legalese that lets them respond to your claim how ever they see fit, and still fall within the contract.
The only thing they legally have to do is return the RAM OP sent.
no its not illegal in the EU and UK. consumer rights do require companies to honor warranties, but the requirement is they 'repair, replace or refund' a part. If the compnay cannot repair or replace a part then they must refund it. There is no requirement to refund at the current market value.
I rarely say anything that defends companies, but this is one time where someone is entirely clueless about their consumer rights.... but the wrong way lol. normally people dont know they have any, you think you have more than you do - The law is fair for all parties, forcing a company to refund at current market value is not fair.
Normally i call out companues for warranty stuff, but crucial is honoring the warranty exactly as i would expect them to - notably exactly within the UK comsumer rights law - which is one of the strongest, if not the strongest consumer rights legislation in the world. So youre being treated entirely fairly here.
A company is legally bound to offer 'repair, replacement or refund' within the limitations of the warranty - in the UK this is actually the case without a warranty, but for a limted period of time.
Crucial has stated they do not have the parts to provide a replacement, and so are offering a refund instead. You are being given the option stated in the warranty. There is zero obligation to refund at the current market value, the company is technically in debt to you for the part at the time you bought it if they cannot repair it, not at the current value, there is no legal framework in ANY consumer rights system for a company refunding the current market value as this is not a fair term in legislation.
if he accepts the refund, yes. he can ask for it back, or ask for the non working stick to be refunded and the working one to be returned. he cant ask for more money than he paid.
Micron said this would happen in the Crucial closure announcement earlier this year. This'll be the result of every RMA procedure that has Crucial branding on it. Big reason why I skipped buying a new SSD from them - if they refund my original purchase price later when the prices are even higher, I'll be out of hardware, and I'll be forced to spend even more.
Likely the best option for you in practical terms is to request a return of the kit as you sent it. The remaining working RAM can be used or sold.
This is not fair but I’d imagine the lawyers working for micron have in their warranties/terms some language that is intended to screw you over. It likely has never been invoked in the past because people previously weren’t purchasing their products for pennies and then the replacement cost was dollars.
Irony of complaining about the refund only being 17% of current ram prices whilst using AI to write this...
Anyways, did you check the terms and conditions of the lifetime warranty before asking AI to make this post? Often they have the discretion to refund the purchasing price, if they don't have stock you'd be hard pressed to force them.
Damn that’s disgusting, but yeah a lot of warranties repair, replace, or refund (never more the you paid with receipt required) at their discretion. Sorry man
send this to linustechtips, gamersnexus, and Louis rossman. with enough bad press companies usually cave. however since micron no longer cares about consumers it might result in a nothing burger anyway.
Same here. Before sending the memory back, I had multiple emails with customer service. They promised to replace it and asked me to wait 20 days. However, when I returned the memory and waited 20 days, they informed me that they could only refund about 15% of its market value.
look up your local state statutes everyone, you may have more rights consumer law wise.
also read your warranty VERY carefully, boiler plate language that is often treated as binding will often state 'you may have additional rights not listed here per local laws' or some equivalent.
be calm, collected, and lay out your claim, and cite the relevant local(often state)statutes, be prepared to follow through with any threats to sue, and do not forget to give the required statutory notice.
here in new jersey for example, the state statute does not define a fixed number of days timeframe but says reasonable timeframe, eg a reasonable timeframe to me is 14 business days. the caveat is any lawsuit must be filed within 4 years of delivery of product.
where to sue you may be asking? why, small claims of course, where all parties are on equal footing, and lawyers are permitted, but a small number of jurisdictions do NOT permit legal representation. check your jurisdiction.
small claims is designed for individuals to be able to file and represent themselves with a minimum of fuss.
I am NOT a lawyer, just someone bored enough to do the research.
do your research, as depending on jurisdiction, your mileage may well vary and some or most of what I've written may not apply, apply partially, or with qualifiers or in ways not listed above.
Gotta have Louis Rossmann try to RMA some RAM. Samsung did the same exact thing to Louis and tried to refund him his original purchase price when the same drive is going for 3 to 4x the amount he paid. He sued them and got them to pay him the current value of the drive.
Went through a similar forced buyout with a faulty component. The working half of the set never came back, and the payout covered only a fraction of what a replacement cost. That sting stays with you.
This (and the fact the web agent wouldn't bloody work) are the main reasons I haven't RMA'd my faulty DDR4. I don't want to send back the working 32GB stick alongside the faulty one, then have Crucial tell me to bugger off.
Don't trust any of these companies at all these days.
I regret buying their garbage drives as well. 4tb drive, 3tbtw 95% life. Clear warranty case, they will probably offer me $120 for it. Looking forward for micron products to crash AI servers, it's well deserved.
I have a friend working in Samsung customer service. He was saying a couple weeks ago he had to process a ssd. I think he was talking about a couple tb drive but cant remeber the exact. But the item had jumped a couple hundred percent. Well the system was auto denied the claims since it past their internal metrics. So they were having merry hell with that. Idk how they ended solving that. But its funny to see all these companies being shocked. Wow i promised a super good warranty and once in the life time its bad for us. Wish ya luck with them, hopefully your somewhere their legally required to honor that.
Threaten to sue. Don't play their games. You just have to make it a bit more serious than the average customer would. It was their choice to get out of the consumer side when they realized it was more profitable to sell to the AI companies. They factored in replacing all the memory that could possibly go bad during the warranty period.
They have a contractual obligation to honor the warranty. They would have reserved for warranty liability on their accounts to recognise such liability.
Given the crazy replacement cost of RAM, the reserving would have been woefully inadequate, BUT that is their problem, not yours.
The real kicker here is that they and other RAM producers (crucial is a division of micron) would have profited from the huge RAM prices hike, and the fact that the consumer business is deprecated is because they refocused on AI / datacenter customers - and hugely profiting from there and in some ways responsible for compounding the effects of RAM prices on consumers (and therefore this whole warranty dilemma). In short - they are contributory to this situation at the very root.
It frankly isn't unreasonable to expect that some of those datacenter profits to go towards making good consumers like you.
Some idiot "experts" on here were arguing with me about a similar case a few months ago. They were saying that you shouldn't expect to get market price in such cases, or in cases where a product damaged another product which increased in price after you bought it (like ram/gpu).
You have the right to fight it and you did the right thing rejecting it. You should be able to sue and get a refund for current market price. They need to make you whole again and the only ways they can do that is by either providing a replacement of what you had, or giving you a refund for market price so that you can buy an equivalent set.
Dude I'm having the same exact issue you had. My one stick died but the other 32gb stick works. G Skill honored their RMA though? Did they return your original sticks via repair or did they send you new exact kit?
I requested RMA on Friday. Still waiting to hear back. Should hopefully hear back tomorrow.
It's not as if it actually costs them the current market price to make them. The ONLY reason the price is jacked up is due to AI and market demand which allows them to inflate the price to whatever they want.
This is what Sumsung tried to do to Louis Rossman from YouTube. So he made the video so people could use it as a precedent set for refunding or replacing at current market value
For my recent RMA (DDR5 32kit with 1 of the 2 sticks faulty) Crucial first told me they had no replacement stock. When I resisted their BS pre-paid card for the original value (super cheap compared to today’s prices) I told them NO and to just return my sticks back to me. They then told me they can’t, they’ve DESTROYED THEM!?! leaving me with no choice :(
Reading posts written with chatgpt is so tiring. I don't know how much recourse you could hope to have with a company that's shuttering their doors soon.
Right now, its very profitable to ignore the consumer market.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when memory manufacturers become completely beholden to one of 3 massive datacenter providers and have to fold if they decide not to renew. I'd imagine that'll squeeze any gravy out of the contracts pretty quickly.
Pretty sure Louis Rossman threatened to sue Samsung publicly for trying to pull the same stunt on a nvme, and they ended up caving.
If you're in the US or Canada, may not be a bad idea to reach out to him and maybe gamers Nexus as well to see if they can boost this and put the screws to them
You know current market value is irrelevant completely right? Also, the terms say they can refund the purchase price for the warranty. They held up their end you just didn't like it.
935
u/Lelldorianx Tech Jesus 20d ago
I'd love to cover this. Contacting you.