I think you're misunderstanding the article. It's not that he wouldn't like a working AMD card it's that the cards are nearly impossible to find "since no comparable replacement cards can be had without paying scalpers on eBay".
It takes a good bit of work to get a flagship GPU at MSRP right now. If you've managed to get one from AMD and one from Nvidia at the same time and one turns out to be defective + they won't offer a direct replacement, only refund, then you're unlikely to be interested in putting a bunch more time in trying to find a non-defective model in stock at MSRP. Particularly when the manufacturer is making 0 effort to make this easier for you.
It takes a good bit of work to get a flagship GPU at MSRP right now. If you've managed to get one from AMD and one from Nvidia at the same time and one turns out to be defective + they won't offer a direct replacement, only refund, then you're unlikely to be interested in putting a bunch more time in trying to find a non-defective model in stock at MSRP. Particularly when the manufacturer is making 0 effort to make this easier for you.