After browsing the sub for the last few weeks (which would make you think that ALL of the OLED LEs are defective), and unfortunately finding a dead green subpixel in a conspicuous place on my own LE, I wanted to document my RMA process for anyone else with one of the common questions I have seen come up.
Keep in mind this is my own personal experience, I certainly can’t guarantee the same treatment for you.
As my RMA is still in progress, I’ll update this post as new information comes in.
After deciding to actually RMA my LE (I was on the fence for a couple of days, but then ended up finding a total of 3 dead subpixels around the screen. Don’t look if you don’t see any obvious ones! 😂) I submitted a ticket to Steam Support on Sunday 11/26 at around noon. I attached some photos I had taken of the pixels, which I definitely suggest you also do to save time. There is already another post here where someone opened a ticket without a photo and was asked for one, and is now waiting for another reply.
Since I opened the ticket on a Sunday I expected a couple of days before I got a response, but I actually got one on Monday 11/27 at around 6:45pm (so around 29 hours turnaround). The response was that they were processing my RMA and I should keep an eye out for another email with an RMA return form and shipping label, which may take up to 24 hours to arrive. I wasn’t asked any further followup questions, they did the RMA without any issues.
That second email with the shipping label showed up an hour later, at around 8pm.
At this point in the journey, I have boxed up my LE again (thankfully I was too lazy to throw out the original box, so it is going back in that) and sent it on its way. They asked that I send back the Deck in its original case, along with the original PSU that it came with.
TLDR:
Include a picture of whatever you can when you open the original ticket
RMA ticket turnaround was about 1.5 days
Total RMA process turnaround TBD
Deck OLED LE RMA Timeline
0 hours: Opened RMA ticket (on a Sunday)
29 hours: Received response from support, processing RMA
30 hours: Received email with RMA return form and shipping label
44 hours: Shipped to RMA center
TBD: Received at RMA center
TBD: RMA processed
TBD: Replacement shipped
TBD: Replacement received
Mine actually showed up pretty quickly in the US, I managed to refresh my way to a purchase in the first 13 minutes of launch and it was in my hands 6 days later. If that dang dead green wasn’t where I could see it easily I might have just held on to it. Don’t go looking for problems if you don’t notice any naturally. 😂
And don’t let the sub get you scared about yours being defective either, the people whose LEs are perfect are too busy playing to post about having nothing to complain about. It certainly feels like the LEs are getting beat up right now, but squeaky wheels get heard.