So an odd (and unexpected) turn of events this morning... My HS1A left headphone broke the plastic where the headphone meets the support beam
. The headset was not dropped, sat on or abused in any way, so this was quite a disappointment as far as quality of construction goes. The headset itself felt pretty solid when I wore it, and the feeling of the material was excellent for a sub $100 headset. It appears that the design of how the headphone attaches and meets the support beam was just a weak point in the design. I noticed the issue only when my left ear felt like it wasn't 100% flush against my face, breaking the barrier for the sound around my ear. The headset was purchased on May 13, 2011.The Good
I called Corsair up expecting to be told that this wasn't covered because it would be classified as misuse, BUT I was not. My call went in to Corsair at 11:57am this morning where I hit a Shortel phone mailbox. I left a message regarding my issue with a call back number and at 1:06pm was called back by a technical support agent name Greg. He was very friendly about the entire process and within the first 30 seconds of the conversation asked when and where I bought them. I told him they were a Newegg purchase on the 13th of May and he replied with "Yep, no problem we can RMA those for you"... no other questions asked. He said they no longer make the HS1A so they would more than likely be sending me a Corsair Vengeance 1300, which I'm alright that
I have only had to deal with Corsair's RMA process 1 other time after a DDR2 667 ValueSelect SO-DIMM died in my laptop after 4 years of faithful service and every day, heavy gaming/business usage. With that RMA I did it all online and was able to get the stick of ram returned (without any original packaging), they paid both ways of shipping for that ram as well
. After that I was pretty loyal to the Corsair name, and have built hundreds of systems for customers using their ram, not one stick has needed to be sent back yet for the RMA process . The only question I didn't get to ask the tech support guy was whether I need the original packaging in order to send the headset back (which I do not have). I do however have the spare headphone covers for it and all other parts of the headset are in pristine shape.Here is a picture of the headset.
I was also given some inside information regarding Corsair and its making Video Cards and Motherboards.... The long of the short is.... They don't plan to get into that market. They wanted to for the longest time but the issue is that in order to get into those markets they would have to buy a package of lower end chipsets and GPUs, something the company currently has no invested interest in due to their image of being a mid-high end manufacturer. Making low end GPUs or motherboards just don't fit into their current business model, and the cost of having to purchase them in order to purchase the higher end series would cut way to deep into their profits. Bad news for the rest of you guys out there hoping to see them enter even more markets as they have been expanding in the recent years.
