CableMod issues the perfect response to 12VHPWR adapter failure reports

CableMod shows the industry how to respond to brewing controversies by standing by their customers

The 12VHPWR (12 Volt High PoWeR) connector has always been controversial, changing the way that manufacturers design new power supplies, while posing cable burnout risks when they are not inserted correctly. Even Nvidia has confirmed that 12VHPWR cables can cause problems if they are not fully inserted (see here). 

Now the inevitable has happened, 12VHPWR connector issues have affected CableMod. We first learned of this from reports within our YouTube comment section, and after hearing this news, CableMod has quickly acted to set the record straight with consumers, and confirm that they stand by their 12VHPWR products.

With most 12VHPWR cable problems stemming from incorrect cable insertions, it was inevitable that CableMod cables and adaptors would be affected by the ongoing 12VHPWR connector controversy, and so far CableMod has received around 20 cases of where their adaptors had melted. So far, CableMod has sold tens of thousands of their 12VHPWR adaptors, giving their adaptors an impressively low failure rate. 

CableMod has confirmed that the majority of their 20 reported cases involved incorrect cable insertion, but that a minority of cases were due to defective adaptors.

CableMod Stands By their Customers

In their statement below, the folks at CableMod have made one thing clear; they are standing by their customers. They have also done something refreshing, they took the time to fully explain the issue, and how they will help affected customers. As CableMod says below, they will leave none of their users out in the cold.

In cases where GPU RMAs are denied, CableMod will step in and reimburse users the full price of their graphics card to affected users. They have also put up the costs for sending GPUs to repair centers, for users who would prefer their hardware to be repaired and not replaced. This even applies to cases where cables are not fully inserted, ensuring that no affected CableMod customer is left behind. 

You can read CableMod’s full statement regarding 12VHWPR adapter failures;

    Hello Hardware Community,

Our 12VHPWR Angled Adapters have undoubtedly been our fasting-selling item at launch, and we have to start by thanking everyone who supported us and decided to pick one of them up.

Over the past couple weeks, a number of people have been making posts regarding melted adapters, and this has caused a number of people to write to us here on Reddit and other platforms asking if this is happening a lot. We wanted to make this post to explain what we are seeing on our end, and what we are doing to handle these cases.

From the beginning, we set out to create a product that not only looked good aesthetically, but was both robust and reliable. We have sold tens of thousands of these adapters since launch back in March, and of these, have received around 20 cases where the adapter connector had melted – an extremely low failure rate.

Upon analysis, the majority of failures were due to the adapters not being fully inserted into the GPU, while other cases were indeed due to defective adapters. We cannot deny that things can go wrong during the manufacturing process – no company can guarantee a 0% failure rate. However, what we can do is help our users when such things occur.

To that end, we have been closely monitoring cases that are being reported to our support team. For GPUs where the RMA requests are denied, we have offered to reimburse the full purchase price to the affected users. Some users have been asked to send their GPUs to repair centers, and we have covered all shipping costs as well. We have been doing this even in cases where the adapter was not fully inserted, as we want to make sure that none of our users are left out in the cold.

As for GPUs that are repaired, we are planning a series of giveways to help benefit our community. We have given one away on the NVIDIA subreddit, and will be giving away more across our various social platforms.

CableMod stands 100% behind each and every product that we ship, and when cases like this occur, we will always be here to help. As always, we thank everyone for their support and faith in us.

Sincerely,

Your Friends at CableMod

CableMod stands by their products

To put things simply, we are impressed with CableMods’ response to our queries about 12VHPWR adaptor failures. They were fully transparent, and have already taken the steps required to set things right with affected customers, even if the failures were due to incorrect insertion (what could be called ‘user error’ to avoid responsibility).

CableMod has made it clear that they stand by their 12VHPWR cable adaptors, and that they will support all customers who are affected by instances of adaptor failure. CableMod has also made it clear that failure rates are exceedingly low, with the company only knowing of around 20 failures after the sale of tens of thousands of adaptors. The PC industry has a lot of learn from how CableMod has responded to this new 12VHPWR controversy, and other companies can learn from CableMod’s customer-first approach. 

You can join the discussion on CableMod’s response to 12VHPWR adaptor failure reports on the OC3D Forums.