You should take their deal or lawyer up, those are your choices really. I like the idea of the internet swooping in at the injustice of it. I've been in the same boat for things much worse. But save for a few inspiration examples the internet never swoops in, in a PR context, about the same odds as becoming a Hollywood superstar when you set out to be an actor.

Take the deal or lawyer up. Online PR / notoriety won't save you. The government won't save you either. "Don't screw the consumer" type organizations typically don't save the little guy, they work in aggregate.

If you want to be ethical and meta you need to advocate to change the rules of the game which is a years long process If you want vengeance and revenge, there are ways to do that but I leave that to you, unethical in one sense but the intent is to forcefully punish the behavior so it never happens again

I want to share my own unrelated-OEM RMA experience, and provide an example to OP/all on why to buy future items (like OC's) from CostCo/Sam's/BJ's:

The first power-outtage of its brand-new life, my online-purchased UPS failed to back-up the load. The OEM had intentionally made the return process difficult and time-consuming, hoping that most consumers wouldn't be willing to "jump through all the hoops" of completing a return (e.g. shipping costs, phone-trees, insane warranty disqualifiers). "Out of principle," I went ahead and did this, but with this promise:

I will purchase all my future UPS systems from CostCo, because then all I have to do is drive to member services and drop off the dud/fuddy/DOA (bigger vendors have more "leverage" against OEM), for a full refund.

(Disclosure: I am a CostCo shareholder, and would not judge OC's return of defective hardware to the original vendor)

Dear OC: hindsight being 20/20, in your current position I would take the offered $1500 refund (maybe you can part-out the DOA computer?)

This is for you, @Pickletickler9000, and everyone else who has bought a pre-built PC. You can build your own PC. It is very easy and you can build them in all kinds of shapes and sizes. It is also much less expensive. The sky is the limit for $2700. Take the money and build something to your specs so you can go back to your video editing gig.

All of these blow what you had out of the water.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildmeapc/comments/1b599jy/the_abs...

Best thing to do in the future is to get an American Express card that has return protection and extended warranty.

Return it if you can, otherwise wait for the one year warranty to expire and do a claim with them.

HP has tried to disable their printers when owners attempted to use non-HP cartridges. I don't understand why anyone would do business with such an anti-consumer corporation.