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Garbage Seagate RMA

J

jschen

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 18, 2002
Messages
369
Here's the story, I RMAed a drive 6 months back that was close to being out of warranty I guess. I get the replacement which lasts ~6 months and decides to start dying. So I guess the warranty carries over and you get no extension on it. Seems like a shoddy deal to me to send in a dead drive to receive a dead drive. You would think a company as large as theirs would stand by their product. I'm sure they have a stockpile of "recertified" drives to hand out. "Recertified" junk.
 
jschen said:
Here's the story, I RMAed a drive 6 months back that was close to being out of warranty I guess. I get the replacement which lasts ~6 months and decides to start dying. So I guess the warranty carries over and you get no extension on it. Seems like a shoddy deal to me to send in a dead drive to receive a dead drive. You would think a company as large as theirs would stand by their product. I'm sure they have a stockpile of "recertified" drives to hand out. "Recertified" junk.
Click to expand...

Why would you expect an extension of the original warranty? A recertified drive carries the balance of the original warranty, just like every other electronic device out there.
 
mwroobel said:
Why would you expect an extension of the original warranty? A recertified drive carries the balance of the original warranty, just like every other electronic device out there.
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It's a shoddy replacement policy. It shows that they aren't standing by their recertification process. What's the point of an RMA if you don't get a reliable product back? Basically they're saying we'll get you through the warranty period with this "recertified" piece of equipment. I should feel secure with a recertified product instead of now feeling like I should have just tossed the original drive and bought a new one. I guess I would still be upset if the product was under warranty since I would have lost the drive in 6 months. I would still have that feeling afterward that is the new replacement drive going to last or not?

6 months is a short period of useful life for the hassle of filling out an RMA form, sending the drive in, waiting for it to come back, restoring from backups, etc.
 
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jschen said:
It shows that they aren't standing by their recertification process. What's the point of an RMA if you don't get a reliable product back? Basically they're saying we'll get you through the warranty period with this "recertified" piece of equipment. I should feel secure with a recertified product instead of now feeling like I should have just tossed the original drive and bought a new one.

6 months is a short period of useful life for the hassle of filling out an RMA form, sending the drive in, waiting for it to come back.
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Hi, jschen,

The Seagate Technology Limited Consumer Warranty seem to be pretty standard to me. From what you've described seagate seems to have met the terms of the limited warranty, but I'm not an attorney and could be wrong.

Chuklr
 
Not sure what the complaint is. When I buy a new X, with a warranty of Y years, and it dies after Y-3 years, I would expect to be made whole. e.g. get something warrantied for 3 more years. Sounds like you're wanting a free lunch here.
 
I'm saying their recertified drive should be as good as a new drive. No point in RMA when near the original drive dies near end of warranty. Guess the definition of recertified doesn't mean quality.
 
I understand exactly what you are saying - I just disagree. You should not, IMO, get more time out of a drive than if it had never failed.
 
jschen said:
I'm saying their recertified drive should be as good as a new drive. No point in RMA when near the original drive dies near end of warranty. Guess the definition of recertified doesn't mean quality.
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Nope. You purchased a HDD with a warranty of, lets say, 3 years. Seagate vows to ensure that you have a working hard drive for that 3 year period. Once that three year period is over, so ends the manufactures obligation to warranty your device. The lack of warranty has nothing to do with the quality of the recertified products. Its 100% due to the fact that Seagate owes you no warranty beyond what was advertised when you purchased the original drive. Usually recerts come with a 30 or 90-day warranty to make sure the drive doesn't arrive with a fault. Past that, if your original warranty is over, thats your problem. Seagate is doing nothing wrong here, and I challenge you to find any OEM where the initial warranty period is extended by way of an RMA.
 
Sure they don't necessarily send you a new drive, but I'd say the recertified are actually quite reliable, it's just bad luck what happened here.
 
jschen said:
I'm saying their recertified drive should be as good as a new drive. No point in RMA when near the original drive dies near end of warranty. Guess the definition of recertified doesn't mean quality.
Click to expand...

Those re-certified drives are just as good as new drives. New drives can also die six months after purchase as well. In this case, it's a case of bad luck. I've had plenty of re-certified Seagate drives last for years after the warranty expired.

So in other words, you just had bad luck and overly high expectations (to say the least). if there's any to blame, it's your luck, not Seagate.
 
And it's stories like these on why I won't buy a drive with a 1 year or 2 year warranty.
You can only expect them to be around for as long as the warranty and no longer. Anything past that is a bonus. Gone are the days when hard drives are rapidly made obsolete due to newer bigger drives. A 3TB or 4TB drive will still be considered a big drive in 3 years so having it (or it's replacement) fail just outside of a 1 year or 2 year warranty would be very annoying.
Simply buy a drive that has a warranty equal to the length of time you want the drive to last and don't expect anything more.
/rant
 
jschen said:
Here's the story, I RMAed a drive 6 months back that was close to being out of warranty I guess. I get the replacement which lasts ~6 months and decides to start dying. So I guess the warranty carries over and you get no extension on it. Seems like a shoddy deal to me to send in a dead drive to receive a dead drive. You would think a company as large as theirs would stand by their product. I'm sure they have a stockpile of "recertified" drives to hand out. "Recertified" junk.
Click to expand...

I expect all drives to fail. When they do, I expect the new drives to get the balance of the remaining warranty.

Compare to WD, Toshiba, SSD vendors, motherboard vendors and etc.

Now, you may say this type of warranty stinks, but that's they way it is right now.
 
After many of my *CENSORED* drives failed i stopped buying *CENSORED* drive.
I hate them!
 
So far, my refurbished WD drives I get, have a good history of being reliable.

My seagates though, I have returned a batch of them, to have the replacement batch 100% fail a few months later, returned that batch, and again 100% failure after a few months of getting replacements, this was for a 3y warrenty drives. Out of the original purchased batch, only 10% failed, the other 90% are fine. Of the refurb replacements, over 3 batchs, 0 of them are working after 4months on any of them.

I have phased out of any seagates since maxtor joined with them, and as much as I don't like wd firmware, I am sticking with wd drives now, as I hitachi are limited, looking at some promising toshiba's though.
 
Just bad luck or maybe the fault isn't the drives. Or it could be a known issue with a particular model. All of the manufacturers release a bad model from time to time.

In any case, you can feel bitter and cheated all you want, but ALL of the manufacturer warranties function the same. So this issue could have occurred with any brand that you had purchased.
 
Krispy, I could have assumed that, but considering the same system had a mixture of drives in it, and the seagates always failed, and the rma drives where of different models each time, cause they had stopped producing the drives I assumed.

But like everything, these things very over time, and while I personally consider seagate not as good presently, doesn't mean that won't be different next year.
 
I just stay away from companies that dont stand behind the products they sell...i would count this as a life lesson and move on. I feel like seagate rests on laurels to stay afloat and keeps screwing over the people willing to buy their consumer products. 15$ for advanced RMA, shortest warranties, slow ship times and poor staffing pretty much completes my book of "why not to deal with seagate".
Their prosumer/enterprise is a whole other story.

I run all new drives for 3-6 months before important data goes on them (highest chance of failure) so say a drive did go bad, statically I might as well trash it if it carries a 1 year joke of a warranty.
Hoping Toshiba ruffles some feathers in the near future.
 
You're complaining about extensions on warranty?

Corsair gave me 30 days on a recertified $200 SSD. Not even my original warranty which had another year on it, just 30 days.
 
I just RMA'd a WD 1TB Black 6 weeks ago that was making a grinding sound when it was reading or writing.
The replacement drive just died a few minutes ago.
Had a whining sound then just clicked and spun down.
 
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