It’s not that unusual. I work in the medical device industry and we need to do quite some testing with early prototypes for all sorts of stuff like biocompatibility, cytotoxicity, hemocompatibility as well as pressure tests, drop tests, leakage testing and whatnot. Each and every one of those prototypes is hand made and therefore the “only one”.
Even if they pass one test with flying colors and no visible damages, we couldn’t use them in another test because they need to be factory new to satisfy regulatory protocols.
Normally we don’t ask for those back, we are more interested in the ones that failed a particular test.
Now we wouldn’t want our prototypes to be auctioned off, naturally, so the test centers we work with have to ensure they’ll be destroyed (we have contracts and NDAs in place). But not wanting a prototype back after a third party played around with it is way more common than you think.
Indeed, medical devices are often intended to be single-use throw-away items. This was a water cooling block, which is completely reusable. It makes no sense to assume they didn't want it back, and I'm quite sure Billet Labs would have mentioned that they wanted it back.
LTT did something really stupid and they're still claiming "but they didn't tell us not to do something really stupid!" Even though they almost certainly did.
You're good. You were providing an insight into a scenario most people wouldn't expect. Please keep posting information like that to help build this place up.
didn’t qualify as a review much less a “poor review” – lose the provided graphics card, proceed to munge the cooler onto an unrelated card, complain when it doesn’t fit, blast it as a garbage product that no one should ever buy
"Poor review" is putting it lightly after how dirty they did that card. They probably wanted it back to give to someone to do an actual, fair review of.
Also, they were told they could keep it for further testing, but not that they could keep it forever or as a gift. That LTT auctioned the prototype that definitely still belonged to Billet Labs was plain irresponsible.
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