After being dealt with in a professional manner by...

After being dealt with in a professional manner by Matthew from xoticpc, and being informed of new improvements to the RMA system that should eliminate the kind of communication black hole that used to exist, I feel comfortable awarding them a 5 star review. When MSI failed to reproduce the issue for which I had sent in my laptop and which had been reproduced by xotic, Matthew and the folks at xotic went to bat and insisted that they (MSI) perform the GPU replacement. I am happy to report that my laptop is on the way back to me now with the proper repairs.