The warranty saga surrounding Micron and its now defunct Crucial consumer brand keeps spiraling out of control. We recently covered a customer’s RMA process with Crucial, in which the company denied him a warranty replacement, and even refused to send back his RAM. The customer was cornered into accepting the only possible remediation: a refund at the original purchase price.

Now, the saga seems to be picking up even more, as another Redditor going by AssignmentGlass5591 posted in the r/pcmasterrace subreddit about his own RMA experience with Crucial. Apparently, this customer’s Crucial X10 Pro 4TB portable SSD died at just 1% of its rated lifespan, a catastrophic failure by all means that should be covered under warranty. The customer swiftly contacted Crucial support for an RMA, and the response was quite baffling.

Crucial now claims Micron "stopped making M.2 NVMe SSDs" to dodge warranties. Micron is a top-3 NAND manufacturer. I have it in writing, and their own app confirms my SSD is dead.
byu/AssignmentGlass5591 inpcmasterrace

Crucial’s customer support representative denied him a replacement and offered him a refund at the original price. We have, of course, seen this before, and as appalling as that may be, it’s a response we expected. However, the explanation that came next is quite confusing.

“Due to the closure of Crucial, the production of all components, including portable SSDs and M.2 NVMe SSDs, has been discontinued. The stock is therefore exhausted.”

Now, the part that leaves me scratching my head is that the customer didn’t ask for a replacement of his portable drive, as that might have been difficult to secure. He just asked for a standard M.2 NVMe SSD, which should be readily available from Micron, one of the three largest NAND flash manufacturers on the planet. Surely, Micron has NOT ceased production of all M.2 NVMe SSDs, have they? 

The customer support representative’s email.

As the customer rightly notes, Micron reported $28 billion in net income last quarter, and most of that came from the enterprise segment. Micron has shifted its focus almost entirely to producing enterprise SSDs like the 7450, 7500, and 9550, and now this customer service rep is telling customers straight up that Micron does not make any M.2 consumer SSDs? How is that even possible?

Now, of course, the customer service rep mentioned Crucial, not Micron, which makes sense on the surface, since Crucial has effectively been closed. However, Crucial never made SSDs or NAND flash in the first place, as it all came from Micron. Let’s remind ourselves that Micron’s VP said the company had no plans to abandon gamers by exiting the Crucial business, but now the story seems to have shifted.

The customer’s reaction to the email.

This customer was also offered a refund at the original price, which is well below what the SSD currently goes for due to the global memory and NAND crisis. This practice is not limited to Crucial/Micron; SK Hynix has recently been denying replacements for their SSDs and instead offering customers a refund at the original price. That solution is simply unacceptable given the market conditions, as the customers will have to spend almost double or triple that amount to secure a replacement from the market.

Something similar happened to YouTuber Louis Rossmann recently, when Samsung tried to deny him a replacement for his SSD. He threatened to take Samsung to court over it, and mysteriously the issue was swiftly resolved. Samsung initially offered a refund at the original price (like Crucial and SK Hynix), but later reimbursed Rossmann at the current market rate.

The replies in the thread are as you would expect: Redditors are furious over this practice. Many are calling for a class-action lawsuit, and others are still confused about what that particular line from the rep means. 

It is still unclear whether Micron has halted production of all M.2 NVMe SSDs (unlikely) or whether Crucial is simply being deceptive about not having any replacement parts on hand. Still, it is an anti-consumer practice which is actively hurting whatever trust gamers had in Crucial and Micron.