Western Digital Rant

[S_Wilson]

So 2 1/2 months ago I bought a Western Digital 80Gb JB or Special Edition with three year warranty. I paid a premium price for a premium drive, could have saved money going with Maxtor but would have less warranty and I had heard many good things about WD JB drives. I get the drive and am happy with the performance so life is good. Last week this drive crapped out taking about 70Gb of non-retriveable data with it.

Yesterday I received my advanced replacement drive from WD support and that is where the fun really begins.

Open the package and the first thing I see is "Refurbished" written two places on the label. I go ahead and clone the data from my temp drive and make the necessary optimizations to the new drive. I go through a few benchies and find this drive doesn't perform as well as the one that went bad and doesn't perform as well as the Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9 temp drive that only has a 2Mb cache. Then I decide to check the warranty status of the new drive and find that the warranty expires 5/18/2003 when drive that they are replacing has an expiration of 10/7/2005.

[Rant]
I wasn't real happy to get a refurb as replacement for a 75 day old premium drive, not to mention the hit on resale value but I decided that I could live with that. What really ticks me off is that they sent me a supposedly tested and recertified drive that barely performs on par with BB model drives that only have 2Mb of cache and a less aggressive firmware. And what really chaps my ass is that my drive had 2 years and 9 months of warranty on it and they send me something that has only 4 months of warranty left on it. So as you can see it has gone from bad to worse to good god why didn't I just stick with Maxtor.
[/rant]

Anyway, I am trying to get this unacceptable situation resolved with Western Digital and I will let you guys know what comes of it.

Sorry for venting but I needed to, thanks.

[Staz]

Man

They sound worse than Dell!

Let us know how it turns out.

[dod]

I'm not surprised your venting. At least here your warranty runs for an agreed time from the date of purchase, regardless of the number of returns.

[cloasters]

Yep, the Corporatocracy at its best. Sorry to read this, doing so brought my opinion of WD down to the basement. Three year warranty? 8 Gb cache? Lies, pure and simple.

Soon enough, there will be no "pull" dates on any perishable item at the grocery store. "This milk looks OK."
But it's sour when you open the container at home. Take it back to the store. "Hey, this milk is bad."

"Tough luck, mate. If the dairy doesn't guarantee it, we sure don't. Leave before we call the cops."

It's a great time to be a corporation. And it'll get better!

[S_Wilson]

Yea, I know, seem like the corporate world gets worse all the time. Here is a copy of the email I sent to WDC yesterday and again today. I will continue to send them mail until they respond.



I received my advanced replacement drive today and there are several problems. I purchased my WD800JB new on 10/21/2002 with a three year warranty. The problems I have are as follows:

1. I received a "Refurbished" drive to replace my 2 1/2 months old drive. I just lost 60Gb of data and work that I cannot get back and you expect me to place trust in a refurbished and recertified drive?

2. The drive I received S/N WCA8E478121 is only under warranty until 5/18/2003, less than four months from now. The original drive was under warranty until 10/7/2005 which is 2 years and 9 months from now.

3. I tested the new drive and the performance is not quite on par with the old one that went bad. The performance is considerably less than the old drive and more what I expect from something that has only 2Mb of cache instead of 8Mb.

I would like to know what Western Digital intends to do to remedy this situation. This is the first WD product I have owned in the last five years and decided to switch from Maxtor because of all the positive press about the Special Edition drives. I was happy with the original drive but would be happy with a Maxtor also. Thank you for your time.

Respectfully
Shawn Wilson

[SteveI]

It is against the law in the USA to reduce the original warrantee period. WD will have to honor the warrantee period of the original drive you purchased. Remember to keep the original receipt and warrantee info for the original drive.

[surlyjoe]

I have also gotten refurbs for drives that showed up DOA, it kinda chapped my bootie ,but I figured wth, the warrantee is the same and they performed the same as the rest, so....

[S_Wilson]

The new drive being a refurb wasn't that big of a deal but I figured I would make issue with several points to increase the chances that it will be resolved. I have to admit that the performance has improved on this drive, still not quite what it should be but acceptable. I guess that it needed to be run in a bit to loosen up the bearings or whatever. So the main sticking point for me is the loss of 2 years and 5 months of warranty. We will see what they do to resolve this.

[S_Wilson]

Ok, Finally got a response and it is positive, here is the excerpt from the email they sent me.



[email from Peter at WDC]
The refurbished drives used for warranty replacements are remanufactured in the same factory which manufactured the hard disk. We do not use third party manufacturers.

These drives undergo the same rigorous quality control testing as our new drives, and are shipped certified error free. Please see the link below for Western Digitals' warranty policy.

All warranty replacement product is covered with an automatic 90 warranty at shipping time. During that ninety day period, the warranty of the replacement is updated to reflect the customer's original failed drive's warranty expiration. In other words, the warranty period of the replacement drive will be same as your original hard disk's warranty.

If performance of the replacement drive is substandard, please revisit our web site at the address below in order to create either an Advanced or a Standard RMA on line, for the warranty exchange of your hard drive.
[/email from Peter at WDC]



I highlighted the important paragraphs. So it appears that at some point in the future they will update this drive to the warranty of my old drive. That is something I will definetly follow up on just to make sure. I would hate to be six months down the road and find out that not only did they not update but now it is to late and I have no warranty left. The last paragraph states that I can RMA again if the performance of the drive is substandard which is reasonable. As I said in a previous post, the performance of this drive has improved to an acceptable level, so I will watch it a few more days to see what the performance does.

By the way, this is the first time I have ever had a drive go bad under warranty so this was a new experience for me.

[S_Wilson]

By the way, here is a screen shot of the warranty info on the two drives so you can see why I was griping. The first drive is the replacement they sent me and the second my failed drive