This post is quite lengthy, but every bit is worth the read.
First of all. I would like to say that I USED to think OCZ was a good company of hard working people. The only part of that conception that's changed is that I no longer think that they are a good company. They are hard working people, but they have misplaced their loyalties and have sold out for cash.
Before proceeding, I would like to note that this post, along with another letter I have written will be submitted to the Better Buisness Bureau. Attached to the letter (to be submitted in email form) is a 20 minute long 40 megabyte MPEG documenting part of my experience with the store, and a set of extremely high resolution digital pictures that are all marked with an encrypted watermark to prove that they have not been modified from their original source.
For that almost a good half of this year I have been doing forum moderation and providing tech support/advice as a volunteer through these forums FOR OCZ. With little to no benefits. Basically I would get things from their store at a slightly cheaper price than they sell at. I made one purchase from the store during my time "working" for them, and boy, I'm going to let out my frustration about it now. As well as let people know about the questionable things that I became aware of that went on behind the doors of the OCZ store.
My once purchase from OCZ was 512mb of their OCZ Performance Enhanced PC2400 DDR which supposedly had micron chips. It was in the form of two sticks of 256mb each supposedly. I was charged $36 per stick of ram - $9 cheaper than their normal list price of $44.99. I patiently awaited its arrival with high ambition of being able to overclock my computer even higher with this stuff.
The delivery took about a week and a half via UPS Ground. In that time I recieved no tracking number until I hounded the store on the private admin only forum, and directly through email. When the stuff arrived the package was in perfect shape. There was absolutely no evidence of abuse to the package in delivery. Inside I found my two sticks of ram. I looked at the chips, and they were not micron. I inspected the ram more closely and found very questionable physical damage to BOTH sticks. One of the sticks appeared as if it had been burned and the other had a deep cut in one of the ram chips.
In spite of the obvious physical damage to the chips (which I took pictures of) I tried them out hoping that the damage was merely superficial. My fears about the RAM being nonfunctional were correct. One chip only counted to about 100mb of its total 256mb, and the other would generate all kinds of errors in the windows kernel and would never allow the system to boot properly. I tried both sticks individually, and together, with the slowest ram timings, and with varying voltage to try and increase their stability. Nothing worked.
So I called the store and had a very painless RMA done. I recieved the replacement ram a couple days later which I opened again in high anticipation. Inspecting the chips again revealed that they were NOT micron chips. They were instead hyinx chips. I didn't care much because hyinx is a good brand. But again upon further inspection I found very obvious physical damage to the chips on the ram sticks. One appeared to have some kind of compound smeared on one of the chips, and the other again had a deep gash on it (again photographed.)
Once again I tried the chips in spite of their obvious physical damage. This time both chips counted to their maximum 256megabytes each, and my computer loaded into windows. But what was to follow was unpleasant. Memory error after memory error popped up on my screen. Programs were crashing left and right, and nothing would run properly. This was all running at the 150mhz cas2 spec of the ram. I followed the exact same testing methodology as before to no avail. These ram chips were also defective.
How does a store mess up twice, in the same manner, with one of their own trusted friends who has been doing work for pretty much free? I have no idea. At this point I was pretty frustrated so I called the store and told them I was sending the RAM back and that I just wanted a refund.
Everything seemed dandy, but little did I know that there had been irreparible damage done to my motherboard by this faulty and damaged RAM. I had booted my computer off of my roommates ram (which I had been using for the past month or so, working 100% fine.) and then ran out the door down to mailboxes etc to return the RAM before the last UPS pickup.
Upon returning I found my computer locked up, I rebooted and found that it would no longer complete booting, and that sometimes my computer would not even POST. Luckily the motherboard was under warranty and it is being replaced at the cost of shipping for me, which is costing me about 30 bucks (purchased from another company.) Upon returning my roommates RAM to him because my computer no longer functioned at all, we discovered that the OCZ RAM had messed up my motherboard SO bad that my motherboard had toasted HIS RAM as well. So now I'm out another 30 bucks to replace HIS RAM. On top of this, I had to pay for all of the return shipping to OCZ, which was about 10 bucks each time, so that's another 20 bucks. So far what do I have? Nothing except $-80 bucks in shipping and repair costs.
Immediately that same day which I called for my refund I lost all administrative rights on their forums. I had not made any posts except helpful posts to customers about problems they were having.
The next day I found another member having memory problems, and I told him how to test his ram properly, and then I said that I had just had a similar RAM problem - I had not, however specified that it was RAM from OCZ, nor the nature of the RAM problem I had. Immediately following my post in this nature I found my account on their forums deleted and my post as well. This leads me to today and this post - warning all of you never to purchase from this corrupt and irresponsible company. They screwed me - one of their volunteers whom backed them up when hardly anyone else would - and they will screw you too. All they care about is taking your money. They charge your credit card as soon as the order is placed, before anyone looks at your invoice, before anyone in the store even knows your order exists. They take exceedingly long in filling orders, and they make claims about their hardware that cannot be fulfilled.
I have the photographs, and the video to prove all of what I'm saying. If you wish to see them you can email me at zoson@hotmail.com and I can set up a way for you to get them. The word needs to be spread.
Go and post a message on the ocz forums about how they cheat their customers.
http://forums.theoverclockerzstore.com
-Zoson