We manage to get a hold of a rather interesting e-mail between Asus and one of its partners regarding the Sandy Bridge recall. Apparently, Asus advises its partner to keep selling the Sandy Bridge motherboards.

Asus currently weighs in the good and bads of the recall and is telling its partners to continue with the sales due to a couple of reasons. First of all, Asus concludes that there is no immediate danger or fault, which is kinda true as the Intel info says that SATA ports might die in a period of two to three years. The second reason is the replacement stock, or rather a lack of it, as there won't be any in next few months.

On the other hand, Asus is ready to offer a direct swap for those customers at a later date, or to be precise, once the replacement stock is available. Apparently, we are looking at a "buy one now and get a new one at a later date" scenario with Asus. Asus does offer a choice of returning the stock, but wants to keep the Q1 sales numbers and would rather sell faulty boards and replace them at a later date.

We are unable to publish the e-mail as we would rather keep the people behind it out of harm's way, so you'll have to take our word for it, but it looks like that some P67/H67 motherboards are here to stay, at least if retailers/e-tailers decide to listen to the Asus recommendation. Plenty of Asus 6-series motherboards are still available in European retail despite public calls for retailers to stop selling them.

Update:

Asus was kind enough to give us their official statement regarding the issue and, according to Asus, the previous statements are not true and all motherboards are officially being pulled from the market. Those that have already bought Asus' Sandy Bridge motherboards will get a replacement once those become available. You can find all the RMA info here.