Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing • Hacker News Board

Re: Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing

#21

Post by hogwasher » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

Cpoll wrote: post #14

> When confronted by Goran, Umart went to the trouble of quoting the Australian Consumer Law but made a seemingly byzantine and twisted interpretation of it, reiterating that a refund at the original price was the proper remedy. Have I been living in a country with weak consumer protection for too long? I can't see refunding the product as byzantine, and I've never heard of anyone getting a refund at the new price.

Some electronics insurance providers will do that in the U.S. I'd say that kind of refund isn't typical otherwise.

But if the RAM was sold with Umart's promise to replace it (or the local laws' requirement that they replace it) if it prooved faulty within such and such a time period, then they owe the buyer a replacement.

If they don't want to provide an actual replacement, anything less than giving the buyer a full present-day replacement's worth of money, or a genuinely equivalent or better product, is breaking their own guarantee and/or the local law (I don't know Australian law).

They can't just say "actually it's more expensive now and we don't want to honor our replacement guarantee anymore, so we'll only give you a quarter of a replacement's worth of money instead". That's absurd.

They just want to shove their own bad luck/the consequences of the RAM shortage off on their customers in any way they can, whenever they think they can get away with it.

Re: Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing

#22

Post by Tadpole9181 » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

theowaway213456 wrote: post #2

Here's a (flawed) thought experiment: imagine that 100% of customers' RAM suddenly goes faulty at the same time, and RAM prices have suddenly skyrocketed to infinity at the same time. Which outcome is ideal? Which one is morally correct? (A) the retailer refunds every customer, loses all of their profits and probably goes bankrupt (B) the retailer is forced to go into massive debt in order to replace everyone's RAM,…

It's not a "flawed" thought experiment and it's certainly not "instructive", it's utter trite clearly framed to promote the idea that the retailer can do whatever they want to save money.

This isn't what happened. It's nowhere near what happened. This will never happen. And our laws are written for the real world, not some hyperbole designed for corporate interests where any and all consumer protections are impossible because "what if the moon explodes".

Re: Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing

#23

Post by hahn-kev » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 8:05 PM UTC

theowaway213456 wrote: post #2

Here's a (flawed) thought experiment: imagine that 100% of customers' RAM suddenly goes faulty at the same time, and RAM prices have suddenly skyrocketed to infinity at the same time. Which outcome is ideal? Which one is morally correct? (A) the retailer refunds every customer, loses all of their profits and probably goes bankrupt (B) the retailer is forced to go into massive debt in order to replace everyone's RAM,…

D: give them money at the original price of the ram.

Re: Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing

#24

Post by hananova » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 11:14 PM UTC

john01dav wrote: post #12

hananova wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is, and should be, B. Retailers that wish to avoid future hardship can prepare by pre-stocking some replacement parts like in C, but I don’t think laws should protect retailers from their poor financial choices. The law should strictly, and extremely, protect the consumer.

There is a lot of merit to this view, but there is also a major problem: rules like this make it substantially harder to start a new business due to increasing overhead and complexity, which is bad for everyone long term. Such comparatively more complex and burdensome regulation is why so many (but not all) startups go to America or Israel instead of Europe. To address this I prefer ultra low friction and ultra low c…

I'll take fewer startups if the tradeoff is actual consumer and human rights. I don't even think it's a morally debatable tradeoff.

Re: Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing

#25

Post by jasomill » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 2:02 AM UTC

john01dav wrote: post #12

hananova wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is, and should be, B. Retailers that wish to avoid future hardship can prepare by pre-stocking some replacement parts like in C, but I don’t think laws should protect retailers from their poor financial choices. The law should strictly, and extremely, protect the consumer.

There is a lot of merit to this view, but there is also a major problem: rules like this make it substantially harder to start a new business due to increasing overhead and complexity, which is bad for everyone long term. Such comparatively more complex and burdensome regulation is why so many (but not all) startups go to America or Israel instead of Europe. To address this I prefer ultra low friction and ultra low c…

The most important thing in my view is that both parties are aware of their rights and responsibilities. If the plain text of the warranty agreement specifies replacement, replacement should be required. If the business doesn't want to assume the risk, that's fine, but the warranty should then clearly and explicitly stipulate replacement or refund at the retailer's discretion, in such a way that an average consumer would be expected to see and understand this (i.e., no "replacement" in large, friendly letters and "or refund" buried in fine print or legalese, or leaving out specific details to be filled in by default provisions when such provisions favor the retailer).

Re: Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing

#26

Post by john01dav » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 7:14 PM UTC

hananova wrote: post #24

john01dav wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of merit to this view, but there is also a major problem: rules like this make it substantially harder to start a new business due to increasing overhead and complexity, which is bad for everyone long term. Such comparatively more complex and burdensome regulation is why so many (but not all) startups go to America or Israel instead of Europe. To address this I prefer ultra low friction and ultra low c…

I'll take fewer startups if the tradeoff is actual consumer and human rights. I don't even think it's a morally debatable tradeoff.

I don't think that it's that simple. I'm advocating for regulations to consider the burden on small businesses and aggressively minimize it.

Another example than the GDPR example that I previously gave is beneficial owner registration. The US government tried to pass a law requiring every corporate entity to state who the beneficial owners are, to reduce tax evasion. In principle, this sounds great, but the vast majority of corporate entities are small businesses with natural persons owners, so that beneficial owner is already obvious. So, they should have added such an exception to filing requirements. Even better would be to just work with states to put beneficial owner fields on the existing state incorporation forms, instead of creating a new form, that are optional to fill in when the owner is a natural person. That way, we reduce tax evasion with the better data, but we aren't relying on a random electrician in Ohio or a tech nerd startup founder in California to be aware of these requirements. While one form isn't a big deal on its own, the whole system is like this, and it adds up.