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There were sellers buying the smallest RAM units, changing the RAM chips, and then reselling them as the higher RAM SKUs. The sellers who do this don’t always c

There were sellers buying the smallest RAM units, changing the RAM chips, and then reselling them as the higher RAM SKUs. The sellers who do this don’t always care to use good RAM chips and may even use QA reject parts. When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi foundation.

DoctorOetker 5d ago
could it be construed as anti-competitive to block end-users or resellers from swapping RAM?
- Aurornis 5d ago
  No. Price discrimination and locking hardware are not illegal.
  - smilespray 5d ago
    You'd be well advised to remember there is a world beyond your visible horizon.
    - Aurornis 5d ago
      I prefer to stay grounded in the reality of how the world works when responding to questions about legalities.
      - smilespray 5d ago
        What you said isn't true for quite a few countries.
        iso1631 5d ago
        That's quite possible, but could you name a couple where locking a raspberry pi type of computer would be illegal?
        smilespray 5d ago
        EU Right to Repair Directive specifically prohibits manufacturers from using HW/SW locks or firmware limits to block part replacement.
        Aurornis 5d ago
        The part can be replaced with the same part to repair the item. This is not locked.
        smilespray 5d ago
        Part locking against unoriginal parts is prohibited in the EU.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 5d ago
        "Each chip is programmed with the timing settings and storage size settings of just the RAM we ship it with, and doesn't know how to boot with anything else." I don't know if you could call that "blocking." I mean you could call it that but I don't know if that's legally what it would be.
  - DoctorOetker 5d ago
    lets try proof by exhaustion: in those jurisdictions where either price discrimination or locking hardware are not illegal, it is typically perfectly legal to reverse engineer for compatibility purposes. So nothing prevents such resellers from upping their game and learning a thing or two about link training and general SDRAM bringup. Once they have acquired the knowledge legally in such jurisdictions the product just flows in the other jurisdictions anyway. Courts upheld the monopolistic position of microsoft etc. for decades, but respect has no finality, "re" + "spect" to review, so later such companies were fined for their decades long transgressions. But during those decades it may appear legal to the average consumer. Inaction is not permission.
    - Grombobulous 5d ago
      All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective. Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult. There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players.
      - DoctorOetker 5d ago
        > All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective. > Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult. I'm not asking for help to figure this out, and of course RP is allowed to shoot themselves in any foot they like. Consider Europe where such reverse engineering is perfectly legal for compatibility purposes. Let's consider an idealized scenario, there were no security bugs or other issues with the product that would justify reverse engineering RP blobs in public. When they do something like this, they are GIVING CARTE BLANCHE to public reverse engineering efforts to attain compatibility with other RAM chips. Why would you provide legal cover in some jurisdictions for others in publicly reverse engineering your own products by introducing artificial incompatibility? Also from a consumer perspective, RP tries to place itself front and center in maker communties, emphasizing modularity, not just hobbyists, also companies build and design end products using RP units. All of these companies must now be wondering where RP Foundations exact red line resides: can we resell an RP board in a Kiosk we made? or only for as long as it doesn't compete with RP's future Kiosk modules? Today its the RAM upgrade, but tomorrow RP modules may refuse to boot some popular Kiosk hardware intentionally. What prevents RP Foundation from eventually "not copying" end-application hardware like a Kiosk design from their customers, and then enforcing compatibility only with RP Kiosks? So not only are they providing legal cover for public reverse engineering efforts, they are scaring part of their customer base. > There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players. That's a very shallow interpretation of law, looking only at what RP is or isn't allowed to do. There's generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like reverse engineering for compatibility or security applications illegal either.
  - Hizonner 5d ago
    Lots of things aren't illegal... unless you do them for illegal purposes. I doubt antitrust would get anywhere on this RAM issue, but antitrust law is not defined in terms of either of those categories.
- kmeisthax 5d ago
  Probably not. Doing a RAM swap and then selling the resulting unit as if it were a Raspberry Pi of the higher RAM capacity might be construed as trademark infringement[0]. And in general it's fairly difficult to make arguments in antitrust cases that boil down to "yes, your honor, everything they're doing is within their rights but I don't like it". [0] At the same time, the scammers could probably get away with this by putting "Upgraded to 16GB!" in the title of their eBay listings or whatever, in the same way that fraudulent storage devices are labeled as "upgraded" (read: lying about their capacity). That doesn't impact the antitrust analysis though.
  - DoctorOetker 5d ago
    I certainly agree that such a reseller should clearly state the modification, and not pretend its an authentic RPi 8GB unit. But if this is the real concern, they could just display the fact that "Unoriginal RAM detected" to inform the user its not a vanilla RPi Foundation product, so buyers understand the situation, but continue booting normally.
    - mannykannot 5d ago
      In practice, this would still leave the RPi Foundation with the warranty and support burden generated by the "reseller's" activity.
      - DoctorOetker 5d ago
        For every user asking questions and facing issues for such-or-such firmware or software support they need in their projects, that same user would have appeared regardless if their Pi came from RP directly or through a reseller. Every board sold would have been an extra user, the reseller isn't adding full users (although they may increase the indirect customer base!), so even gaining a user through a reseller increases the amortization divider for the support burden. Now lets consider RAM chip support burden, the original Pi RAM chips can have issues generating support burden, and so can the reseller RAM chips. Unless RP foundation refuses to upstream link training / RAM bringup patches from resellers, there is no real additional support burden. In fact if RP were a little more creative, they could have tried contacting the resellers to explain they can continue their modding business as long as they advertise it clearly as modified, and to inform them they will be receiving units that didn't pass the RAM tests from the automated lines, since they're going to desolder the chips anyway, this can save costs for RP foundation.
kotaKat 5d ago
But bricking retroactively in the field is a bad move, and sends even more anger and RMA requests back towards parties. https://github.com/therealdreg/ftdibrick https://github.com/therealdreg/ftdibrick Pepperidge Farm remembers the FTDI driver bricking.
- undersuit 5d ago
  It's not bricked retroactively from what I've read.
  - kotaKat 5d ago
    https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/issues/761 https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/issues/761 If someone gets updated in the wild (like this person did without realizing they had a counterfeit board), they'll fail to boot.
    - undersuit 5d ago
      Consider that that happened a year ago and this submission may be about the fix.
      - abracadaniel 5d ago
        The "fix" in the thread is just not updating ever again.
        undersuit 5d ago
        There is no fix that can be suggested in that thread. Pi LTD doesn't have the modified RAM Pis to test their firmware against nor should they be required to support modified hardware.
- kiicia 5d ago
  gateway 3ds tried to brick 3ds-es of users of cloned cards, bricked whole swaths of actual users instead https://www.eurogamer.net/3ds-flashcard-includes-secret-kill-switch-that-bricks-handhelds https://www.eurogamer.net/3ds-flashcard-includes-secret-kill...
jamesh98 5d ago
[dead]
Tepix 5d ago
The user friendly option would be to print the amount of RAM in very large letters on the PCB. There happens to be a lot of suitable surface on the PCB to the right of the text "Raspberry Pi 5" on the PCB anyway (§). Right now the amount of RAM is hard to read and easy to modify (move a little tiny SMD resistor). Drawback: You need different silkscreens for different amounts of RAM. Btw, if you're worried about RAM-swapped units you can already verify them as described at https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberry-pi-5-how-to-verify-factory-ram-size https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberr... -- (§) as can be seen here https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/documents/RP-006041-PC-2-PCN%20Raspberry%20Pi%205B%20Rev%204.pdf https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/docum...
- kiicia 5d ago
  it can be very easily done by burning it with laser on prepared blank box on silkscreen - even iPhones are marked this way with their own serial numbers the only reason why pis are not marked this way is because raspberry didn't wanted to (so far)
- buildsjets 5d ago
  A little bit of acetone and a q-tip will remove the silkscreen, and then the PCB can easily re-marked by the scammer. Having a new silkscreen made is pocket change.
  - jackyinger 5d ago
    Etch it in the top layer of copper, cover it with soldermask. A bit harder to see, but harder to tamper.
    - hasperdi 5d ago
      That's still trivial to defeat. They're very capable and determined. In the olden days they used to mill the top of microprocessor ie intel x86 to remove the engraving and engrave the fake label. These days I imagine it's way more advanced
frenchtoast8 5d ago
Mac Minis used to have soldered on SSDs, but the 2024 model is upgradable. A lot of people purchased a cheaper Mac Mini and upgraded the storage themselves. Most people would argue this is a good thing, even if some of those Mac Minis were resold. This is no different.
- snapetom 5d ago
  It absolutely is different. You just said the Mac Mini is upgradable but the Pi is still soldered on. Desoldering and soldering a new RAM unit carries huge risks no matter how skilled people claim they are at it.
  - locknitpicker 5d ago
    > It absolutely is different. You just said the Mac Mini is upgradable but the Pi is still soldered on. I'm sorry, you seem to be confused. Soldering is not the problem. Locking up the hardware to have hardware provisioned tier limits to block you from upgrading your own hardware is silly. And do note, raspberry pi doesn't prevent you from switching RAM chips. The board will continue to work just the same with high capacity variants. But for some reason raspberry pi hardcodes a max memory size that prevents you from using the hardware upgrade you paid for in full.
- wolrah 5d ago
  > Mac Minis used to have soldered on SSDs, but the 2024 model is upgradable. A lot of people purchased a cheaper Mac Mini and upgraded the storage themselves. Most people would argue this is a good thing, even if some of those Mac Minis were resold. This is no different. Replacing a socketed component that is modular by design, even if it's not officially intended to be upgraded outside the factory, is worlds different from replacing BGA components on a densely packed PCB. That said, there could also be a middle ground by just providing some way to look up the hardware specs of a given serial number. Post the part numbers of the components that you're concerned about being replaced and provide tools to verify as many of them through software as is practical. Allow owners to know if their device has been modified and how so, but allow them to choose what to do with that information. Combating fraudsters trying to pass off modified and/or refurbished devices as genuine is valid, but preventing owners from modifying or repairing their own or knowingly purchasing such devices from honest resellers is not.
PunchyHamster 5d ago
Should just print "warranty void on unauthorized RAM", instead of not booting
- undersuit 5d ago
  It does boot.
zb3 5d ago
Oh no, there were bad actors on the market, let's lock the hardware so cheaper but genuine options can't emerge. > When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi It's not their problem then, the seller is responsible for it and I think we can assume the user has a brain so they knew they could buy a more expensive option from the authorized sellers. Isn't this the case?
- ThrowawayR2 5d ago
  > "we can assume the user has a brain" Dangerous assumption there. I'm not just being cynical, that is decades of experience speaking.
stefan_ 5d ago
Curiously NVIDIA have long allowed consumer GPUs to be upgraded with larger memory chips - they could very easily reject booting those configurations. This is something done almost exclusively by unsavory Chinese actors who then sell on the bare retail PCBs (core removed, since they use different PCBs and heatsinks) to various scammers that foist them upon unsuspecting retail buyers. In short, someone at NVIDIA really hates retail, but loves Chinese sanction busters.
renonce 5d ago
Just make the RAM mismatch a warning that voids warranty rather than a hard error. This is no excuse for forcing hardware pairing
akersten 5d ago
> When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi foundation. They don't need the resellers help for that! I've already been burned twice thinking "I'll use a raspberry pi for this small project" and having it die within a month because reliably reading/writing to an SD card is hard or something. Between the notorious unreliability, crazy price hikes, trademark or whatever disputes, and this anti consumer ewaste generating policy, I can't think of any reason I'd ever patronize them again.. my only regret is it took me two purchases to learn this lesson!

DoctorOetker 5d ago

could it be construed as anti-competitive to block end-users or resellers from swapping RAM?

Aurornis 5d ago
No. Price discrimination and locking hardware are not illegal.
- smilespray 5d ago
  You'd be well advised to remember there is a world beyond your visible horizon.
  - Aurornis 5d ago
    I prefer to stay grounded in the reality of how the world works when responding to questions about legalities.
    - smilespray 5d ago
      What you said isn't true for quite a few countries.
      - iso1631 5d ago
        That's quite possible, but could you name a couple where locking a raspberry pi type of computer would be illegal?
        smilespray 5d ago
        EU Right to Repair Directive specifically prohibits manufacturers from using HW/SW locks or firmware limits to block part replacement.
        Aurornis 5d ago
        The part can be replaced with the same part to repair the item. This is not locked.
        smilespray 5d ago
        Part locking against unoriginal parts is prohibited in the EU.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 5d ago
        "Each chip is programmed with the timing settings and storage size settings of just the RAM we ship it with, and doesn't know how to boot with anything else." I don't know if you could call that "blocking." I mean you could call it that but I don't know if that's legally what it would be.
- DoctorOetker 5d ago
  lets try proof by exhaustion: in those jurisdictions where either price discrimination or locking hardware are not illegal, it is typically perfectly legal to reverse engineer for compatibility purposes. So nothing prevents such resellers from upping their game and learning a thing or two about link training and general SDRAM bringup. Once they have acquired the knowledge legally in such jurisdictions the product just flows in the other jurisdictions anyway. Courts upheld the monopolistic position of microsoft etc. for decades, but respect has no finality, "re" + "spect" to review, so later such companies were fined for their decades long transgressions. But during those decades it may appear legal to the average consumer. Inaction is not permission.
  - Grombobulous 5d ago
    All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective. Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult. There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players.
    - DoctorOetker 5d ago
      > All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective. > Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult. I'm not asking for help to figure this out, and of course RP is allowed to shoot themselves in any foot they like. Consider Europe where such reverse engineering is perfectly legal for compatibility purposes. Let's consider an idealized scenario, there were no security bugs or other issues with the product that would justify reverse engineering RP blobs in public. When they do something like this, they are GIVING CARTE BLANCHE to public reverse engineering efforts to attain compatibility with other RAM chips. Why would you provide legal cover in some jurisdictions for others in publicly reverse engineering your own products by introducing artificial incompatibility? Also from a consumer perspective, RP tries to place itself front and center in maker communties, emphasizing modularity, not just hobbyists, also companies build and design end products using RP units. All of these companies must now be wondering where RP Foundations exact red line resides: can we resell an RP board in a Kiosk we made? or only for as long as it doesn't compete with RP's future Kiosk modules? Today its the RAM upgrade, but tomorrow RP modules may refuse to boot some popular Kiosk hardware intentionally. What prevents RP Foundation from eventually "not copying" end-application hardware like a Kiosk design from their customers, and then enforcing compatibility only with RP Kiosks? So not only are they providing legal cover for public reverse engineering efforts, they are scaring part of their customer base. > There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players. That's a very shallow interpretation of law, looking only at what RP is or isn't allowed to do. There's generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like reverse engineering for compatibility or security applications illegal either.
- Hizonner 5d ago
  Lots of things aren't illegal... unless you do them for illegal purposes. I doubt antitrust would get anywhere on this RAM issue, but antitrust law is not defined in terms of either of those categories.
kmeisthax 5d ago
Probably not. Doing a RAM swap and then selling the resulting unit as if it were a Raspberry Pi of the higher RAM capacity might be construed as trademark infringement[0]. And in general it's fairly difficult to make arguments in antitrust cases that boil down to "yes, your honor, everything they're doing is within their rights but I don't like it". [0] At the same time, the scammers could probably get away with this by putting "Upgraded to 16GB!" in the title of their eBay listings or whatever, in the same way that fraudulent storage devices are labeled as "upgraded" (read: lying about their capacity). That doesn't impact the antitrust analysis though.
- DoctorOetker 5d ago
  I certainly agree that such a reseller should clearly state the modification, and not pretend its an authentic RPi 8GB unit. But if this is the real concern, they could just display the fact that "Unoriginal RAM detected" to inform the user its not a vanilla RPi Foundation product, so buyers understand the situation, but continue booting normally.
  - mannykannot 5d ago
    In practice, this would still leave the RPi Foundation with the warranty and support burden generated by the "reseller's" activity.
    - DoctorOetker 5d ago
      For every user asking questions and facing issues for such-or-such firmware or software support they need in their projects, that same user would have appeared regardless if their Pi came from RP directly or through a reseller. Every board sold would have been an extra user, the reseller isn't adding full users (although they may increase the indirect customer base!), so even gaining a user through a reseller increases the amortization divider for the support burden. Now lets consider RAM chip support burden, the original Pi RAM chips can have issues generating support burden, and so can the reseller RAM chips. Unless RP foundation refuses to upstream link training / RAM bringup patches from resellers, there is no real additional support burden. In fact if RP were a little more creative, they could have tried contacting the resellers to explain they can continue their modding business as long as they advertise it clearly as modified, and to inform them they will be receiving units that didn't pass the RAM tests from the automated lines, since they're going to desolder the chips anyway, this can save costs for RP foundation.

kotaKat 5d ago

But bricking retroactively in the field is a bad move, and sends even more anger and RMA requests back towards parties. https://github.com/therealdreg/ftdibrick https://github.com/therealdreg/ftdibrick Pepperidge Farm remembers the FTDI driver bricking.

undersuit 5d ago
It's not bricked retroactively from what I've read.
- kotaKat 5d ago
  https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/issues/761 https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/issues/761 If someone gets updated in the wild (like this person did without realizing they had a counterfeit board), they'll fail to boot.
  - undersuit 5d ago
    Consider that that happened a year ago and this submission may be about the fix.
    - abracadaniel 5d ago
      The "fix" in the thread is just not updating ever again.
      - undersuit 5d ago
        There is no fix that can be suggested in that thread. Pi LTD doesn't have the modified RAM Pis to test their firmware against nor should they be required to support modified hardware.
kiicia 5d ago
gateway 3ds tried to brick 3ds-es of users of cloned cards, bricked whole swaths of actual users instead https://www.eurogamer.net/3ds-flashcard-includes-secret-kill-switch-that-bricks-handhelds https://www.eurogamer.net/3ds-flashcard-includes-secret-kill...

jamesh98 5d ago

[dead]

Tepix 5d ago

The user friendly option would be to print the amount of RAM in very large letters on the PCB. There happens to be a lot of suitable surface on the PCB to the right of the text "Raspberry Pi 5" on the PCB anyway (§). Right now the amount of RAM is hard to read and easy to modify (move a little tiny SMD resistor). Drawback: You need different silkscreens for different amounts of RAM. Btw, if you're worried about RAM-swapped units you can already verify them as described at https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberry-pi-5-how-to-verify-factory-ram-size https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberr... -- (§) as can be seen here https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/documents/RP-006041-PC-2-PCN%20Raspberry%20Pi%205B%20Rev%204.pdf https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/docum...

kiicia 5d ago
it can be very easily done by burning it with laser on prepared blank box on silkscreen - even iPhones are marked this way with their own serial numbers the only reason why pis are not marked this way is because raspberry didn't wanted to (so far)
buildsjets 5d ago
A little bit of acetone and a q-tip will remove the silkscreen, and then the PCB can easily re-marked by the scammer. Having a new silkscreen made is pocket change.
- jackyinger 5d ago
  Etch it in the top layer of copper, cover it with soldermask. A bit harder to see, but harder to tamper.
  - hasperdi 5d ago
    That's still trivial to defeat. They're very capable and determined. In the olden days they used to mill the top of microprocessor ie intel x86 to remove the engraving and engrave the fake label. These days I imagine it's way more advanced

frenchtoast8 5d ago

Mac Minis used to have soldered on SSDs, but the 2024 model is upgradable. A lot of people purchased a cheaper Mac Mini and upgraded the storage themselves. Most people would argue this is a good thing, even if some of those Mac Minis were resold. This is no different.

snapetom 5d ago
It absolutely is different. You just said the Mac Mini is upgradable but the Pi is still soldered on. Desoldering and soldering a new RAM unit carries huge risks no matter how skilled people claim they are at it.
- locknitpicker 5d ago
  > It absolutely is different. You just said the Mac Mini is upgradable but the Pi is still soldered on. I'm sorry, you seem to be confused. Soldering is not the problem. Locking up the hardware to have hardware provisioned tier limits to block you from upgrading your own hardware is silly. And do note, raspberry pi doesn't prevent you from switching RAM chips. The board will continue to work just the same with high capacity variants. But for some reason raspberry pi hardcodes a max memory size that prevents you from using the hardware upgrade you paid for in full.
wolrah 5d ago
> Mac Minis used to have soldered on SSDs, but the 2024 model is upgradable. A lot of people purchased a cheaper Mac Mini and upgraded the storage themselves. Most people would argue this is a good thing, even if some of those Mac Minis were resold. This is no different. Replacing a socketed component that is modular by design, even if it's not officially intended to be upgraded outside the factory, is worlds different from replacing BGA components on a densely packed PCB. That said, there could also be a middle ground by just providing some way to look up the hardware specs of a given serial number. Post the part numbers of the components that you're concerned about being replaced and provide tools to verify as many of them through software as is practical. Allow owners to know if their device has been modified and how so, but allow them to choose what to do with that information. Combating fraudsters trying to pass off modified and/or refurbished devices as genuine is valid, but preventing owners from modifying or repairing their own or knowingly purchasing such devices from honest resellers is not.

PunchyHamster 5d ago

Should just print "warranty void on unauthorized RAM", instead of not booting

undersuit 5d ago
It does boot.

zb3 5d ago

Oh no, there were bad actors on the market, let's lock the hardware so cheaper but genuine options can't emerge. > When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi It's not their problem then, the seller is responsible for it and I think we can assume the user has a brain so they knew they could buy a more expensive option from the authorized sellers. Isn't this the case?

ThrowawayR2 5d ago
> "we can assume the user has a brain" Dangerous assumption there. I'm not just being cynical, that is decades of experience speaking.

stefan_ 5d ago

Curiously NVIDIA have long allowed consumer GPUs to be upgraded with larger memory chips - they could very easily reject booting those configurations. This is something done almost exclusively by unsavory Chinese actors who then sell on the bare retail PCBs (core removed, since they use different PCBs and heatsinks) to various scammers that foist them upon unsuspecting retail buyers. In short, someone at NVIDIA really hates retail, but loves Chinese sanction busters.

renonce 5d ago

Just make the RAM mismatch a warning that voids warranty rather than a hard error. This is no excuse for forcing hardware pairing

akersten 5d ago

> When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi foundation. They don't need the resellers help for that! I've already been burned twice thinking "I'll use a raspberry pi for this small project" and having it die within a month because reliably reading/writing to an SD card is hard or something. Between the notorious unreliability, crazy price hikes, trademark or whatever disputes, and this anti consumer ewaste generating policy, I can't think of any reason I'd ever patronize them again.. my only regret is it took me two purchases to learn this lesson!