HDD Return policies...

[AtlantaBob]

So I've got a Seagate Hard Drive that their tech support says is failing and needs to be returned.

I know that the old Maxtor people would cross ship you a drive, which saved you both a.) time and b.) packaging costs, because you could go ahead and send it back to them in the packaging you received.

Anyone know if Seagate does this? (or will do it, if you complain enough?)

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: AtlantaBob
So I've got a Seagate Hard Drive that their tech support says is failing and needs to be returned.

I know that the old Maxtor people would cross ship you a drive, which saved you both a.) time and b.) packaging costs, because you could go ahead and send it back to them in the packaging you received.

Anyone know if Seagate does this? (or will do it, if you complain enough?)

They charge I believe a $15 fee or more to do that. I complained to a manager(drive failed within the first month of use) and got that fee waved.

 

[AtlantaBob]

Hm. Thanks for letting me know. Well, it's off to go complain to a manager....

Would anyone like to weigh in on their defense?

I mean, I can see that they take a risk in doing it, but if they get your CC number beforehand.... I can't think that too many credit card thieves like to impersonate people with broken hard drives, and sit outside their houses all day, waiting to get a hard disk.... let alone deal with the RMA/Serial Number mess.

With such friendly customer service, I imagine they'd think I was joking if I asked for a SATA drive to replace the PATA one, right?

 

[Alexio]

Seagate customer service suck big time. I don't know if it's true about Seagate itself, but it sure is a case for their recently acquired Maxtor unit. They do not do cross shipping (although it says that they do on their web site). They will ask you to ship your drive first, and then (after it will be somewhere in their warehouse for couple days) they will test it (another 2-3 days), allocate a new drive (another day) and ship it UPS ground (another week). I was without a drive for almost 3 weeks. They've apologized, but if I'd knew about all this hassle, I'd toss the drive and get myself a new one.

 

[Tullphan]

So who's got the best/easiest RMA now?
I never had any luck w/the old Maxtor drives, but their customer service was top-notch.
I've not had any dealings with Seagate or Western Digital (the current drives in my rig) yet.
I'm not sure about the other companies...Hitachi, Samsung, etc.
Anyone?

 

[Gorrillasnot]

I did a cross ship with western digital and I believe it took about 4-5 days to get the new drive.
It didn't cost me any extra, but if I remember right I had to give them my credit card info so they could charge me for the new drive if I didn't return the defective one.

 

[Tullphan]

That's the way it was with me & the Maxtor drives I had to return...of course that's been several years & i've read that things have changed since Seagate took over.
Pity.

 

[Le Québécois]

I had to do return a WesternDigital HDD and with the cross shipping I recived a new(not refurbished) HDD 3 days after.

As for Seagate, it's more a case by case thing. Sometimes the service is really good and sometimes you just wish you never have to deal with them again.

 

[Puffnstuff]

You know I've never had to rma an hd back to the manufacturer before. They've either died up front so the retailer took it back or after the warranty expired. I've got a seagate sata that is going bad and needs to be replaced however I bought a hitachi deskstar 500gb to replace it with. I've seagates in all of my systems and I'm loosing faith in them. I've got drives that sound like sirens making a variating high pitched tone plus the one that is shaking my tower and sounds like crunchy clicks when you try to move large files. Reminds me of my old ibm 75gxp before it died. I suppose that fujitsu makes the best drives but I can't afford them. If you do buy seagate make sure that they are the enterprise models ending with an se.