Question about Card Warranty

[I apologise for writing in english, if there's a problem with that I can try to rephrase this in German]

Hello,
My card (INNO3d gtx 980 ti X4) recently stopped working and also had a burning smell. I contacted Caseking and they asked that I return the card.
After receiving the card, they sent me and email saying that they sent the card back because "Serial Number removed, its not possible to identify". Now I did actually remove the serial number sticker but only because it was sitting on the back plate and it looked very ugly, however, the serial number is still available on the box and the warranty sticker (the on the actual graphics card and not on the back plate) is still in place. I'm hoping for someone from Caseking to reply to tell me if :

1. They actually tested the card ?

2. If the sticker was removed, but the serial number is still on the box, do I lose my warranty ?

(I can supply a photo of the graphics card and serial number if necessary)
Thanks for any help.

Greetings willy91,

first off, you can contact us in English any time, that's never a problem. Now let me come to your questions:

1. No, of course not. We are never going to test cards on our test benches whose origins we cannot verify in order to avoid damage to our systems.

2. The box alone doesn't matter, since it is a common fraud scheme to buy defective cards on eBay or similar platforms, remove their stickers and just stuff them in the box of another, still functioning graphics card purchased before and then send it in for RMA in order to have the second card illegitimately replaced. So there is a very good reason for those stickers being on the card itself and there are warnings everywhere that inform you to never remove any stickers from the product, since it's going to void your (seller's) warranty. Therefore we automatically rejected your RMA claim.

3. The manufacturer's warranty is an entirely different matter, yet I cannot give you any reliable statements regarding this, because we cannot know how the manufacturer of your card is going to react exactly. If you can provide a photo, that will be scrutinised for Photoshop editing on our side, we can contact the manufacturer and discuss if there is a way to replace the card despite the missing sticker. Please forward a link of this thread along with said photograph to "reklamation@caseking.de". Please bear in mind that we cannot promise anything.

Here you can find more information on the differences of the seller's warranty and manufacturer's warranty in German and European law:
https://www.caseking.de/en/warranty?__shop=2

Kind Regards,
Mike

Thanks for replying,
that sounds fair enough. I have attached a picture of the serial number on the box and on the card, and a dropbox link to the original pictures if you want to check for yourself
Dropbox link to photos

Hi willy91,

unfortunately it's pretty hard to make out the serial number on those pics and two of them seem to have been edited today at 13:10, although you only may have resized them. Nevertheless we will forward them to Inno3D and see what happens.

Kind Regards,
Mike

Those pictures were the one's I rotated (you can tell because the unedited pictures have the serial number upside down), as you can see in the dropbox link the original pictures we're taken and modified on 01/07/2015. Thanks for the help anyway, at least now I have a chance.