Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

BLUF: D-pad switch broke in less than 2 months and I have to wait 5-6 weeks for a replacement, or pay for a replacement to be sent to me. I've been a longtime buyer of Razer products, but unfortunately it looks like their quality control is not what it used to be, and it is absolutely apparent that their help desk / customer service is much, much worse. As a longtime user of the Tartarus game pad (all the way back to the Belkin N52), I was super excited to see the Tartarus V2 come out...especially since they brought a true D-pad back to the V2 like the old Nostromo had. I pre-ordered the V2 in NOV17 and received at the end of DEC17. By mid-FEB18, one of the d-pad switches failed (it stopped clicking, felt 'mushy' and would either not work, or be stuck on). I emailed Razer support and waited for over a week. I re-emailed them asking for a status update, and finally received an email back asking to see a movie of the issue and to fill-in a form. I sent the movie and form the same day and continued to wait another week with no response. I sent 2 more emails asking for a status and finally just called their help-line. After an ~45-60 min call with a help desk agent I was told that they would send me a label (~1 week), I would need to ship back my broken product and wait for their staff to inspect it/etc. (~1-2 weeks) and then they would ship me a new one (~1 week). I pushed back and said that I've already been waiting nearly 3 weeks to get this fixed so they offered up the "non standard" replacement approach, but that could only be done by their Tier 2 help desk...who would get back to me within 24-48 hours. Two days later (this morning 3/1/2018), I received an email that said they would send me a new product and a shipping label, but would require that I pay them first ($79.99 +tax) as a 'guarantee', and would hold my funds until they received the broken product back, plus an additional 10-15 business days. At this point, it's looking like it will be ~1.5-2 months since my product broke for me to receive a replacement and I'll have to pay twice for it and *hope* they reimbursement my funds in a timely manner. I'm not sure what has changed at Razer, but my only other experience with their help desk and replacement process was completely different. I had a switch fail on one of my Black Widow Ultimate keyboards a few years back and was contacted by a rep in less than 2 days, was told they would send me a new keyboard out the same day, and all I had to do was send them a picture of my keyboard cable being cut in half. I was super impressed with how easy it was and had a new keyboard in my hands within days. It's clear *something* has changed, and unfortunately, not in favor of the customer.