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Maxtor dropping standard HD warranty from 3 years to 1 year

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It`s a bad move by Maxtor,customers will just buy HDs from other companies,I`ve a Maxtor at the moment and will be looking elsewhere for my next HD.Maxtor how many customers do you think you`re going to lose? I know you`ve just lost one customer .
One year warranty shows how much faith you`ve in your products 🙁.
 
They just don't make 'em like they used to..about 1 year ago I had to RMA a Quantum so I was
rummaging through the garage for a drive to use while I waited for the RMA. I come across an
old seizegate 40mb, useless of course but just for my amusement I plugged it up and it STILL RAN!
the actuator was louder than a food processor full of wing nuts and a small dust cloud blew out of
its vent hole but there it was, a C: prompt.......
 
I doubt this decision had anything to do with product confidence by Maxtor. This is pure economics at work here. Unless the company has a 0% return rate, longer warranties will cost the company money. The ATA drive market has razor thin margins and any cost cutting measure possible is going to be taken. If this is what it is going to take to keep Maxtor in business, then so be it. The ATA market is basically down to 3 main companies with WD, Maxtor, and Seagate. Every year recently, at least one HD manufacturer has disappeared for one reason of another. We can't afford to lose any more and expect costs of drives to continue to spriral downwards. What would you rather have a 1 year warranty from a company still in business or a lifetime warranty from one that isn't?
 
What would you rather have a 1 year warranty from a company still in business or a lifetime warranty from one that isn't?
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I`ll rather have a 3 or 5 year warranty from a company like WD or Seagate that`s still in business 😉.
 
That sucks indeed. However, I do like the emergence of 80GB platters and Serial ATA! Both motherboards AND harddrives are now coming out that support Serial ATA.
 
Typically, crappy products have crappy warranties and good products have good warranties. Regardless of how the quality actually is, Maxtor isn't exactly inspiring confidence in their customers. Lowering your warranty tells consumers that you aren't confident in your product, period. This is evidenced by all of the posts in this thread and many others on other sites. This will likely turn into reduced sales, which will lose Maxtor money. That may more than counterbalance the savings on less RMAs. It was a totally boneheaded move on Maxtor's part.

I know I am not buying Maxtor from now on, and I buy a lot of hard drives, for myself and my job.
 
Ill admit that the HD's that are maxtors here at work have been bought simply because of their Warranty and good name.....now that the warranty is out the door...so is their name from our facility. We replaced many of the Quantums also with some Maxtors...(read previous post)
 
That sucks, I've been a Maxtor man for the past 3 years, now well I dunno. Just dissapointed, a move like that only dessemates consumer trust to a company.
 
"I`ll rather have a 3 or 5 year warranty from a company like WD or Seagate that`s still in business ."

Look at the past 18 months alone, Quantum, Samsung, and IBM all gone from the HD business. Before the release of the BB line everyone was waiting for WD to declare bancruptcy or speculating on who would buy them out. One lame duck release can put you out of business. With that type of scenario you have to look at all the options for cost cutting measures. You can reduce manufacturing costs by only so much, the raw materials for HD's have not gone down in cost nearly as much as the total cost of the drive has. With the razor thin margins, every drive Maxtor doesn't take back is probably 4 or 5 they don't have to sell. With that in mind it makes very good financial sense to cut down the warranty. Maxtor doesn't care whether or not you continue to buy their drives, so long as Compaq, HP, Dell and other large OEM's do. That's where they make the majority of their money, not from the average Joe who goes into BB or CompUSA and uses multiple rebates and price matching and walks out with a free drive.
 
One other thing to add, is how often does anyone use an IDE drive for 3 years anyway? 3 years ago, the original ATA Barracuda had just been released, everyone was on only their 2nd generation ATA 7200RPM drives and the largest IDE drive available was 30GB. How many people here use one of those drives in their main machine today? IDE has always had the throw away mentality. After a year or 2 when the drive needs to be replaced for one reason or another it gets thrown out or tossed aside until it is needed in some sort of emergency. This is quite different than SCSI where users will keep the drives much longer, and aren't just cast off when a new drive is purchased. I steer clear of Maxtor now because I think their quality is subpar, but all the drives I've ever had fail on me from any manufacturer did it within the first year, so the policy change wouldn't affect me.
 
One other thing to add, is how often does anyone use an IDE drive for 3 years anyway?
Click to expand...

I`ve a IBM over 3yrs old still working in my backup PC,my current Maxtor D740X is more or less a year old and have no intention of replacing it .

Having 3 year warranty or so gives you that extra peace of mind,in the end Maxtor are the ones that will lose out,not me.


🙂
 
Originally posted by: BFG10K
Why are they doing this?
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Why do you think? Maxtor are notorious for breakdowns, that's why.

They probably got sick of all the RMAs they had to process.
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I'm havinig a horrible time with Maxtor drives, this 3 to 1 year thing just seems to be confirmation of the issues. I will never purchase another.

 
Originally posted by: Pariah
One other thing to add, is how often does anyone use an IDE drive for 3 years anyway? .... How many people here use one of those drives in their main machine today
Click to expand...


Time for a quick reminder that the world does not live and die by the user's of the Anandtech Forums!

Most of my clients are running Pentium's with 64megs of ram at most (until I upgrade them), Win95/98 and 2 or 4 gig HD's. I would venture to say that over 50% of the machines that are in use right now have 10gig or smaller 5400rpm drives or slower. When I go to a clients house that has a HD failure and I can get them a new HD for free because Maxtor will replace the drive because it's still under warranty that affects the customer on many levels. Less headache for me, less headache for them, and everyone is a just a little bit happier in the end because they were covered by a good warranty.

If you think that harddrives are disposable and that no one uses one for longer than 1 year let alone 3 years then you are wrong.

- J
 
I hope this isn't an industry trend and that the other manufacturers don't follow suit.
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No kidding. If drive companies are hurting, I'd rather pay a little more for a 3 yr warranty then to have them drop all drives back to a 1yr warranty.
 
Originally posted by: Pariah
One other thing to add, is how often does anyone use an IDE drive for 3 years anyway? 3 years ago, the original ATA Barracuda had just been released, everyone was on only their 2nd generation ATA 7200RPM drives and the largest IDE drive available was 30GB. How many people here use one of those drives in their main machine today? IDE has always had the throw away mentality. After a year or 2 when the drive needs to be replaced for one reason or another it gets thrown out or tossed aside until it is needed in some sort of emergency. This is quite different than SCSI where users will keep the drives much longer, and aren't just cast off when a new drive is purchased. I steer clear of Maxtor now because I think their quality is subpar, but all the drives I've ever had fail on me from any manufacturer did it within the first year, so the policy change wouldn't affect me.
Click to expand...

Load and loads of people do, including me.
My firewall is using an old Quantum drive, I have no idea how old it is, but "quite old" is probabaly an understatement.
My main PC is using a 60GXP which is well over a year, and my other PC's are using drives that are between 1-4 years old.

And at work, we have a load of old boxes running with old HD's, and I imagine we're not the only company in that position.
 
You can sometimes purchase an extended warranty. 🙂

We were enjoying fairly cheap hard drives for a long time now and as Pariah said it's all about economics. They realize it may cost them a few enthusiasts but overall I'm sure the numbers crunched in favor of this move. Now will I remember this for my next HD purchase? Yep.

Reduced warranties are happening elsewhere, too. HP's low-end printers, for instance, went from 1 year to 3 months.
 
"Most of my clients are running Pentium's with 64megs of ram at most (until I upgrade them), Win95/98 and 2 or 4 gig HD's."
"And at work, we have a load of old boxes running with old HD's, and I imagine we're not the only company in that position."

I would be willing the wager a decent amount that the majority of mid to large corporation do not custom build their systems after ordering the parts on NewEgg. If you're buy large numbers of systems for clients or employees, you're going through Dell or HP or someone else. Under those circumstances the computer manufacturers bears the burden of honoring the warranty on all the parts in the system, not each individual manufacturer of the parts. If the memory in your Dell systems dies, you don't go to PNY or Kingston, you go back to Dell. There's a reason OEM's usually only have standard 1 year warranties on their system and extended warranties cost a fortune. Maxtor could do the same thing, and charge more for a drive with a longer warranty. IBM in essence does this with their most recent line of mobile hard drives, where there are actually 2 model numbers for the same drive, the only difference is one is rated for more online hours than the other.
 
/me will not be buying anymore Maxtor HDDs. :|

I think you guys are forgetting something here. Everyone keeps mentioning how individuals not buying Maxtor HDDs won't really affect them because most of their business is large OEMs. The OEM part is true, but AFAIK Dell, HP, etc. buy their drives OEM with no warranty. So basically the only drives they sell with warranties are to individuals. Thus, if I large portion of individuals decide not to buy Maxtor HDDs because of the reduced warranty, they could lose more more money than if they had stayed with a three year warranty and not POed so many customers.
 
Well, I will still support maxtor. As many have said, when getting a replacement for an drive that has been bad (only one time in my case) it was very easy to get it replaced. Which means more to me knowing that ehy will stand behind their warranty rather than some of these vendors who don't care about their customers and are responsible for warranties that they don't want to fulfill.

Regardless, I am satisfied with a 1 year warranty. But wish they would have kept it at 3 years.
 
i humbly renounce my doomsayering ways

figures the one time in quite a few months i get mad about something and bam i make an ass out of my self

my apologies

but they could have hinted at least that it wasn't going to be all desktop drives like it sounded😱

sorry pariah i guess i should have listened to wisened experience😉

so to all i humbly apologize and retract all statements
mike

seems i have a letter to write🙁
 
I recently ordered 4 Maxtor 20GB 7200's and all 4 whined like a jet engine. I have used Maxtor drives exclusively for the past year or so. IBM before that. I replaced the Maxtor's with WD.
 
It's good to see people staying informed as consumers; however, it won't put Maxtor out of business in any way whatsoever. People will just accept the 1-year warranty period.

For instance, Apple only warranties their computers for a year. With Dell you can get 3. People who buy Mac don't really pay attention. Apple only warranties their iPod for 90 days. 90 days for a $400 piece of hardware that travels everywhere and is at much higher risk of damage. People, even PC users, are buying them in droves.

The lesson is that while we all know that quality seems to be going down because we have all RMA'd products, warranties just don't matter to the majority of buyers.
 
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