Seagate RMA

[alteredNate]

Well, I just have to vent. I buy a 200GB SATA that had boatloads of bad sectors, I loose hours repairing damage from major crashes and corrupt files because of it, I wait 2 weeks for a replacement, and it's refurbished???

OK, sure, there's probably nothing wrong with it (I have yet to verify), but I can't halp but thinking that's LAME. It's like buying a new car, taking it in for repairs, and suddenly you have a used car.

Anyone else had this experience?

 

[Matthias99]

This is pretty common. I mean, technically, you sent them a 'used' drive; they sent you a 'used' drive in return. It still has a full warranty, and if it makes you feel any better, it has probably been checked out more thoroughly than most 'new' drives are.

 

[alteredNate]

Yeah, ok maybe, but I can't help but feel a little stiffed for the amount of hassle that I went through for absolutely no fault of my own only to end up with a repaired item. If it were a 4 year old drive that I had abused the crap out of, that would be different.

 

[UsandThem]

Originally posted by: alteredNate
Yeah, ok maybe, but I can't help but feel a little stiffed for the amount of hassle that I went through for absolutely no fault of my own only to end up with a repaired item. If it were a 4 year old drive that I had abused the crap out of, that would be different.

Most companies do this. I bought a Sony VCR, and it was broke within 90 days. It stated on the warranty card that they would either repair it or send me a refurbished unit.

Consumers get the shaft on stuff like that.

 

[Ike0069]

Actually, most refurbs are actually items that were returned found to be working. They can't resell as new, so they sells as refurbs or exchange for RMA'd items.

 

[nealh]

how new was the drive...if it was within a few months I would call and complain and demand a new drive..nicely...

I just bought 2 seagate 7200.8 and if I find they had bad sectors and I got a refurb I would hit the roof..pay for new HDD get a bad drive and then get used/refurb as RMA...sorry that is wrong and not good customer service....

if my drive was 1 yr old ...ok

 

[airfoil]

Out of curiosity, how did you identify the replacement as a refurb? Was there a sticker or something of the sort?

 

[GnomeCop]

yes, they will put a sticker on the drive saying it is a refurb unit.

the ONLY time I ever got a NEW drive from them was when I bought 2 RETAIL sata drives and they were mispackaged with drives LABELED as OEM inside,

It was really weird and clearly a manufacturing error. The box label has the same serial number as the drive inside it, except on the box it ended with the letters RTL-KT (retail kit)
and on the drive itself the serial number, although identical, did not have those characters and when I entered the serial number in ther website, it said it had 0 warranty on it.

They said it must have been some kind of packaging mistake and they sent me 2 new drives.
the 2 other times I had to RMA drives back to seagate because of actual drive failure, (1 ide and 1 Scsi ) both came back as refurbs.

 

[imverygifted]

if you RMA something i dont think you can just automatically expect something new your supposed to expect something that replaces what you had equally and works. when a company sends you something new thats above their required service which is a mark of a good company

 

[alteredNate]

Yeah, even the BOX stated "REFURBISHED" on the outside.

The drive was brand spanking new. Seatools found 1082 bad sectors on it. It reaked all sorts of havok. I mean, ok, maybe I was stupid to not run a surface scan before loading it up, but man, this is like the 20th hard drive I've bought in my life and I've never had one have bad sectors right off the bat.

So I agree with nealh - I'm a bit pissed. However if I slap this in and there's no errors after a small torture test, I'll keep it to avoid the hassle of waiting again for a drive.

I'm going to send a "nice" e-mail to them complaining anyway...

We'll see what i hear back.

 

[suse920]

it wasnt nesisary for them to give you a new drive back. You did send them a used one. If you wanted a new drive you can always just return it to the store you bought it from. The "used drive is most likely checked more than the bnew drives are

 

[ribbon13]

Indeed. The seagate refurbs are the best checked drives. They have a really nice 'Clean Room' I've never had a Seagate refurb ever go bad. It was probably that something happened during shipping.

 

[n19htmare]

I recently RMAd my Western Digital 160GB Sata. I bought OEM from a store and i only had it for 17 days before it crapped out. Store wouldnt take it back because of their 15 day return policy. I did an Advance RMA, they shipped out the drive monday, i had it up and running Tuesday.
the drive I got was also a Refurbised drive. I don't have any complaints becuase it works fine and better than the New one I had. Believe it or not a Lot less noisy then the new drive I had too.
I think most of your frustration is because of the delayed time it took them to send the drive. If you have gotten the drive the next day, I dont think you would be as mad about the Refurb as youare now. Plus I think its clearly stated in nearly all warrantees (fine print) that your drive will be repaired or replaced. never states with a Brand New drive. Pop that sucka and in a get to work

 

[nealh]

Jeez..I am sorry you guys missed the point..he bought a NEW drive it was never used and was BAD from the get go..sorry...he deserves a NEW drive not a refurb...period

I consider something new for at least 30-60 days...no way a new product should be bad and if so it should be replaced as new...may 90 days or something...6mo...a year..I agree refurb is fine

He did not returna a used drive....please read carefully he bought stuck it in and it was BAD......

why does everyone back crappy CS..this pisses me off as I bought 2 new drives from Seagate ....I would never accept this...

Seagate has a great rep but this tarnishes it for me....bad a premium for there newest drive and 5yr warranty..I expect better

 

[ribbon13]

Haha, Seagate vs what?

My friend bought a brand new maxtor. It was bad from the get go. He called them up, apparently because the seller wasn't 'Authorized' to sell it the refurb he got came with a 30 day warranty. He paid for a 3 year warranty, ended up with 30 days.... Nice!

I've owned 285 seagate's and 43 wd's. Only 13 of the seagate's didn't work anymore when I got rid of them, none of the wd's worked when I god rid of them.

 

[alteredNate]

Well, I did get a 160GB before that and it still runs fine.

I am a bit dissapointed with seagate for this misadventure, but overall I still feel they make damn good drives. And in fact the RMA process wasn't too painful (aside from the wait) and they are damn quick to respond to e-mails.

I think in their eyes an RMA is an RMA at 2 weeks or 4 years. But I would still like to have seen a little effort on their side to realize that it was brand spanking new.

Anyway...

 

[nealh]

I think in their eyes an RMA is an RMA at 2 weeks or 4 years. But I would still like to have seen a little effort on their side to realize that it was brand spanking new.

Anyway...

well as a consumer I disagree with this....in fact it makes me want to return my seagates on this principle..clearly the hassle makes that not wrth while...but a new drive that is bad should be replaced by new...I would talk with a supervisor personally and demand better

 

[ribbon13]

And replace it with what? Maxtor and WD fall even farther behind in CS

 

[Jeff7181]

Actually a refurb might be better than a "new" one since refurbs are tested by hand, and if I'm not mistaken, repaired by hand (if possible). So in a sense... your refurb drive has been to a day spa and is good as new again.

But that's how things work... they take in broken drives, repair them, and send them out to replace broken drives other people send in. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing unless you suspect that the structural integrity of the case the platters and everything is enclosed in has been compromised and upon powering on the drive it may suffer from a catastrophic failure and take out other components in your PC.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Ike0069
Actually, most refurbs are actually items that were returned found to be working. They can't resell as new, so they sells as refurbs or exchange for RMA'd items.

Like the Hitachi 180GXP drive I was sent as a replacment for a head-crashed 120GXP. "Servicable Used Part," the thing said. Not even two months later, click of death, and the drive remains unusuable, with all data trapped onboard. Worse too, it had gone to someone else's PC, so it wasn't even my data lost.

And my replacement drive from Maxtor. 200GB drive shows bad sectors. RMA'd. They sent a refurbed 250GB drive. Ok, that's fine. Guess what - it's got even more bad sectors than the 200GB.

Oddly enough, Western Digital has had a decent track record here. Granted, I've found their drives to be louder than most, but I've had only one WD drive die on me, and it predicted its own death - the SMART reported a few uncorrectable write errors, which turned out to be bad sectors. The replacement (refurbed of course) worked fine.

My Seagate drives (7 of them, all running currently, all pretty new) are sort of ok; I had a hiccup recently with one drive - it started making funky clicking noises, but SMART reports nothing wrong, and a surface scan revealed no anomalies. Might have been a loose cable, but I am cautiously keeping a close ear on it for any additional weird noises.

 

[aka1nas]

You should have returned it to the store if it was defective out of the box. All the hard drive manufacturers will ship you a refurbed drive for RMA's

 

[alteredNate]

well I ordered it online, figured it would be easier to RMA it.

I'm about to plop it in and run an overnight seatool scan on it... we'll see. I assume that everyone is correct, and that a refurbed drive is safer than a new. It's just the feeling of being "jipped" that remains.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: nealh
Jeez..I am sorry you guys missed the point..he bought a NEW drive it was never used and was BAD from the get go..sorry...he deserves a NEW drive not a refurb...period

I consider something new for at least 30-60 days...no way a new product should be bad and if so it should be replaced as new...may 90 days or something...6mo...a year..I agree refurb is fine

Well, that's up to the store and mfg's policies. Some will RMA for a new drive, if you purchased it new/retail, and it shows as bad within the first 14 days or so. That's one reason to buy HDs locally at the B&M - if something does go bad, you can usually immediately exchange the drive for a brand-new one. I always give my "new" HDs a pretty thorough torture-test before trusting them with any important data. Just because the drive is new, doesn't mean that it couldn't have been mis-handled and is now defective. If the stock clerk dropped the box, or the warehouse forklift driver... well, you can imagine what that might do to a drive.

Originally posted by: nealh
He did not return a a used drive....please read carefully he bought stuck it in and it was BAD......
why does everyone back crappy CS..this pisses me off as I bought 2 new drives from Seagate ....I would never accept this...
Seagate has a great rep but this tarnishes it for me....bad a premium for there newest drive and 5yr warranty..I expect better

How long after purchasing did he attempt to RMA it as bad? If it was after 30 days, forget any possibility of getting a new one back in exchange. You should be able to tell if a drive is bad/DOA within a week, more or less.
It's not really "crappy CS", it's pretty industry-standard.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Haha, Seagate vs what?

My friend bought a brand new maxtor. It was bad from the get go. He called them up, apparently because the seller wasn't 'Authorized' to sell it the refurb he got came with a 30 day warranty. He paid for a 3 year warranty, ended up with 30 days.... Nice!

That's interesting. Maxtor used to have an end-user "no quibbles" warranty, and they would extend it to even OEM drives.. I thought. It was Seagate that was well-known to refuse end-user warranty on OEM HDs and ones purchased from other than "authorized" retailers.

Are you certain that your "friend" wasn't just confused, normally, if a HD mfg sends an advance RMA unit, the warranty will show only 30 days, and then when you return your "bad" drive, they re-instate the remainder of the full purchase warranty in the database again. Either that, or he bought a completely grey-market (from a different worldwide distribution region) HD, which wouldn't have had any warranty, not 30 days.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Oddly enough, Western Digital has had a decent track record here. Granted, I've found their drives to be louder than most, but I've had only one WD drive die on me, and it predicted its own death - the SMART reported a few uncorrectable write errors, which turned out to be bad sectors. The replacement (refurbed of course) worked fine.

For all of the nay-saying about WD... that is indeed one thing that I've also observed - when they do fail, they tend to do so somewhat gracefully, giving you a chance to salvage your data, unlike Maxtor and IBMs, which tend to suffer completely sudden catastrophic failures, more often than not.

Originally posted by: Jeff7
My Seagate drives (7 of them, all running currently, all pretty new) are sort of ok; I had a hiccup recently with one drive - it started making funky clicking noises, but SMART reports nothing wrong, and a surface scan revealed no anomalies. Might have been a loose cable, but I am cautiously keeping a close ear on it for any additional weird noises.

Yeah, wierd noises = watch out!