Update 18 Aug 7:40 ET: This story has been updated with extra detail and clarification regarding the purchase of the laptop from a third-party reseller, as listed on Best Buy's website.
There was a time when PC RAM and storage products were sold with lifetime warranties. Replacement of these components was an inconvenience at worst, with parts exhibiting great reliability and sold at trifling prices. In 2026, the tide has fully turned, and we see even the largest businesses wriggling to avoid warranty repairs and replacements with little shame. Yet another anti-consumer case in point is shared by GRINZ_DOCTOR on the Mildly Infuriating Subreddit. It appears to be a bizarre episode where Best Buy ‘repaired’ an under-warranty laptop by simply removing one of its SODIMMs, testing it worked reliably, and then sent it back to the customer with half the memory it originally shipped with installed, confusion possibly caused by a purchase made from a third-party seller.
You can see at the top of the letter from Best Buy/Geek Squad, dated August this year, the device sent in for warranty repair was a “Lenovo – Upgraded – Legion 5 15.1-inch WXGA Gaming Laptop, Intel i9-14900HX, RTX 5070, 64GB DDR5, 2TB SSD, +1TB dock station, Win 11 Pro” laptop in black, available to buy at Best Buy in the exact configuration. One possible reason for the mishap is that the linked product here is sold by a third-party retailer, PC Heaven, which offers "professionally customized and upgraded configurations." Upgraded in the product listing may be a giveaway that this is, in fact, one of PC Heaven's souped-up options.
GRINZ_DOCTOR sent the eight-month-old 64 GB laptop in for attention after beginning to experience repeated blue screen crashes. The notes mention that underlying software issues were basically ruled out ahead of the warranty return, as reinstalling Windows didn’t help.
Amputation was the chosen 'cure'
The technician accepted the Legion 5 in good cosmetic condition with “no visible wear or damage.” After investigations, the blue screen issues were clearly pinned on RAM, as the Best Buy tech closed the case with repair notes as follows: “Unit has two 32GB sticks for a total of 64GB; this unit only accepts 32GB RAM maximum. One stick of 32GB has been removed and sent back to client with unit.” Before ending the note with the punchline “Unit passed all tests.”
Of course, we don’t know exactly what was done by the repair tech during their fault-finding and resolution process. While GRINZ_DOCTOR insists they bought the unit as described on the upper section of the document with 64GB pre-installed, a product you can still get on Best Buy right now, it seems the most likely explanation for the snafu is that the customer bought an upgraded model from a third-party reseller. Best Buy's insistence that the laptop only supports 32GB of RAM does clash with the user's report that the laptop worked for eight months. Moreover, this certainly doesn't change the fact that they simply took the RAM from the machine without the customer's input. Best Buy also continues to list a configuration of a laptop on its website that the company admits is unsupported by the hardware.
Plenty of commenters have advised escalating the issue with Best Buy. They are advised to go to the store in person and keep escalating until a proper remedy - meaning a new working second RAM stick, or a like-for-like laptop replacement - is done. However, if they did indeed buy a third-party offering, their options may be limited.
Earlier this month, we reported on Micron offering pennies on the dollar for Crucial RAM returns. Meanwhile, in NAND-land, SK hynix reportedly ran out of replacement SSDs and is instead insisting on original purchase price refunds.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
Reply Yeah, and no mention is made (at least here) that the SELLER was NOT Best Buy (they are called PC Heaven, which may explain why there was a RAM stick that already went to heaven).factchecker said:Smh how many more sites are gonna cover this crap. Best buy clearly mailed the ram if you actually read. Just delete this article and save ursel..ur editor the embarrassment. Still, I don't know if he had a contract with Geek Squad made with the purchase. If so, they should have replaced the RAM under their terms. (And maybe BB will throw out all of these third-party sellers so we can have a normal site back instead of the garbage site we have now.)
I am not a great fan of WorstBuy but:Reply
If the seller was not BB... then why did the customer bring it to them for repair? If they were subcontracted maybe? But this wasn't clear enough in the article.
As to WorstBuy: The lappy was working fine for 8 months despite the "too much RAM" lame excuse....maybe they removed the one defective stick and called it a day (instead of replacing it).
"One stick of 32GB has been removed and sent back to client with unit.”Reply
I read this to mean nobody stole any RAM, they just sent the uninstalled stick back to the owner. Why is this an article?
Facts aside, I really hated it when big retail started copying the Amazon model and accepting sellers from anywhere on their platforms. It became very confusing, and I mostly stopped shopping at Newegg at that point.