Have you been horrendously unlucky with one specific brand?

[Ottonomous]

Hello. I was an annoying kid who bugged his parents for electronics, and the major brand that hurt me, despite all the love and fanboyism is ATi/AMD.

My Pentium II had an ATi Rage chipset that didn't seem to work with any amount of tinkering although I was quite young (9) so I might have been totally incompetent. However the PC store said they couldn't fix it too and big red racing never worked

My brother bought a Lenovo laptop with an integrated AMD GPU which never seemed to work, eventually a german customer told us in a forum that if X set of fixes don't work, countless drivers, iGPU and bios tweaking etc (which we exhausted out of desperation), time to get a mobo replacement from Lenovo which we couldn't get from our Saudi retailer

 

[Ottonomous]

The 2nd worst part: Graduated and had multiple financial concessions because of top academic perf, so why not take a piece of the savings (10th) into the gaming PC I always wanted. Ordered from superbiiz because it was the only one to ship to the anemic area (big mistake). 2500K + 6950. Ecstatic bringing it home from the DHL office. Everything connected and time to boot up: no VGA. WTF moment must be a minor mistake right? No VGA LED. I am scared shitless and my father got a bit mad (really strained our relationship a bit).

After a marathon of diagnostics I finally realized that some idiot tried to do the 6970 flash and botched the BIOS, which was a mixture corruption and 6990. Superbiiz employee says he had a reference 6950 (I wanted it) and suddenly it wasn't available so he helped me out by springing for a 6950 Sapphire (made me mad but I wasn't in a position to make demands here, so told him to go head). Its now a paper weight.

 

[Ottonomous]

The absolute horror: The superbiiz guy apparently got anxious and sent me a proof receipt for the 6950 with a 'delete-me' email. Anyhow they accept after some calls so long as I can premium-mail the card back within the 30 days

On my way and truly happy, Obama announces the assassination of Bin Laden and now all mail from Saudi Arabia has been banned from the US until further notice. A total and shambolic loss of 250USD, my sanity and patience and time.

 

[sandorski]

MSI, both MSI products I have owned(small sample size) 1 Motherboard and 1 Video card lasted 18 months. I'll never buy MSI again.

 

[Ottonomous]

Nvidia: My Inno3D FX5500 Ran for 12 years, my brother exchanged it for a few Shawermas

My 560 WF still runs nicely (the replacement for the 6950), along with the 9500GT which was used for diagnosing the VGA problem. I keep it because it helped.

My 970 was a nice OCer (Gaming G1). My 1060 6GB is alright.

I will still try to buy AMD again. Ryzen 2019 fingers crossed and any card because I am the kind of person who'd buy the Vega 56 over the 1070 Ti and try to push it

 

[Ottonomous]

MSI, both MSI products I have owned(small sample size) 1 Motherboard and 1 Video card lasted 18 months. I'll never buy MSI again.

For me it was the reverse, I was told MSI or GB for reliability after my ASUS boards were wonky in USB and after certain BIOS updates. I learned about their QC issues too late (P67) and still have the Sabertooth running the 2500K

 

[mikeymikec]

Nvidia - the 700 series (750ti being the highest I've used) having issues on Intel rigs. Two PCs of Core2 era were unstable with a 750ti and a gt710, and my Haswell rig was unstable with a faulty 750ti. Multiple brands of card.

Corsair - After a flawless record with many VX450Ws (none have failed AFAIK), the CX430v1s I had to return something like two thirds of them. After trying other brands and having products go EOL at inconvenient times, I tried the CX430v2. Out of probably 10 - 15 ordered, I've had one fail just outside the warranty. I can't say I'm overly impressed with Corsair.

Logitech - I bought an MX700 once, which failed in warranty. Logitech refunded me (cool!), got an MX1000 which also failed within warranty. Logitech refunded me again, I got an MX Revolution which is still going to this day (I'd guess it's 8-9 years old). Logitech's customer service forgives the failures IMO, and in my line of work I haven't seen Logitech's stuff dying on a regular basis.

 

[purbeast0]

I've had 2 Sony Bluray players and they both ate the shit in the same way after like 12-18 months. Both of them the disc drive just stopped working. It wouldn't open/close and after I manually open/closed it, the drive wouldn't spin.

So fuck standalone Sony Bluray players

 

[RLGL]

For computer stuff, I probably have the highest failure rate of anyone. I have no favorites. All brands fail prematurely. I have not had a build last more than 2.5 years. Over the years I have had 3 processors fail, two of them were amd. Video cards, I can't guess the amount, I am on my third one this year, wty covers them. MB the worst I had was Biostar way back when. Six were replaced in rapid succession, all had the same failure. I gave up on them and moved on. Ram I have replaced countless sets over the years. The list goes on.............

 

[DigDog]

I had bad customer service with ASUS but no specific brand has failed me multiple times.

Women, on the other hand ...

 

[Muse]

I've had 2 Sony Bluray players and they both ate the shit in the same way after like 12-18 months. Both of them the disc drive just stopped working. It wouldn't open/close and after I manually open/closed it, the drive wouldn't spin.

So fuck standalone Sony Bluray players

My Sony BDP-S390 standalone Bluray player is working fine, AFAIK, had it over 6 years.

I've had reasonably good luck with my 3 Lenovo laptops, only the first bought new, back in 2006. The Lenovo T60 I have with ATI graphics runs extremely hot!!! However, it works. People flocked to them but I bought the machine not because of the ATI, it was a for parts machine (cheap!) on ebay that I managed to fix.

Pretty good luck with Logitech stuff. Never bought one of their vaunted sound cards, but have a few mice that work OK.

I will never buy another Acer machine or whatever. The laptop I bought was a mistake.

I too had problems with MSI motherboards, IIRC, also video cards.

I've had several Nvidia graphics cards and by and large had OK success, although the fans sometimes died (replaced them).

 

[Scarpozzi]

I've had 2 Sony Bluray players and they both ate the shit in the same way after like 12-18 months. Both of them the disc drive just stopped working. It wouldn't open/close and after I manually open/closed it, the drive wouldn't spin.

So fuck standalone Sony Bluray players

Sony is on my list too from way back. I bought an external Sony CDRW drive in the late 90s for $150-200 (can't remember exactly)...it stopped being recognized and started acting up once it heated up...obvious circuit board fault related to heat. I called their tech support to get a replacement under warranty....the response was basically, "We don't support that drive anymore.....we're Sony....too big to deal with customer service." I was like, why do you have all these warranty papers and why does it say it on the box. I got no where with their support and was told to buy a new one.

I've never purchased another Sony product and never will. I've had an issue with a panasonic Bluray player a few years back. Panasonic replaced it within 3 days....

I purchased an iPod from Apple 12 years ago....it was DOA from China....arrived 8 days after I ordered it. I left on an 8 day trip once it arrived, but didn't test realize it was broken until I got back. By the time I called Apple to find out if they would refund me for the $120 piece of junk, the customer service rep told me they couldn't refund my money because they only do refunds for 14 days.... I got no where with customer service, so I called Amex and had them straighten it out. I got a humble letter 3 weeks later asking me to put the defective item in a box and ship it back.

I like Amazon and Walmart for taking returns for these companies...they're a bunch of jerks.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

No. If I have a bad experience once I won't buy that brand again.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I had some bad luck with Nvidia cards in the early-mid 2000s. Geforce 4 TI4200 artifacting after a few years of use, likely due to memmory corruption, replaced with a Geforce FX 5600 which completely died around 1 or 2 months out of warranty.

After 2 Geforces died, I stuck with AMD cards until bitcoin miners drove the prices too high. Now I have a Geforce 960 in my 2nd gaming box & AMD card in my triple monitor gaming box. Never had any problems with Radeon 4850, radeon 4870, radeon 6870, or radeon 290 or any of my earlier ATI cards.

I guess I used to think I was stubborn and "never try the brand again", but, after so many years of being stubborn, it's easy to give another chance.

 

[snoopy7548]

Probably whichever company makes the toilet paper we use at work...

 

[shortylickens]

Generic brands. Its rare I find anything generic that even functions, much less makes me happy.

Other than that I cannot think of a single name brand that always disappointed me. I dont like Bose, but thats another issue entirely.

 

[crashtech]

Seagate. Out of the dozens of drives that I've seen fail over the years, all but a handful have been Seagate. part of this is no doubt due to their market penetration, but it's still pretty clear that they fail more often than other brands.

 

[quikah]

Samsung appliances.
- My refrigerator has an iced over drain so I get water leaking all the time, too pain in the ass to deice it since I would need to empty it and tear it apart. It is a known issue with this model.
- My stove has a wildly fluctuating temp sensor for the oven, I need to let it sit for 30+ minutes to stabilize at the temp I set after it claims it is ready.

Have had a good experience with Samsung electronics, TV, tablet, phone all work pretty well.

 

[Kaido]

FCA vehicles (Fiat-Chrysler America = Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, Fiat, RAM)

Have had poor experiences with the Dodge Dakota, Chrysler minivan, and currently the Jeep Renegade. Quality control issues & electrical issues on all of them. They are cheap for a reason

On the flip side, I've had nothing but wonderful experiences with all of the Kia's I've had (2011 & newer).

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Trojan

 

[ImpulsE69]

I can't say that I've had bad luck with a specific brand, but I've had horrible luck with USB network adapters just dying after a few months over the years.

 

[Chaotic42]

Mostly MSI and Antec, but I will say that Antec's customer service has been awesome every time I've used them.

 

[clamum]

I been building my own systems since high school and can't recall a particular company I've been disappointed with. Everything has worked as it should; AMD, Corsair, MSI, etc etc.

Also I remember Big Red Racing! LMAO that's some old school shat.

 

[Oyeve]

ASUS. Every ASUS POS item I bought has died. Swore off them years ago. And IBM Deathstar HDS.

 

[crashtech]

Oh, yeah, Deskstars. Didn't see too many of those for some reason. Had a Quantum Fireball die on me, though.