I hate all of you Americans - Newegg's specials

[Mercutio]

Jan,

Apparently, not in this case. The drive in question (pre-pre-RMA) was originally purchased at Sam's Club and came in a retail box, in August of 2001.

The drive that started this was not OEM.

 

[CityK]

I note that in your situation they sent you a brand new drive instead of a refurbished unit. New drives are commonly treated differently than refurbished drives. So, I'm not surprised that the warrenty check said one year.

...the warrenty web check yes, but I'm still a little suspicious about what the case would be if this drive should break and I call in for a RMA for it (i.e. is there any fine print I'm missing somewhere).

I guess that this thread, as its been transformed into, goes to show that Caveat Emptor is still in effect. Damn Roman's! I blame them for our RMA troubles today.

CK

 

[Buck]

This is in direct contradiction to what I was told by WD Customer Service, in the particular case of my drive. Talked to a rep, talked to a manager.

It is possible that they were wrong.

 

[blakerwry]

Blakerwry,

If the reason for limiting the manufacturer's of your HD buying is the warrentee issues regarding refurbished drives, I strongly suggest that you call the manufacturers tech support lines and find out their policies regarding replacement/refurbished drives. I didn't know about the policy untill after I had to return a return. This type of policy may differ from manufacturer to manufacturer and thus worth the phone call to each one. You do yourself a disservice by boycotting some drive manufacturers based on the policy if others/all that you do not boycott do the same thing.

Also note that warrentee policies like what we are describing can change on a manufacturers whim. So that even if I had a problem several years ago with Maxtor, it does not necessarily follow that they have the same policy now. With that in mind, include Maxtor in the same set of phone calls as above, just to make sure that they have not changed the policy between when I delt with the issue and now.

After dealing with Guillmot and spending $25 to RMA a tnt2 (i didnt realize the phone call was international) that they just sent back to me without fixing and after dealing with linksys refusing to honor their warranty at all I really am not up to taking any more crap.


IBM has fully honored their warranties and I will stick by them. From what I hear Seagate does the same and doesn't have any current or recent past "ghosts" haunting them. So I will stick with them as well. Since a few of you guys are having good luck with Samsung I wouldn't mind helping to contribute to their conglomoration.

 

[Jan Kivar]

Jan,

Apparently, not in this case. The drive in question (pre-pre-RMA) was originally purchased at Sam's Club and came in a retail box, in August of 2001.

The drive that started this was not OEM.

Sorry about that Merc. I think that I missed that one...

Did some digging at SR... This is what I found.

Cheers,

Jan

 

[blakerwry]

yeah, I've heard of similar problems with maxtor warranty lengths. I think Merc even made a post or 2 about it.


This is one of the reasons I've never bought a maxtor drive, the other being that some were terribly slow while others of the same capacty/model line were fast (this was back when 8-20GB drives ruled) and that I've always heard they were not as reliable as competing drives from IBM, seagate, or quantum.

 

[Mercutio]

Wasn't me complaining about Maxtor, it was MARK.

I've never had a Maxtor drive fail, and the only time I've used their warranty service was for a dead quantum AS. I had one arrive DOA, but that went back to the vendor. Maxtor drives are perfectly reliable as far as I'm concerned.

I would, however, like to say that I may have an iffy 740X right now, but that might also be a slightly overloaded PSU.

 

[P5-133XL]

My return rate for Maxtor's and WD drives have always been acceptable. I have always found that Maxtor drives are rarely the fastest, but they will be close and in the past were signifigently cheaper than most other drives. Maxtor's warrentee policies tend to be similar (or better) than everyone elses: They really were the first amoung the major Manufacturers to produce a no quibble (no questions asked) warrentee return policy. Even though burned once by Maxtor a few years ago concerning the warrentee of refurbished drives, I really am not Anti-Maxtor: I really have no problem buying and using Maxtor or WD drives.

My purpose in my original post was to inform that WD was not the only company (Maxtor too did the same) that gave shortened warrentees to refurbished (returned/RMA) drives. I was not condemming Maxtor but rather trying diminish the comdemnation against WD by pointing out that another company had similar policies. I really don't think the policies are reasonable, but I think they are the standard of the industry and thus to single out one company is unfair. I found that dealing with Seagate or IBM on warrentee service to be signifigently harder than WD or Maxtor.

 

[CougTek]

Biggest thread ever in the FS&T forum. Somehow, I knew the title would generate a lot of attention

A replacement should be guaranteed for as long as the original's unit warranty period. Anything less, no matter what the replacement is (a brand new drive or a refurbished unit) is totally unaceptable and even fraudulous. I would never accept it...and never did.

 

[blakerwry]

My return rate for Maxtor's and WD drives have always been acceptable. I have always found that Maxtor drives are rarely the fastest, but they will be close and in the past were signifigently cheaper than most other drives. Maxtor's warrentee policies tend to be similar (or better) than everyone elses: They really were the first amoung the major Manufacturers to produce a no quibble (no questions asked) warrentee return policy. Even though burned once by Maxtor a few years ago concerning the warrentee of refurbished drives, I really am not Anti-Maxtor: I really have no problem buying and using Maxtor or WD drives.

My purpose in my original post was to inform that WD was not the only company (Maxtor too did the same) that gave shortened warrentees to refurbished (returned/RMA) drives. I was not condemming Maxtor but rather trying diminish the comdemnation against WD by pointing out that another company had similar policies. I really don't think the policies are reasonable, but I think they are the standard of the industry and thus to single out one company is unfair. I found that dealing with Seagate or IBM on warrentee service to be signifigently harder than WD or Maxtor.

This is the 1st time that I have heard about a different warranty on the replacement product for something like a HDD.. or maybe anything.

I think that's why it's generated so much attention. It's not acceptable to most of us.

Mark, you may be right that Maxtor had the 1st no quibble HDD RMA service(i don't have that kind of experience), but for what it's worth IBM/Hitachi has had it for a while and I've heard seagate is just as good

Example: they will exchange your ATA IV for one with the "raid" firmware.. this to me seems almost rediculous.



I do remember seeing a thread on SR about a new maxtor drive not being able to be returned even when the drive itself showed that it had bad sectors. That's just dumb.

 

[Mercutio]

I've heard, anecdotally, of Maxtor exchanging ball-bearing 740Xs for FDB; literally just because someone didn't like the pitch of the noise their drive was making. This was precrash at SR.

Don't know if that's true, but it's a far cry from "won't replace because of bad sectors".