Meanwhile, Crucial SSD owners are seemingly experiencing similar RMA practices from Micron. A Reddit user named LeanaIsTheBest highlighted in the same thread that Micron is allegedly refusing to provide direct replacements for a failing 4TB SSD. Instead, the company ostensibly offered a gift card equivalent to the original purchase price of the 4TB SSD as compensation. However, the company provided an alternate option to receive the same amount in cash through PayPal or Venmo with the condition that the user pays the 6% transaction fee.
Micron wound down its consumer business back in December 2025. It is reasonable to think the chipmaker has reshaped its manufacturing factories to cater to more profitable markets, such as data centers and the AI sector. Micron probably is not maintaining inventory or production lines for consumer products, so direct replacements are unlikely. For a company that reported revenue of $41.46 billion in its last earnings call, it isn't a great look for Micron to not reimburse the replacement cost for loyal customers who have purchased its Crucial products.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom\u2019s Hardware. Although he loves everything that\u2019s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-25/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Zhiye Liu News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
core-builder A couple of years ago I made a warranty claim for a failed 16GB stick of Crucial Ballistix Max RGB DDR4 4400, which was from a 32GB kit. They insisted I return only the defective module rather than the entire kit, and they were only willing to replace it with a single Crucial PRO 16GB DDR4 3200 module, despite those being two different tiers of product, and the fact that I would now have mismatched modules. When I pointed out the discrepancy and argued that they were not offering a like-for-like exchange, they basically said "sorry, since we no longer have any stock of the original modules, that's the best we can do". I would've gladly accepted a cash offer for original MSRP, or for what I originally paid, or even just an offer to exchange the full kit of both modules. Reply
TechieTwo I used Micron DRAM in all of my many builds decades ago. When I had one pair go bad and tried to warranty them they gave me a bunch of pushback. That was the last time I ever purchased or recommended Micron DRAM again. Their Biz practices are not acceptable to me and their DRAM does not seem to be as reliable IME as other brands. Reply
murkusdagger Desktop DDR5 is dual-channel. A kit is 2 matched sticks, one per channel. Three sticks can't split evenly across two channels, so part of your RAM runs at full dual-channel speed and the rest drops to single-channel. Same GB, worse memory. "Your board has 4 slots" is misdirection. Four slots means you fill them in pairs, 2 or 4. It never meant 3 is supported. The correct replacement is another 2×24, and Crucial knows that. And they argued that 3 would be better performance. That's what makes it wild. Reply
hwertz They tried the same with Louis Rossman. If you've seen his Youtube channel you know how that went. He *specializes* in covering device repairbility but expanded to companies screwing people over in general. He dragged their name through the mud (as it should be). correctly pointed out it's not his problem that they drove prices up by cutting DDR production to make themselves billions in profits. He is passionate about this stuff, when he gets worked up he looks like he may have a stroke. Long (well not that long) story short he got his full refund. Reply
Dementoss I don't know how things are here now but, in the UK Crucial always had an excellent reputation for reliability and customer service. Disappointing to see Micron seemingly willing to throw that away. They may come to regret it, if the AI business suffers a major correction and, they seek to re-enter the consumer market. Reply
hwertz Dementoss said: I don't know how things are here now but, in the UK Crucial always had an excellent reputation for reliability and customer service. Disappointing to see Micron seemingly willing to throw that away. They may come to regret it, if the AI business suffers a major correction and, they seek to re-enter the consumer market. As far as I know they did here in the states as well? But they've blown through that. Even if they hadn't tried to gaslight Rossman (they falsely claimed his faulty memory wasn't faulty and sent it back — he does phone and pc repair so he had a full on memory tester besides plugging it into a pc or two and having them fail to POST), offer in his case 20 cents on the dollar of replacement cost, etc., and done the same to others. Even if that wasn't a thing, just screwing over the regular 'consumer' market as they have is enough to make me not want to buy from them again. Honestly, even if it's black market in the US, if I buy any new RAM I'll make sure it's CXMT (or JHICC or YMTC once they get production ramped up shortly). I'll skip Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix for what they've done to their past customers (not the warranty thing, the abandoning the market as quickly and thoroughly as they did.) Reply
thestryker To me this mostly shows how slapdash the decision to kill Crucial was. They easily could have had plenty of modules prepared if it had been planned for. Instead they clearly axed it and opted to not worry about their warranties because that would have cost them money. hwertz said: They tried the same with Louis Rossman. That was a Samsung SSD, not Micron DRAM. Reply
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/micron-reportedly-offers-pennies-on-the-dollar-for-crucial-ram-return-only-offers-to-reimburse-original-msrp-despite-it-being-only-37-percent-of-market-value-chipmaker-later-reverses-course-with-a-better-solution#main
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.